Some tech habits stick around simply because they sound sensible. Close every app. Run the battery down. Keep everything in the cloud. Connect to Wi-Fi whenever you can. A few of these habits are perfectly harmless, some are outdated and some can actually make things less convenient — or leave you with less protection than you thought. Here are a few worth rethinking.

Closing Every App to Save Battery

It feels logical. If an app is open, surely it must be using battery? Not necessarily. On modern phones, many apps sitting in the background are effectively paused, and constantly force-closing them can mean the phone has to reload everything from scratch the next time you open the app.

That doesn’t mean you should never close anything. If an app has frozen, is behaving wierd or is clearly using more battery than it should, closing it, of course, can help. But routinely swiping away every app several times a day is usually unnecessary. A better place to look is your battery settings as both iPhone and Android can show which apps are actually using the most power, which is much more useful than guessing.

Waiting Until Your Battery Is Nearly Empty Before Charging

This one comes from older rechargeable battery habits. Modern phones use lithium-ion batteries, and they don’t need to be repeatedly drained to 0% before being charged again. In fact, constantly running a battery completely flat can put more strain on it over time.

You don’t need to become obsessed with keeping your phone between two exact percentages either. Just charge it when it’s convenient rather than deliberately waiting for the red battery warning. If your phone offers optimised or adaptive charging, it’s worth switching that on. These features are designed to reduce the amount of time the battery spends sitting fully charged.

Assuming 'It's in the Cloud' Means It's Safely Backed Up

This is one of the easier mistakes to make. Cloud syncing and cloud backup aren’t always the same thing. If your photos or files are synced across several devices, deleting something on one device may also remove it everywhere else. That’s useful when you want everything kept tidy, but less useful when you accidentally delete the wrong folder and discover the cloud has very efficiently copied that decision across every device.

For anything genuinely important, think about having more than one copy. That might mean cloud storage plus an external drive, or using a dedicated backup service rather than relying entirely on file syncing. It’s also worth checking your deleted-items or recovery period. Many services keep deleted files for a limited time, but not forever.

Staying on Wi-Fi Because It Must Be Better Than Mobile Data

Connecting to Wi-Fi often makes sense. Automatically connecting to every available network doesn’t. Public Wi-Fi in cafés, airports, hotels and shopping centres can be convenient, but it’s not always the best place to access sensitive accounts.

If you’re checking banking, entering card details or dealing with anything particularly private, using your own mobile connection can be the simpler option. It’s also worth switching off automatic connection to open networks. And be careful with network names. A Wi-Fi network called “Airport Free WiFi” isn’t automatically the official airport network simply because someone named it that.

Keeping a Charging Cable Until It Finally Gives Up

If a cable still charges the phone, it’s tempting to keep using it indefinitely, even when the outer casing is splitting, the connector needs to sit at exactly the right angle and one end has developed an impressive amount of electrical tape. Damage near the connector is particularly worth paying attention to.

If a cable is badly frayed, unusually hot, bent or only works when positioned in a certain way, replace it rather than waiting for complete failure. The same applies to chargers themselves. Excessive heat, cracking, buzzing or loose components are all good reasons to stop using one. And when replacing them, buy from a reputable manufacturer rather than picking the cheapest mystery plug available. Saving a few pounds on something connected to the mains isn’t always the victory it appears to be.

Ignoring a Phone That Keeps Getting Hot

Phones get warm. Charging, gaming, video calls, navigation and hot weather can all raise the temperature. But regularly becoming very hot during ordinary use is worth investigating. Start by checking which apps are using a lot of battery or running heavily in the background, and look at whether the phone becomes hot only while charging, only when using one particular app or seemingly for no reason at all.

A thick case can trap some heat, so removing it temporarily can help you work out whether that’s contributing. If the phone is repeatedly overheating, shutting itself down, swelling or becoming too hot to comfortably handle, stop treating it as “one of those things” and get it checked. A swollen battery in particular isn’t something to keep using.

Assuming More Storage Will Fix a Slow Phone

A nearly full phone can absolutely cause problems, but deleting 8,000 photos isn’t a guaranteed cure for every slow device. Performance problems can also come from old software, a struggling battery, buggy apps, background processes or simply older hardware trying to run newer software.

Before starting an enormous photo purge, check your storage settings and see what’s actually taking up the space. Large videos, old downloads, offline streaming content and messaging attachments can sometimes free up far more storage than deleting hundreds of ordinary photos. It’s also worth restarting the phone occasionally. Not because restarting magically fixes everything, but because it can clear temporary processes and give misbehaving apps a reset.

Leaving Every Notification Switched On So You Don't Miss Anything

This sounds sensible until genuinely important alerts are buried between shopping offers, game updates and an app informing you that somebody you’ve never met has uploaded a new video. Notifications work better when they’re selective.

Keep alerts for things you genuinely need to react to quickly — banking, messages, calendars, travel, security alerts. Everything else can probably wait until you actually open the app. You can also make use of scheduled summaries or notification categories where your phone offers them. The aim isn’t to turn everything off. It’s to make sure that when your phone does interrupt you, there’s a decent chance it’s for a reason.

Treating Software Updates as Optional Until Something Breaks

Updates are easy to postpone, especially when your phone asks at exactly the moment you’re trying to use it. But updates aren’t only about new emojis or redesigned menus. They can include security fixes, bug fixes and improvements to how apps and devices work together.

You don’t necessarily need to install every update within five minutes of release, but repeatedly ignoring them for months isn’t a great habit. Automatic security updates are particularly useful if your device supports them. And before installing a major operating-system update, make sure your important data is backed up first. Because even good habits deserve a backup plan.

A Few Tech Habits Are Worth Unlearning

Technology changes much faster than the little rules we create around it. Advice that made sense for an old laptop, an early smartphone or a completely different type of battery can hang around for years after it stopped being useful. So every now and then, it’s worth questioning the things you do automatically.

You may discover that your phone doesn’t need every app closed, your battery doesn’t need running flat, and the cloud isn’t quite the safety net you assumed it was. Although the drawer containing seventeen unidentified charging cables? That one may be beyond help.