How to tell whether apps are "running" on iOS Many people think (and even some websites report) that the app switcher shows "apps running", e.g. in the background but this is not so. It just shows a recently used list of apps. Apps shown in app switcher can be in different states, including "not running" which means "The app has not been launched or was running but was terminated by the system."

My question is, is there any way on iOS (i.e. by a user, not programmatically) to tell whether an app on iOS is actually running or not, and by running I mean in any state other than "not running" as defined in the following link (scroll almost to the bottom).

The App Life Cycle
No, there's no way a regular user can tell the current state of an app.  

Apple can change the state of an app at any time depending on a number of circumstances.  None of those circumstances should be of any concern to a user.