The iPhone is a great companion that provides plenty to do — that is, unless your battery is dead. Once the juice is gone, you’re left with a pretty paperweight. It’s frustrating when you’re struggling to make your iPhone’s battery last between charges, and no one wants to be searching for an outlet more often than needed. Luckily, these tips will buy you some extra time. If you want to know how to save battery life on an iPhone, then you’re in the right place.
Further reading
Show the Battery Percentage
If you’re keeping an eye on your battery level, you may find it easier to track as a percentage, rather than a bar icon. To see the percentage go to Settings > Battery > Battery Percentage.
Turn on Low Power Mode
If you have iOS 9 or later installed on your iPhone, then you can take advantage of Apple’s Low Power Mode. You’ll find the toggle to turn it on in Settings > Battery > Low Power Mode. The feature temporarily turns off or reduces mail fetch, Siri functions, background app refresh, automatic downloads, and some visual effects until you fully charge your iPhone.
Turn down the volume
You should consider turning the volume down on your iPhone and using headphones whenever possible, thus allowing you to reduce the impact of audio on your phone’s battery life. If you take a look in Settings > Music, you can also set a volume limit and turn the EQ off to save even more power.
Turn off iCloud
Automatically backing up to iCloud can drain your battery and eat through your data allowance. It’s a useful feature for backing up precious photos, but there might be a few things being backed up that you don’t really care about or need. Take a look in Settings > Your name > iCloud and toggle off anything you don’t want.
Kill “Hey Siri”
This feature is an unnecessary battery drain if you don’t really use it, mostly because your iPhone will be listening for “Hey Siri” whenever it’s charging. To turn it off, go to Settings > Siri & Search and turn Listen for “Hey Siri” off.
Don’t bother closing apps
A lot of people imagine that the apps listed when they double tap the Home button are actually still open in the background and using battery life, but they usually aren’t. Outside of Background App Refresh, which we’ll look at soon, the vast majority of apps are not doing anything when they’re not in use. You can actually end up draining more battery by double tapping the Home button and quitting them all the time, so don’t do it.
Turn off Background App Refresh
You can start your journey of iPhone battery discovery by going to Settings > Battery. As a quick test, try making a note of the remaining standby and usage times, then tap the sleep/wake button and wait 10 minutes. Then, go back to Settings > Battery and you should find standby time has increased by 10 minutes. If it hasn’t, then something is keeping your iPhone from resting, and it’s likely an app.
Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh and take a look at the list. Do you really need all those apps updating themselves in the background and draining your battery life? Be ruthless and turn off all the apps you don’t need to update automatically. Remember, they’ll still update and work as normal when you fire them up, they just won’t keep running when you’re not using them. If you find that you don’t like the change, you can always head back into this section and toggle the apps back on again.
Switch Push Email to Fetch
Do you really need to get every email as soon as it comes in? Maybe you’ve got a secondary email account that isn’t so important. Go into Settings > Accounts & Passwords > Fetch New Data and switch from Push to either Fetch or Manual. With Fetch, you can set an interval, such as every 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and so on, for your iPhone to check for new email. The longer you make the interval, the less battery you’ll be using. With Manual, it will only check for new email when you open the app.
Kill Push notifications from apps
Some apps will send you notifications that you don’t really need. Go to Settings > Notifications and tap on any apps that you don’t need notifications from. Consider turning Allow Notifications off or just switch off Show on Lock Screen and some of the other settings.
Turn off Automatic Downloads
You can have your iPhone update Music, Apps, and iOS automatically, but it will eat a lot of battery life. Your iPhone might also choose an inopportune moment to update everything. You can save power and battery life by going into Settings > iTunes & App Store and sliding Use Cellular Data to off, so it only updates on Wi-Fi. You’ll save even more if you just turn the automatic downloads off altogether and update on your own schedule.
Reduce screen brightness
The screen drains the battery faster than anything else and the brighter it is, the faster it drains. Go to Settings > Display & brightness and turn True Tone off. Then, set your brightness to the lowest setting that still looks readable. You might have to tweak it from time to time, but you’ll save a lot of juice this way.
Turn off vibrations
Do you really need your iPhone to vibrate? It will eat up some battery life and it’s probably only necessary when you have your iPhone on silent. Go to Settings > Sound & Haptics and you can toggle Vibrate on Ring to off.
Reduce Auto-Lock time
When you stop using it, your iPhone takes a set amount of time to turn the screen off. You can change it in Settings > Display & brightness > Auto-Lock. Set it as low as you can without it becoming annoying, and you’ll save a decent amount of battery life over time.
Turn off AirDrop
You don’t need AirDrop turned on all the time either, so swipe up from the bottom of the screen to bring up the Control Center and turn it off until you actually need it.
Stop Location Services
It’s debatable how helpful it is to have your iPhone tracking your location. What we can say for sure is that it drains the battery faster. Head into Settings > Privacy > Location Services and turn off any app you don’t feel needs to be tracking you. You can also go further in Settings > Privacy > Location Services > SystemServices, where you can certainly afford to turn off Location-Based Apple Ads, and iPhone Analytics.
Turn off Bluetooth
Bluetooth doesn’t need to be on unless you are using it. Bring up the Control Center and toggle it off until you need it.
Turn off unnecessary animations
There are two obvious things on your iPhone that are purely aesthetic, but impact your battery life negatively: The parallax effect and dynamic wallpapers. To get rid of the unnecessary parallax effect, go to Settings > General > Accessibility and turn Reduce Motion on. Next go to Settings > Wallpaper > Choose a New Wallpaper and pick something from Stills or a photo. The dynamic wallpapers and the parallax effect are animated by information from the iPhone’s sensors about how you’re holding and moving the phone. These effects inevitably drain battery life. Check out the best wallpaper apps if you need some new backgrounds.
Be prepared — download ahead of time
A lot of music and movie streaming services give you the option to download for offline listening or viewing. If you stream content using your cellular data connection, it will eat your battery fast, not to mention your data allowance. It’s better to use Wi-Fi to stream if you have to, but it’s even better to download the content you want ahead of time. If you plug your iPhone into iTunes and download content at home, your battery will go a lot further.
Edit Search
By default, the Search function indexes and searches through every item on your iPhone. You can save a little battery, filter your searches, and potentially get faster results, if you tell it to drop irrelevant items. Go into Settings > Siri & Search and remove anything on the list that you don’t use or want to search.
Opt for Wi-Fi
If you’re in a place with a Wi-Fi network that you can use, such as your workplace or your home, then make sure that Wi-Fi is toggled on. If you always use cellular data, you’ll run through your data allowance quickly and drain your battery much faster, especially when you’re indoors where the network has to search for a stronger connection. When you leave the Wi-Fi zone, make sure that you toggle Wi-Fi off because you don’t want your iPhone constantly searching for a new Wi-Fi network.
Enable Airplane mode
If you don’t need to make calls for a while, or you notice that the area you are in has terrible reception, then just switch your iPhone to Airplane mode. There’s no point having it searching for your network if you’re on the subway or somewhere else you know you can’t get a signal. If you don’t turn Airplane mode on, the constant searching will drain the battery fast.
Turn off Auto Time Zone
Your phone will automatically update its time depending on where you are in the world. Since your phone determines the time through Location Services, it uses a small amount of power. To switch this off go into Settings > General > Date & Time, and toggle Set Automatically to off.
Turn off 4G
If you do a lot of downloading or streaming over your cellular data network, you might be making good use of the faster speeds offered by 4G, but 3G is enough for most people and it won’t drain your battery anywhere near as fast. Go into Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options and toggle Enable 4G to off.
Kill Raise to Wake
In iOS 10, Apple introduced the Raise to Wake feature, which automatically brings your screen to life when you pick up your iPhone. It’s convenient, but it also means that your screen will often come to life when you don’t need it to, thus draining your battery. To disable the feature, go to Settings > Display & Brightness and toggle Raise to Wake off.
Battery Health (Beta)
A feature introduced in iOS 11.3, Battery Health (Beta) displays information on your iPhone’s maximum battery capacity and peak performance capability. This feature will also tell you when the battery needs to be replaced.
Get an external battery pack or case
There are loads of potential options on the market that will charge your iPhone up when you’re out and about. If you’ve got the room to carry a battery pack with you, it could save you in a jam. Or, you could check out the best iPhone battery cases.
Check for updates
Each new iOS update generally fixes a few bugs and improves performance. Sometimes, it can improve battery life. Make sure your software is up to date by going to Settings > General > Software Update.
Get a battery test
If you’re suspicious that there may be something wrong with your battery, then go to your nearest Apple Store and request an extended battery life test. They’ll be able to tell you if there’s a problem or if it’s just down to your usage.
Editors' Recommendations
- Common iOS 13 problems and how to fix them (iOS 13.7 update)
- Common iPhone 11 problems and how to fix them
- iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro: Key settings you need to change
- The most common iPhone X problems, and how to fix them
- The worst Apple Watch problems, and how to fix them
