Optimised battery charging is a feature on iOS 13 or newer that limits overnight charging to protect your phone’s battery in the long term. Charging your phone to 100% for extended periods reduces the battery’s lifespan, so Apple’s software only charges it to 80%, reducing strain on the battery. Using optimised battery charging can increase your phone’s lifespan, but it may not be beneficial if you have irregular sleep patterns or don’t charge your phone overnight. You can easily turn off the feature in your phone’s settings.
Have you ever noticed that when you charge your iPhone late at night it stops at around 80 per cent? This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature called optimised battery charging doing its thing. It’s designed to increase the longevity of your phone’s built-in battery, ensuring that it works optimally for years to come. However, it’s not always beneficial, so it’s useful to know how to turn it off, too.
In this article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about optimised battery charging, including how it works, why you should or shouldn’t use it, and how to control it. Let’s dive in.
What does optimised battery charging do?
Optimised battery charging is enabled by default on all devices running iOS 13 or newer. It’s a feature that’s designed to protect your battery in the long term by limiting overnight charging.
The majority of people plug in their phones when they go to bed, leaving them plugged in overnight. This is convenient as it’s the one time that you know you’re not going to need your phone, and most homes have an outlet near the bed that can be used for charging.
As convenient as it is, it’s not the best thing for your battery. It’s not dangerous, there’s built-in protection on all modern smartphones that will stop the battery from overcharging, but keeping the battery at 100 per cent charge for extended periods reduces its lifespan.
That’s because as well as the physical age of your battery, its lifespan is also affected by its chemical age. The chemical age of your battery can be affected by how hot your battery gets, and how and when you charge your iPhone. As your battery chemically ages, the amount of charge it can hold will slowly decrease, meaning you’ll need to charge it more often.
iPhone 14 Pro Max shown from the bottom displaying Lightning portTo combat this, Apple’s software monitors your daily activity and will only charge the phone to 80 per cent when it’s plugged in at night. Then it will wait until just before your usual wake-up time to complete the charge to 100 per cent.
Only charging to 80 per cent reduces the strain on the battery, which can help to reduce the chemical aging of battery. When it’s working as it should, you won’t notice any difference from charging the old-fashioned way – except for the fact that your battery will remain in good health for much longer. You may also see a notification on your iPhone indicating that it’s using optimised battery charging, along with an estimate of when your iPhone will be fully charged.
Optimised battery charging does a few other clever things, too. Apple says that it only triggers in locations that you spend a lot of time in, such as at home or work, so long as you have location services enabled. This means that it shouldn’t impact you when travelling. Ironically, having location services turned on may actually run down your battery more quickly, as the GPS components in your iPhone will require power to make location services work. Indeed, turning location services off is one of the common suggestions for ways to extend your battery life.
Why should you use it?Using optimised battery charging means that your phone will have a much longer lifespan. There’s nothing worse than having a handset that works great but won’t hold a charge for more than a few hours, and this feature should help prevent that from happening.
Of course, batteries aren’t perfect, and they all have a finite lifespan. So even if you use this feature, you should expect your overall battery life to decrease as the years go by. It’s just that with this feature enabled, it’ll take much longer for that to happen, and the usable period is likely to greatly exceed the time that you use the device, before deciding to upgrade to a fancier model.
So, sound like a no-brainer, then? Well, there are a few scenarios where optimised battery charging might be more of a hindrance than a convenience.
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The system requires iOS to learn your habits in order to work effectively, so if you keep irregular hours or regularly change shift patterns at work, then you might find that it’s not working as you’d hoped.
Similarly, if you don’t charge your phone overnight, then it won’t be doing anything useful – and could even slightly decrease your battery life by trying to learn your habits in the background.
In cases like that, it’s probably best to turn off the feature entirely. Thankfully, Apple makes this easy to do, and we’ll explain how in the next section.
How to switch off optimised battery charging on iOSIf you’ve decided you’d rather turn off optimised battery charging, simply follow the steps below:
Optimised Battery Charging iPhoneOpen SettingsSwipe down until you find Battery and tap on thatChoose Battery Health & ChargingTap the toggle to turn off Optimised Battery ChargingYou will be presented with the option to turn it off until tomorrow or turn it off entirelyChoose the option that suits your needs, and you’re all done