Short answer: turning Background App Refresh off does not stop notifications and does not break apps. What it removes is the preloading — the work an app does so that content is already there the moment you open it. Everything else keeps working: alerts still arrive, apps still update when you look at them, and background jobs such as walking navigation or music playback are unaffected because they are not Background App Refresh at all.
That is a smaller change than most people fear, and it is why the switch is a reasonable thing to turn off for most of your apps. What follows is the specific list of what stops, what does not, and how to work out whether the symptom that brought you here was ever caused by this setting.
The one thing it actually changes
Background App Refresh is permission for the *system* to wake an app briefly while you are not using it, so the app can fetch new content over the network. Turn it off and the app is simply not woken for that purpose. When you open the app, it fetches the same content in the foreground, exactly as it always did.
So the change is a shift in timing, not a loss of function. You trade "already loaded" for "loads now". On a fast connection that is a fraction of a second for a text-heavy app and a noticeably longer pause for one that pulls images, video thumbnails or a large feed.
What stops, by app type
| App type | What you lose with it off | How noticeable |
|---|---|---|
| Chat and messaging | The thread is not pre-fetched, so history takes a moment to load after you tap the alert | Small — the alert itself is unaffected |
| New mail is not downloaded until you open the mailbox | Small on Wi-Fi, more visible on weak cellular | |
| News and reading | Articles are not waiting for you; the front page loads on open | Small |
| Weather | The forecast is fetched when you open it instead of in advance | Small |
| Podcasts, music, offline video | Automatic downloads of the next episode or playlist stop | Noticeable if you rely on them |
| Maps and navigation | Voice navigation with the screen locked still works; what stops is map data and traffic being pre-fetched before you ask for a route | Small to moderate |
| Fitness and run tracking | A workout already running keeps recording; the app cannot do extra background fetching | Small |
| Smart home and security apps | Actions still work; status is not pre-refreshed before you open the app | Small |
| Cloud photo backup | Uploads generally continue through separate background upload support, not Background App Refresh | Usually none |
The pattern is consistent: anything that only needs to be current when you are looking at it loses almost nothing. The cases that genuinely hurt are automatic downloads and apps whose whole purpose is to have content ready before you ask.
What does not change at all
Four things are commonly blamed on this switch but are separate machinery:
- Push notifications and alerts. These are delivered by the system to your phone, not fetched by the app. Turning the switch off does not stop a banner, a badge or a sound. There is one narrow exception involving silent background pushes, which is covered in Does Turning Off Background App Refresh Stop Notifications?.
- Foreground use. Opening the app does the same network work as before.
- Background modes that are not Background App Refresh. Turn-by-turn navigation with the screen off, audio playback, recording a workout and voice calls over the internet all keep running through separate system support. Turning off Background App Refresh does not switch them off.
- Storage, permissions and privacy. This switch does not change what an app may access, and it does not free up space. If you are trying to reclaim storage, that lives in What Actually Takes Up Storage on an iPhone?.
Is your problem even caused by this switch?
This is the useful half of the question, because "what happens if I turn it off" is often really "I turned something off and now something is wrong". Use the symptom to locate the cause instead of toggling blindly:
| Symptom | Is Background App Refresh a plausible cause? |
|---|---|
| App shows old content for a moment when opened | Yes — this is exactly what it does |
| Notifications not arriving at all | No — check Notifications Not Arriving or Delayed |
| Battery draining faster than usual for a few days after an update | No — post-update background work is a separate phenomenon, see iOS 27 Battery Still Draining After a Week |
| Walk or drive tracking stops when the screen locks | No — that is a background location question |
| Automatic podcast or playlist downloads stopped | Yes — this is a genuine consequence |
| Phone warm for no obvious reason | Possibly — it is one contributor among several, see Background App Battery Use |
The 30-second test in the other direction is just as useful: turn the switch back on for the single app you suspect, then check the app again later. If nothing improves, the setting was not your problem and you have saved yourself an afternoon of toggling.
The Wi-Fi only position
The master switch has three positions, and the middle one is underused. Wi-Fi allows background refreshes on Wi-Fi networks only, so apps still preload at home or in the office and stop doing it while you are out on cellular. For most people this keeps nearly all of the benefit and removes the mobile-data cost — which is the part that actually matters if you are on a limited plan.
Details of the three positions, and which apps are worth keeping on, are in Which Apps Should Keep Background App Refresh On?.
Reversing it, and what overrides it
Nothing here is permanent and nothing is destructive. Turn the switch back on for an app and it resumes refreshing the next time the system decides to schedule it — which is not on a fixed timer, and not something you can set. Apple does not publish a refresh interval, and in practice the system decides based on your usage, the network and the battery state, which is why an app can refresh promptly one hour and not at all the next.
Two things override your per-app choices:
- The master switch set to Off suspends every app at once, but it does not erase the individual switches underneath. Turn the master back on and your per-app choices are still there.
- Low Power Mode pauses background refresh while it is active, so the switch keeps its position but apps stop refreshing until Low Power Mode turns off or the phone charges. This is worth knowing before you change any setting, because it means "turning it off made no difference" sometimes just means Low Power Mode was already doing it for you. See Low Power Mode: What It Actually Does.
If you want the reasoning behind keeping it on for some apps and not others, the battery-and-performance angle is covered in Background App Refresh: What to Keep On, What to Turn Off, and the mechanism itself in What Is Background App Refresh?.