Everyone wants their iPhone battery to last longer. The good news is that Apple has been steadily improving battery life, and the iPhone released in the last couple of years has the best battery life of any mobile phone.
The bad news is that it never seems to be enough and battery life gets shorter as your iPhone ages. There are a million ways to save your iPhone’s battery life. Almost every function uses some energy, and you could spend all day in settings turning everything off to squeeze out a few more minutes.
But many of the battery-saving tips from the past simply don’t apply anymore. The effectiveness of many different features and functions has become so high that turning them off has little to no effect on how long your iPhone will last without recharging. For example, don’t turn off Bluetooth just to extend battery life by a few minutes.
With that in mind, here are four tips that will actually make a noticeable impact on your iPhone’s battery life. If you really feel like you need a single charge to last longer, this is where you should start.
How to check battery usage
Before you start changing anything, you should check the status and usage of your battery.
Open the Settings app, then tap Battery. After a while, your personal usage statistics will appear on the screen and you can see the usage and charging history of your app. This screen will give you an overview of how often you’re draining your battery, the average screen and idle time, and a list of the apps that are draining your battery the most. By default, you’ll see the last 24 hours, but it’s also worth looking at the last 10 days of battery drain as it helps show systemic dehumidifiers, not an app you use frequently.
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Next, open Battery status and charging tab This screen will tell you if your battery can maintain its maximum capacity and deliver full performance. If you have an iPhone 14 it will probably still be at 100 percent, but on older phones it can be closer to 90 percent. As your battery ages and goes through more charge and discharge cycles, it can’t hold as much power and also can’t deliver the same high voltage, so your iPhone may limit its performance a bit to prevent unexpected crashes.
Other options won’t help your iPhone last longer during the day, but they can improve battery life over time. For example, Optimized battery charging help reduce battery wear and tear over time. In a similar way, Charging with clean energy it doesn’t really affect battery life, but it’s just nice for the environment.
Tip 1: Change how you use high power apps
While you’re on your own Battery screen, scroll down and take a look at the “App Battery Usage” list under battery statistics. Check the last 24 hours, but also toggle the switch to Last 10 days to see what’s on the list. You can tap on the list to switch between sorting by battery usage and app usage – it’s reasonable to expect the app you use all the time to be the battery drainer.
The idea is to use this information to help you adjust your habits or app settings. If you spend a lot of time on an app and it’s at the top of the battery drain list, then reducing its usage will help prolong battery life. Even if you stop there, you can probably improve your battery life significantly just by changing your habits. If, say, Twitter is consuming 20 percent or more of your daily battery, try reducing it a bit.
You can also search for outliers here. Maybe an app you don’t use very often ranks high on the battery drain list? It can do a lot of things in the background, which you can turn off in the app’s settings. You can also open Settings > General > update background apps to view the full list of enabled apps and quickly turn off those that may be draining your battery.
Try opening the settings in the app to find ways to limit battery draining features. Games tend to drain your battery very quickly, but many have options to limit framerate and/or resolution to reduce power consumption.
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Tip 2: Turn down the brightness
The display is one of the most power-hungry parts of your iPhone, and there is a non-linear relationship between power consumption and brightness. Sometimes even a slight decrease in brightness can extend battery life. This is one of the fastest ways to reduce battery life and your display may be much brighter than it needs to be.
Open Control Center (swipe down from the top right corner of your iPhone screen) and check the brightness level (it’s the slider below “Now Playing” with a sun icon). If it’s half full or more, your phone’s screen is probably too bright, so try moving it as low as you can while still being able to easily read the screen and see what looks like accurate colors to you. You’ll be amazed at how low you can move it and still see the screen well in most situations.
You can also press and hold the slider to get options for Dark Mode, Night Shift, and True Tone. It won’t make much of a difference in battery life – although some people swear that dark mode improves battery life – but it will make things easier on your eyes.
Your iPhone’s auto-brightness feature will dim the screen in dark environments and make it brighter when the sun is shining. This will also use battery power, so if you want to go low all the time, you can disable auto-brightness in the accessibility settings. Go to Settings > Availability > Display and text size and turn off the Auto Brightness switch at the bottom of the list.
Tip 3: Know your networks
Generally speaking, the wireless radios in the iPhone have become much more energy efficient in recent years. Keeping them on and off all the time is inconvenient, which is why we don’t suggest keeping an eye on Bluetooth and other common settings. But there are a few things you should be aware of.
First, a strong signal consumes less power than a weak signal. If the signal is weak (to any network), your iPhone will use more power to make it stronger or frequently scan other channels or cell towers to connect. A stable, strong signal greatly saves battery power.
Second, ceteris paribus, Wi-Fi consumes less power than cellular. Try to connect to reliable Wi-Fi whenever possible, and use Wi-Fi calling if your carrier offers it (Settings > cellular > WiFi calls).
Finally, LTE is more energy efficient than 5G. By default, a 5G-enabled iPhone will only use 5G wisely if it doesn’t impact the battery too much. But you can go to Settings > cellular > Cellular Settings > Voice and data and always turn on LTE. Depending on how you use mobile data and the 5G networks around you, you may not notice much difference in performance, but you will notice how much longer your battery lasts.
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Tip 4Turn On Low Power Mode (aka Nuclear Option)
If you really want to save battery life, you can always turn on power saving mode. To enable it, go to Settings > Battery to enable it. If you plan to use it often, you can add it to the Control Center by going to Settings > Control center > Customize controlsthen choose Low Power Mode.
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When you turn on power saving mode, the battery icon in the status bar will turn yellow and some of your iPhone’s features will change. Background app refresh will be significantly reduced, your iPhone won’t receive mail until you launch the app, photos won’t sync, display brightness will be limited, ProMotion displays will be limited to 60Hz, auto-lock timer will be set to 30 seconds, and some beautiful visual effects or animations will be disabled.
This is a major change that will greatly change the iPhone experience. It might not be such a bad thing – some people can run in low power mode all the time – but the limits are pretty strict. But your battery worries will be a thing of the past.