Swipe up to close apps not working in iPadOS 26

Swiping up open app to turn them off does not work. Suggestions for how to swipe up to turn apps off also do not work. And these settings suggestions do not solve the problem. I now have 4 open and eternally active apps. I fear having 23 of them open in memory and then need to find the one that I need to use. This is unacceptable. In addition, simply swiping up or down a single page for reading is choppy/ jerky. Please fix these bugs in iOS 26.

Kilgore-Trout, It was actually a matter of being aware of a fairly obscure setting change to fix the issue. This also fixed my problem with Words With Friends not natively opening full-screen in landscape mode.

Restarting the device often fixes although as we can see with so many—-google it:) having the same issue, it’s NOT helping—we’ve been around Apple long enough -I’m using a magic KEyboard I know every workaround, even the geniuses at the store:) have no clue…there are always bugs I’m not sure why BETA people don’t speak up and we get smoothly working devices.

Thanks for the tip. It worked. BTW, I prefer to keep a less cluttered screen keeping only a couple of the apps I’m currently using open. Just because I can have a bunch of apps open doesn’t mean it’s the best way for me to work. 😏

dulcilady wrote:

Thanks for the tip. It worked. BTW, I prefer to keep a less cluttered screen keeping only a couple of the apps I’m currently using open. Just because I can have a bunch of apps open doesn’t mean it’s the best way for me to work. 😏

You can close Apps if it best meets your needs and/or style of working. Just be aware that doing so is not power-efficient; if battery autonomy is important, unnecessarily closing Apps will negatively impact battery autonomy.

Lots of misinformed comments in the thread. There ARE specific reasons why you may want to force close apps and this doesn’t have to do with multitasking. There are countless apps that can bug out and require a fresh re-run. This is can be app-side but without the ability to terminate it by force, you might be blocked from interacting with it.

Thankfully there are really helpful answers here as this is the top search result when looking up the problem. Still feels like an iPadOS 26 issue that persists in 26.1. This isn’t a problem in the iPhone which allows you to easily swipe up an app to terminate. There’s no reason to believe the behavior should be different on the iPad.

So, what was the fairly obscure setting? I’ve had full screen apps enabled on my new iPad from the beginning, however it rarely allows me to go back to the Home Screen by swiping up from the bottom as I’ve always done in the past. Swiping up from the bottom just scrolls down the page. I have to use a BT mouse and click on the bottom of the screen to go to the home screen. I’m really regretting installing IOS 26.1.

charlesmdelacruz wrote:

Lots of misinformed comments in the thread. There ARE specific reasons why you may want to force close apps and this doesn’t have to do with multitasking. There are countless apps that can bug out and require a fresh re-run.

Yes, apps sometimes need to be forced restarted. No one is denying that. That's why the process exists. What people are explaining is that it's not necessary to do it most of the time. Apps don't "bug out" that often. If they do, force restart them. But unnecessary force restarting wastes time and battery life.

I’m not trying to force close anything personally, I just want to be able to swipe up to return to my Home Screen as I have always done on my iPad. Apparently apple does not allow this feature anymore in iOS 26.

herodotus2 wrote:

It is definitely a bug in iPadOS 26 and 26.1.

How could a problem with your iPhone definitely be a bug in iOS 26 when it apparently a bug for hundreds of millions of other users?

And did you bother to read the Top-Ranking Reply at the top of this page that explains the setting that controls this feature?

I want to swipe apps closed. Period. I do not want many multiple gestures to do what 1 gesture did before. Give me that option!

Happy to find this skill has been restored without going through any Settings-based special steps. Glad we all spoke up.

Your “speaking up” had nothing to do with it since it never went away. It is simply a matter of settings.

What setting?

Thank you! This setting change fixed my issue.