Unlike previous versions of Windows, Windows 8 handles running applications in a different way. You may know that Windows 8 is optimized for both PCs and tablets, and features metro style applications, which run in the Metro UI environment. The metro applications behave just like Android/iOS apps. For instance, when you move to home screen (Metro Start Screen) while using a metro app, it suspends the application to conserve CPU resources for other apps. This, however, reduces the load time of metro apps, but suspended applications (apps running in the background) do consume memory resources. In this post, we will show you ways to properly quit Metro apps.

Windows 8 provides you with 4 different ways to close/shutdown the Metro apps. The first method involves the Switch List that contains all the running metro applications. To close an app from the Switch List, right click the app and select Close to shut down the app.