Your iPhone has battery issues?: Disable These iOS Settings to Extend Your iPhone's Battery Life

While iPhones have been dominating the market in sales, slick design and the all powerful iOS operating system there is one area they have faced scrutiny over, besides a consistent design in their pro models, that is battery life. Do you find yourself constantly charging your iPhone when the Low Power Mode warning pops up? While phones hold less of a charge over time, you don't want your phone to die on you while you're using it to navigate on the road or in the middle of a conversation. While individual mileage may vary depending on usage patterns, following these tips will undoubtedly make a noticeable difference in prolonging your battery’s longevity and ensuring peak performance throughout its lifespan.

While your phone's battery might not have the capacity to hold the charge it did when it was fresh out of the box, there are options that can help you squeeze more juice out of each charge. By disabling certain settings, you can ensure your iPhone battery can go the distance when you need it most.

You can also keep an eye on your Battery Health menu -- it'll tell you your battery health percentage (80% or higher is considered good), as well as show you how many times you've cycled your battery and whether or not your battery is "normal."

We'll explain three iOS features that put a strain on your iPhone's battery to varying degrees, and show how you can turn them off to help preserve battery life. Here's what you need to know.

Optimize Your Settings

One of the easiest ways to extend your iPhone battery life is to optimize its settings to conserve power. Start with the basics: adjust your screen brightness or enable 'Auto-Brightness' to allow the device to automatically adjust based on the lighting conditions. This can significantly reduce battery consumption as the display is one of the heaviest drain on your iPhone's battery.Another crucial setting is 'Background App Refresh.' This feature allows apps to update content when on Wi-Fi or cellular in the background. 

Though useful, it can drain your battery rapidly. Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh and turn it off completely or select specific apps to use this feature. The less your phone has to update these apps in the background, the more battery life you will save.Lastly, location services can be a big drain. Many apps request access to your location, and while this can be useful for apps like Maps or Uber, for others it might not be necessary all the time. Head over to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and adjust the settings for individual apps to 'While Using the App' or 'Never,' depending on your preferences.

Turn off widgets on your iPhone lock screen
All the widgets on your lock screen force your apps to automatically run in the background, constantly fetching data to update the information the widgets display, like sports scores or the weather. Because these apps are constantly running in the background due to your widgets, that means they continuously drain power.

If you want to help preserve some battery on iOS 18, the best thing to do is simply avoid widgets on your lock screen (and home screen). The easiest way to do this is to switch to another lock screen profile: Press your finger down on your existing lock screen and then swipe around to choose one that doesn't have any widgets.

If you want to just remove the widgets from your existing lock screen, press down on your lock screen, hit Customize, choose the Lock Screen option, tap on the widget box and then hit the "—" button on each widget to remove them.
 How to delete Lock Screen widgets on iOS 16If you're already low on battery, it's best to just switch to a wallpaper that doesn't have lock screen widgets.

Reduce the motion of your iPhone UI

Your iPhone user interface has some fun, sleek animations. There's the fluid motion of opening and closing apps, and the burst of color that appears when you activate Siri with Apple Intelligence, just to name a couple. These visual tricks help bring the slab of metal and glass in your hand to life. Unfortunately, they can also reduce your phone's battery life.

If you want subtler animations across iOS, you can enable the Reduce Motion setting. To do this, go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion and toggle on Reduce Motion.

Visual tricks like the parallax effect are fun, but they can affect your battery life.

Switch off your iPhone's keyboard vibrationSurprisingly, the keyboard on the iPhone has never had the ability to vibrate as you type, an addition called "haptic feedback" that was added to iPhones with iOS 16. Instead of just hearing click-clack sounds, haptic feedback gives each key a vibration, providing a more immersive experience as you type. According to Apple, the very same feature may also affect battery life.

Fullscreen

According to this Apple support page about the keyboard, haptic feedback "might affect the battery life of your iPhone." No specifics are given as to how much battery life the keyboard feature drains, but if you want to conserve battery, it's best to keep this feature disabled.
Fortunately, it is not enabled by default. If you've enabled it yourself, go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Keyboard Feedback and toggle off Haptic to turn off haptic feedback for your keyboard.

Use Low Power Mode

Low Power Mode is a beneficial feature for significantly extending the battery life of your iPhone when it starts to get low. You can turn this setting on manually by going to Settings > Battery and toggling Low Power Mode to on, or your iPhone will prompt you to turn it on at 20% and 10% battery levels. This mode temporarily reduces background activity like downloads and mail fetch until you can fully charge your phone.

While in Low Power Mode, some automatic features like downloads and mail fetch, background app refresh, and certain visual effects are reduced or turned off. However, you can still use key functions like making and receiving phone calls, emails, and messages. For many users, switching to Low Power Mode can add several hours to their phone's battery life.

Mind Your Battery’s Health

Battery health is a critical indicator of your iPhone’s condition. It's essential to regularly check the battery health by going to Settings > Battery > Battery Health. This feature gives you a clear idea of your battery’s maximum capacity and peak performance capability. If the maximum capacity drops below 80%, it's a sign that your battery is significantly degraded and might need replacing to keep your phone running optimally.

Furthermore, avoid exposing your iPhone to extreme temperatures, which can have a significant impact on battery life and health. Apple recommends using your iPhone where the ambient temperature is between 0º and 35º C (32º to 95º F). Extreme cold or heat can cause the device to operate inefficiently, leaving you with less battery life in the short term and reducing the overall lifespan of the battery as well.

Monitor App Usage

Regularly monitoring which apps are draining your battery is a smart way to manage and extend battery life. Navigate to Settings > Battery to see a detailed breakdown of which apps are consuming the most battery over the last 24 hours and 10 days. Apps with high battery usage might need to be updated, given fewer permissions, or even removed if they continuously drain a lot of power.

Sometimes, simply updating an app to the latest version can reduce its battery usage, as updates often include optimizations. If an app is particularly power-hungry, consider alternative apps that perform similar functions but are more battery-efficient.

Manage Connectivity Functions

~ Bluetooth: If not in use, turn off Bluetooth by swiping up to open Control Center and tapping the Bluetooth icon. This prevents your iPhone from constantly looking for devices to connect to.

~Wi-Fi: Similarly, if you are out and not using Wi-Fi, turning it off can save battery power. Additionally, turning off 'Ask to Join Networks' can prevent your device from constantly searching for new Wi-Fi networks.

~Airplane Mode: In areas with poor reception, such as rural locations or subways, switching to Airplane Mode can also save battery life, as your iPhone expends a lot of energy trying to connect to the nearest cell tower or maintain a signal.

Note: This article was originally written by a human and then was supercharged with AI to refine and correct areas that needed some polishing up.

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