I can tell the time based on how much battery my phone has left. Full charge? I must have just gotten up. Half-dead? It’s probably time to eat lunch and start looking for that phone charger I swear I put in my bag this morning. By the time I get the notification that my phone is entering Battery Saver mode, it’s not even mid-afternoon and I’m desperate for a charging cable. Why does this keep happening?!

If you’re anything like me, you’ve noticed that little by little your phone has nudged its way into every aspect of your life. Sure, it’s always been the primary communication tool, but now it’s a to-do list, a business conference room, an entertainment center and a credit card all rolled into one. No wonder our phones are dying before we even sit down for dinner! The good news is, there are a few simple tips that can save your battery from power-hungry apps and preserve your sanity in the process.

Stop closing your apps

Wait, what? Yeah, you read that right.

Shouldn't closing apps should free up your phone a bit and use less power, right? It seems to make perfect sense and you might feel like you’re doing the logical thing when you force-close apps on your smartphone on a regular basis. Unfortunately, you’re likely doing more harm than good. Let me explain.

When you close an app you are offloading all of that app’s data from your phone’s memory, but keeping that data in memory uses such a minuscule amount of power that you’d never notice the benefit anyway.

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The real power drain comes when you open apps, especially if you previously closed them. When you open an app that was manually closed, your phone must load up all of that data you dumped when you closed it and that uses up way more power than simply letting the apps sit idle. So, leave your apps running and you’ll save power in the long run.

Background battery burn

Many people know this age-old trick for preventing your most-used apps from slurping your battery’s juice, but it’s worth repeating anyway: Disable background refresh for apps that don’t need it. Background refresh allows apps you’re not actively using to continue to work on their own, fetching social updates, refreshing lists or syncing data online. All of these tiny actions use up some of your battery and it can add up fast.