What makes ipad run slow

Most of us probably open an app, use it for a bit, open another app, and so on; we may have several apps all open at once at any given time. This isn't a problem in itself, but if Background App Refresh is on, then your iPad is using RAM to refresh every one of your open apps.

Here's how to choose whether you'd like to turn Background App Refresh on or off on an app-by-app basis. Photos can eat up a sizable chunk of your iPad's storage capacity; if you haven't already, now's the time to offload those pictures. If you have iOS 8 or later, which is compatible with every iPad except the original, you'll be able to use iCloud to save all your photos, so if anything should ever happen to your iPad, they'll be preserved.

The problem with this solution is that if you delete photos from your iPad, they'll also be deleted from iCloud! To save your photos while also freeing up storage space on your iPad, your best bet would be uploading them to an external hard drive or computer not connected to your iCloud account, then deleting them from your iPad.

Getting on a regular schedule of deleting photos from your iPad will help keep your device running more quickly, as well as making the task less daunting. Another storage hog that you may want to consider offloading to your external hard drive is any music from iTunes or Apple Music you've downloaded to your iPad.

To check how much storage space is being used by your Music app:. Whichever your preferred internet browser is, it tracks and stores a lot of information about your internet usage, including recent searches, a history of web pages you've visited, a list of anything you've downloaded, requests from web pages, and much more. While this cache of data can prove convenient and improve load times, it can also eat up storage space. For this example, we'll clear Safari's browser cache, including website data and cookies in this example.

Let's get back to RAM for a minute; something you might not realize your iPad is using working memory for are graphics settings. These settings can be changed to save processing power and speed up your iPad; to accomplish this:.

Changing this setting will turn off Spotlight and Siri Search, which may prove to be inconvenient. The benefit, though, is that turning these features off will save the processing power it takes to index every item on your iPad. To turn off this feature:. If none of the previous steps have helped your iPad to speed up, your last-ditch attempt should be a factory reset.

Factory resetting your iPad will wipe all your settings while preserving the data and apps you've chosen to keep on your device. Once this is accomplished, you'll need to restore all your settings to the way you prefer them, which may take a bit of time!

To restore your iPad to factory settings:. You should see an appreciable performance increase on all iPad 2, 3 and 4 models. If you purchased any music from iTunes, you will need to redownload that content back to your iPad for playing directly from your iPad and not from Apple Music servers. Also, if your iPad contained a lot of images in the Photos app, these will take time to regenerate the original AND thumbnail images themselves inside of the Photos app when you first launch it.

This user tip was generated from the following discussion: Slow iPad 2 on iOS 9. Communities Get Support. Sign in Sign in Sign in corporate. Browse Search. Ask a question. Slow iPad on iOS 9, 10 or 11! OR The new hard reset method for newer iPad Pro models.

Press and Release the Volume Up button. Then immediately Press and Release the Volume Down button. Here is whst is left for updated Web browsers. The app doesn't need to necessarily be the one you're using at the moment.

Some apps continue to run in the background particularly apps that stream content like Spotify and Pandora, and apps that need to track your location, like Google Maps. To troubleshoot this issue, completely close any apps that might be slowing down your iPad. If that solves the problem, try running the app again. It might be an intermittent problem that closing the app solved. If so, great. If it immediately slows down again, see if there's an updated version of the app.

If not, you might want to stop using it, or uninstall and reinstall the app. But to reiterate the previous point, only close apps if you suspect they are not working properly and slowing down your device. Don't make a habit of closing all apps. With the deep interconnectedness of hardware, software, networks, and services, it can be hard to know exactly what's slowing down a computer, and in fact it might not be your iPad at all — your wireless network might be what's causing everything to feel like molasses.

You would be wise to suspect your internet connection. First, make sure that you have a solid WiFi signal you should see three bars in the WiFi indicator at the top right of your screen. If it's weak, move closer to your WiFi router. If it's still weak, reboot the router turn it off, wait two minutes, and then turn it back on again. If that doesn't solve the problem, you might need to perform additional troubleshooting on the router.

Check other devices like your laptop and iPhone to see if they also show a weak WiFi connection. But if your WiFi signal is strong, try one other thing: Test the speed of your internet connection.

On your iPad, google "Internet speed test" and use one of the resulting sites to see how your iPad performs. There are many reasons why an iPad may run slowly. An app installed on the device may have issues. Your internet connection may be slow. The iPad may be running an older operating system or have the Background App Refresh feature enabled.

Your device's storage space may be full. If you notice slow performance only when you're using your iPad to surf the web, Safari for iPad may be struggling to deal with ads.

The good news is that most of these problems are easy to fix. The solutions that follow can help get your iPad in racing form:.

Restart the iPad. Whenever you encounter a problem with a device, an excellent first step is to restart that device, and the iPad is no exception. Restarting the iPad flushes everything from temporary memory and gives the operating system a clean start.

Quit the current iPad app. One reason an iPad may slow down is a problem with an app rather than the iPad. Quitting, then reopening the app may fix the problem. Remove all apps from the App Switcher. Your iPad adds every app you open to the App Switcher, the iPad task manager, so that you can quickly switch between apps while multitasking.

After a while, the number of apps in the App Switcher can add up. Many of these apps are in a suspended mode or running in the background. Removing apps from the App Switcher frees up memory and can improve performance.

Quit apps that are running in the background. Some apps continue to run in the background, even after you quit the app.