iPhone Settings
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Debaser

Original Poster:

8,480 posts

291 months

Friday 8th March 2024
quotequote all
Can anyone help me understand what these two settings do on my iPhone, and what the difference is between them?

Background App Refresh allows apps to refresh their content in the background.




There is also a setting called In-App Content (under App Store in the setting menu) which allows an app to run in the background to download content.



It sounds to me like they do similar things, but I must be missing something.

Somebody

1,756 posts

113 months

Friday 8th March 2024
quotequote all
To me the former is for updating content of the app itself, so up to the minute news in a news app, for example. The latter is updating the app itself e.g. from v1.1 to v1.2.

pip t

1,366 posts

197 months

Friday 8th March 2024
quotequote all
Background app refresh allows apps to update their content periodically without being open - so for example a news app would refresh the stories on the home page. You can turn it off completely or on a per-app basis. Turning it off will save a bit of battery life, it Just means when you open that news app it’ll take a moment or two before it refreshes to the latest content.

The second image relates to updating the apps themselves - whether you want that to happen automatically or to wait for you to trigger an update in the App Store.

CoolHands

23,491 posts

225 months

Friday 8th March 2024
quotequote all
One eats your battery, the other eats your battery. Enjoy

Debaser

Original Poster:

8,480 posts

291 months

Saturday 9th March 2024
quotequote all
Thanks all, i think I wasn’t very clear with my question. It’s these two settings that are confusing me. The descriptions look very similar.

Background App Refresh



In-App Content



What’s the difference between:
‘Allow apps to refresh their content in the background’
and
‘Automatically run apps in the background to download content’

confused


I think this is the setting to allow apps to download updates, not ‘In-App Content’ above?


RUSTILLDOWN

370 posts

98 months

Saturday 9th March 2024
quotequote all
Read the descriptions again, the key word is “first”.

Debaser

Original Poster:

8,480 posts

291 months

Saturday 9th March 2024
quotequote all
Thanks, you’re right, I hadn’t picked up on that. It seems like a very subtle difference.

RUSTILLDOWN

370 posts

98 months

Saturday 9th March 2024
quotequote all
Yeah, very subtle!

beer