One of the big attractions of Apple’s iPhone is its smooth user experience. The iPhone often outperforms the competition, but every device begins to slow down with age. Updates to iOS can also be a double-edged sword, sometimes rendering older iPhone models even slower. It can be frustrating to find that your once youthful, lightning-fast iPhone is slowing to a crawl, but you don’t need to accept the decline. Don’t let your iPhone go gently into that good night. Instead, try out the tips below to give it new life.
Turn it off and on again
It’s the tried and tested opening gambit of IT support for a reason. Turning devices off and on again can often solve issues and boost performance. It’s also quick and easy, so what have you got to lose? Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button and slide the resulting switch to turn off your device. Once done, press and hold the Sleep/Wake button again until you see the Apple logo appear.
Turn off transparency and reduce motion
Visual effects may look nice, but there’s a processing overhead. You can speed things up a little by turning them off or reducing them. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Increase Contrast and toggle Reduce Transparency to On. You should also think about going to Settings > General > Accessibility and toggling on Reduce Motion.
Uninstall unused apps
Go through all the apps and games on your iPhone and uninstall anything that you don’t use regularly. Be ruthless. They’re taking up space and potentially eating resources by running and updating in the background.
Turn Siri features off
Siri can be very handy, but there are a couple of features that you might consider turning off to boost performance. Siri can automatically suggest things when you search in iOS 9 and up, but this feature can slow your iPhone down. To toggle it off, go to Settings > General > Spotlight Suggestions > Siri Suggestions.
Another feature that could be causing a performance hit is “Hey Siri.” If you have an iPhone 6S or 6S Plus, you can say “Hey Siri” at any time to bring Siri to life, and it works on some older iPhones when they’re plugged in and charging. If you want to turn it off, you’ll find it under Settings > General > Siri.
Turn off automatic downloads
If you take a look in Settings > App and iTunes Stores, you’ll find a section labeled Automatic Downloads. If your iPhone is the only device associated with your Apple ID, then you might want this on, but if it isn’t, then you could be automatically downloading new app and content purchases you made on another device that you really don’t want on your iPhone. If you are going to use automatic downloads, we’d suggest turning off Use Cellular Data in Settings > App and iTunes Stores.
Next page: Five more tips to speed up your iPhone…