17 iOS Settings We Changed to Instantly Improve Our iPhone Battery Life
In today’s hyper-connected world, a smartphone is more than just a communication device; it’s our personal assistant, our entertainment hub, our camera, and our gateway to information. For iPhone users, this means constant connectivity and access to a universe of apps. However, this power comes at a cost, and that cost is often measured in battery life. The dreaded low battery notification, appearing far too early in the day, is a frustration shared by many. Before you resign yourself to carrying a portable charger everywhere or contemplating an expensive battery replacement, consider this: your iPhone’s battery performance can be significantly boosted by making strategic adjustments to its iOS settings. At Tech Today, we’ve meticulously explored and tested a comprehensive suite of iOS adjustments designed to reclaim precious hours of usage. We’re not talking about minor tweaks; we’re discussing impactful changes that, when implemented, have demonstrably extended our iPhone’s endurance. Forget the guesswork; we’ve done the heavy lifting to bring you the definitive guide to optimizing your iPhone’s battery life.
Understanding the Culprits Behind Battery Drain
Before diving into the solutions, it’s crucial to understand what drains your iPhone’s battery the most. While it might seem like a mysterious force, most battery consumption can be traced back to specific iOS features and app behaviors. Screen brightness, background app refresh, location services, push notifications, automatic updates, and vibrant visual effects all contribute to the steady depletion of your battery. Understanding these primary culprits allows us to target our settings adjustments with precision, ensuring that every change we make has a tangible positive impact on your device’s longevity. We’ve identified the key areas where even seemingly small adjustments can lead to significant battery savings.
Optimizing Your Display: The First Frontier in Battery Savings
The screen of your iPhone is undeniably one of its most power-hungry components. The brighter the display, the more energy it consumes. Therefore, managing your screen’s illumination is paramount.
1. Smartly Reduce Screen Brightness
While automatic brightness adjustment is convenient, manual control often yields better results for battery conservation.
How to Adjust:
Navigate to Settings > Display & Brightness. Here, you will find a slider for Brightness. We recommend setting this to a level that is comfortable for your viewing environment but not unnecessarily high. For daytime use, a moderate setting is usually sufficient.
Advanced Brightness Control:
For even finer control, consider enabling Auto-Brightness (Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size) and then manually adjusting the slider. While it might seem counterintuitive, Auto-Brightness, when combined with your manual adjustments, learns your preferences and can dynamically manage brightness, preventing over-illumination in dark environments and ensuring readability in bright ones. We found that a slightly lower manual setting, coupled with Auto-Brightness, provided the best balance for our extended testing.
2. Utilize True Tone and Night Shift Wisely
While these features enhance visual comfort, they can contribute to battery drain, especially if used excessively or in situations where their benefits are minimal.
True Tone:
This feature adjusts the color and intensity of your iPhone’s display to match the ambient light, making images appear more natural. How to Adjust: Go to Settings > Display & Brightness. Toggle True Tone off if you are not in an environment where color accuracy is critical. For everyday use, keeping it on provides a pleasing viewing experience, but for maximum battery savings, consider disabling it.
Night Shift:
This feature shifts the display colors to the warmer end of the spectrum after sunset, reducing blue light exposure. How to Adjust: You can schedule Night Shift in Settings > Display & Brightness > Night Shift. While beneficial for sleep, if you find yourself using your phone extensively at night, you might want to shorten its active hours or disable it entirely if battery life is a critical concern for that period. We found that scheduling Night Shift to start later in the evening, rather than immediately after sunset, helped conserve battery.
3. Reduce Auto-Lock Timer
A shorter auto-lock duration means your screen turns off sooner when not in use, saving power.
How to Adjust:
Go to Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto-Lock. We recommend setting this to 30 seconds or 1 minute. This ensures that your screen conserves power by turning off quickly after inactivity. While longer durations offer convenience, a shorter timer is a direct contributor to battery longevity.
Taming Background Activity: Reclaiming Power from Unseen Processes
Many apps continue to consume battery even when you’re not actively using them. By controlling background activity, you can significantly curb this silent drain.
4. Master Background App Refresh
This feature allows apps to download new content and update in the background. While convenient, it’s a major battery hog.
How to Adjust:
Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh. You have three options: Off, Wi-Fi, or Wi-Fi & Cellular Data. We strongly recommend setting this to Off for most apps. For essential apps like messaging or news apps that you need to receive real-time updates from, you can selectively enable it. However, our rigorous testing revealed that disabling it for the vast majority of applications resulted in a noticeable improvement in battery life.
App-Specific Control:
Within the Background App Refresh menu, you can toggle the feature on or off for individual apps. We advise a critical review of which apps truly benefit from background activity. For instance, social media apps, games, and many productivity tools can often function perfectly well without constant background refreshing.
5. Control Push Notifications Strategically
Every notification that pops up on your screen, vibrates, or makes a sound, uses a small amount of battery. By reducing unnecessary alerts, you can save power.
How to Adjust:
Go to Settings > Notifications. Here, you can review each app and decide whether to allow notifications. For apps that don’t require immediate attention, disable Sounds, Badges, and Alerts. We recommend turning off notifications entirely for non-essential apps. For critical apps, consider allowing only banners that disappear automatically.
Scheduled Summary:
iOS offers a Scheduled Summary feature (Settings > Notifications > Scheduled Summary) which groups less urgent notifications and delivers them at set times. This is an excellent way to reduce interruptions and battery drain from constant alerts.
6. Manage Location Services Precisely
Apps that constantly track your location, even when not in use, are significant battery drains.
How to Adjust:
Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services. Here, you can see which apps have requested your location. Review this list carefully. For each app, choose one of the following options:
- Never: The app can never access your location.
- Ask Next Time Or When I Share: The app will ask for permission each time it wants to use your location.
- While Using the App: The app can access your location only when it is open and in use.
- Always: The app can access your location at any time, even when it’s not open.
We strongly advise setting this to While Using the App for most applications. Reserve Always for only those apps where it is absolutely essential, like Find My iPhone. Turning off location services for apps that don’t genuinely need it is a powerful battery-saving strategy.
System Services Optimization:
Within Location Services, scroll down to System Services. Here, you can fine-tune which Apple services use your location. Reviewing and disabling unnecessary services, such as Location-Based Alerts, Location-Based Suggestions, and iPhone Analytics, can contribute to battery savings. We found that disabling Location-Based Suggestions under System Services offered a small but consistent improvement.
Leveraging iOS Features for Enhanced Battery Performance
Beyond managing app behavior, specific iOS features can be optimized to reduce battery consumption.
7. Disable Automatic Downloads and Updates
While convenient, automatic downloads for apps, music, and software updates can consume battery, especially when happening in the background.
How to Adjust:
Go to Settings > App Store. Under Automatic Downloads, toggle off Apps, App Updates, and Music, Podcasts, and Apple TV Apps as you see fit. We recommend disabling these and opting for manual updates when you have a stable Wi-Fi connection and sufficient battery power.
8. Reduce Motion and Visual Effects
The parallax effect and animations in iOS, while visually appealing, require processing power and can impact battery life.
How to Adjust:
Go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion. Toggle on Reduce Motion. This simplifies the user interface by disabling parallax effects and other animations, which can lead to a noticeable battery saving.
9. Optimize Battery Health Management
Your iPhone’s battery degrades over time. iOS has features to help manage this degradation and maintain optimal performance.
How to Adjust:
Go to Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging. Ensure Optimized Battery Charging is enabled. This feature learns your daily charging routine and waits to finish charging past 80% until you need it. This reduces battery aging and improves its overall lifespan.
10. Manage Mail Fetch Settings
How your iPhone checks for new emails can significantly impact battery life.
How to Adjust:
Go to Settings > Mail > Accounts. For each email account, tap Fetch New Data. Instead of keeping mail set to Push (which constantly checks for new mail), we recommend changing it to Fetch and setting a manual interval (e.g., every 15, 30, or 60 minutes). For accounts that don’t require frequent updates, selecting Manually will only check for new mail when you open the Mail app.
Connectivity and Background Processes: Subtle but Significant Drains
Wireless radios and background processes can also contribute to battery drain.
11. Disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth When Not in Use
While convenient, keeping Wi-Fi and Bluetooth constantly scanning for networks and devices consumes power.
How to Adjust:
You can quickly toggle these off from the Control Center. However, for more permanent power savings, you can go to Settings > Wi-Fi and toggle it off, and Settings > Bluetooth and toggle it off. While we don’t recommend disabling them entirely, if you know you won’t be using them for an extended period, switching them off can help.
12. Consider Airplane Mode in Low Signal Areas
When your iPhone is searching for a cellular signal in an area with poor reception, it consumes a substantial amount of battery.
How to Adjust:
If you are consistently in an area with very weak or no signal, enabling Airplane Mode (available in Control Center or Settings) can prevent your iPhone from constantly searching for a network. If you still need Wi-Fi, you can enable it separately after activating Airplane Mode.
13. Limit Background App Activity for iCloud
Even iCloud can consume battery by syncing data in the background.
How to Adjust:
Go to Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud > iCloud Drive. Toggle off Sync this iPhone if you don’t require constant background syncing of your iCloud Drive files. You can always sync manually when needed.
Advanced Battery Saving Techniques: Beyond the Basics
For those seeking to maximize every ounce of battery life, these advanced techniques can provide further gains.
14. Disable Haptic Feedback
The subtle vibrations your iPhone provides for various actions can add up in battery consumption.
How to Adjust:
Go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics. You can turn off System Haptics to disable vibrations for system-wide actions. You can also review individual app settings to disable haptic feedback where it’s not essential.
15. Turn Off Raise to Wake
This feature automatically wakes your screen when you lift your iPhone. While convenient, it can lead to accidental screen activations and battery drain.
How to Adjust:
Go to Settings > Display & Brightness. Scroll down and toggle off Raise to Wake.
16. Manage Widget Usage
Widgets provide quick access to information, but some widgets, especially those that frequently update their data (like weather or news widgets), can consume battery in the background.
How to Adjust:
Review the widgets you have on your Home Screen and Lock Screen. Long-press on a widget to see the Remove Widget option. Consider removing widgets that you don’t frequently use or that are known battery drains. For widgets that are essential, try to select those with less frequent update cycles if available.
17. Utilize Low Power Mode Strategically
Low Power Mode is a built-in feature that helps conserve battery by reducing background activity, visual effects, and automatic downloads.
How to Adjust:
Go to Settings > Battery. Toggle on Low Power Mode. Your iPhone will automatically offer to enable Low Power Mode when your battery reaches 20% and again at 10%. You can also manually enable it at any time. While Low Power Mode does reduce some functionality, it’s an excellent tool for extending your battery life when you know you’ll be away from a charger for an extended period. We found that enabling Low Power Mode proactively, rather than waiting for the low battery warnings, provided the most benefit during busy days.
By implementing these 17 iOS settings adjustments, we have consistently observed a significant improvement in our iPhone’s battery life. The key is a mindful approach to your device’s settings, understanding that small changes can lead to substantial gains. At Tech Today, we believe in empowering our readers with actionable insights, and these battery-saving tips are designed to do just that, helping you stay connected and productive for longer. Don’t let battery anxiety dictate your day; take control with these proven iOS optimizations.