I’m going to tell you exactly why youriPhone battery drains so quickly and exactly how to fix it. I’ll explain how you can get longer battery life out of your iPhone without sacrificing functionality.
1. Close Out Your AppsOnce every day or two, it’s a good idea to close out your apps. In a perfect world, you would never have to do this and most Apple employees will never say you should. But the world of iPhones is not perfect — if it were, you wouldn’t be reading this article.
How To Close Out Your AppsDouble-click the Home Button (iPhones without Face ID) or swipe up from the bottom to the center of the screen (iPhones with Face ID) to open the iPhone app switcher. The app switcher allows you to see all the apps that are stored in the memory of your iPhone. To browse through the list, swipe left or right with your finger. I bet you’ll be surprised by how many apps are open!
To close an app, use your finger to swipe up on the app and push it off the top of the screen. Now you’ve really closed the app and it can’t drain your battery in the background. Closing out your apps never deletes data or causes any negative side-effects — it can only help you get better battery life.2. Notifications: Only Use The Ones You NeedWe’ve all seen the question before when we open an app for the first time:
“App Would Like To Send You Push Notifications”, and we choose OK or Don’t Allow. Few people realize how important it is to be careful about which apps you say OK to.
When you allow an app to send you Push Notifications, you’re giving that app permission to keep running in the background so that if something happens that you care about (like receiving a text message or your favorite team winning a game), that app can send you an alert to let you know.
Notifications are good, but they do drain battery life. We need to be notified when we receive text messages, but it’s important for us to choose which other apps are allowed to send us notifications.
How To Fix NotificationsGo to Settings -> Notifications and you’ll see a list of all your apps. Underneath the name of each app, you’ll see either Off or the kind of notifications that app is allowed to send you: Badges, Sounds, or Banners. Ignore the apps that say Off and take a look through the list. As you go, ask yourself this question: “Do I need to receive alerts from this app when it’s not open?”
If the answer is yes, leave everything as it is. It’s absolutely fine to allow some apps to notify you. If the answer is no, it’s a good idea to turn off notifications for that app.
To turn off notifications, tap the name of the app and turn off the switch next to Allow Notifications. There are other options in here too, but they don’t affect your iPhone’s battery life. It only matters if notifications are off or on.
2. Turn Off The Widgets You Don’t UseWidgets are little “mini-apps” that continually run in the background of your iPhone to give you easy access to up-to-date information from your favorite apps. Over time, you’ll save a significant amount of battery life by turning off the widgets you don’t use. If you never use them, it’s OK to turn them all off.
If your iPhone is running iOS 14 or newer, press and hold on a widget you want to remove, then tap Remove Widget -> Remove.
remove home screen widget on iphoneIf your iPhone is running iOS 13 or older, go to the Home screen swipe from left to right until you get to widgets. Then, scroll down and tap the circular Edit button to see a list of the widgets you can add or remove on your iPhone. To remove a widget, tap the red minus button to its left.
3. Turn Off Your Phone Once A Week (The Right Way)It’s a simple tip but important nonetheless: Turning your iPhone off and back on again once a week can resolve hidden battery-life issues that accumulate with time. Apple would never tell you that because in iPhone Utopia, it wouldn’t.
In the real world, powering off your iPhone can help resolve issues with apps that have crashed or other, more technical problems that can occur when any computer has been on for a long time.
How To Turn Off Your iPhone (The Right Way)To power off your iPhone, press and hold the power button until “slide to power off” appears. If your iPhone has Face ID, simultaneously press and hold the side button and either volume button.
Swipe the circular power icon across the screen with your finger and wait as your iPhone shuts down. It’s normal for the process to take several seconds. Next, turn your iPhone back on by pressing and holding the power or side button until you see the Apple logo appear.
4. Background App RefreshCertain apps on your iPhone are allowed to use your Wi-Fi or cellular data connection to download new content even when you’re not using them. You can save a significant amount of battery life (and some of your data plan) by limiting the number of apps that are allowed to use this feature that Apple calls Background App Refresh.
How To Fix Background App RefreshGo to Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh. At the top, you’ll see a toggle switch that turns off Background App Refresh entirely. I don’t recommend you do this, because Background App Refresh can be a good thing for certain apps. If you’re like me, you’ll be able to turn off almost every app on the list.
As you scroll through each app, ask yourself this question: “Do I want this app to be able to download new information even when I’m not using it?” If the answer is yes, leave Background App Refresh enabled. If not, turn it off and you’ll be saving more battery life each time you do.
5. You May Have A Hardware Problem (But It Might Not Be The Battery)In the beginning of this article, I mentioned that the vast majority of issues related to iPhone battery life come from software, and that’s absolutely true. There are a few instances where a hardware issue can cause problems, but in almost every case the problem isn’t with the battery.
Drops and spills can cause damage to internal components that are involved in charging or maintaining the charge on your iPhone. The battery itself is designed to be quite resilient, because if it were punctured it could quite literally explode.
The Apple Store Battery TestWhen you bring your iPhone to an Apple Store to be serviced, Apple techs run a quick diagnostic that reveals a fair amount of information about the overall health of your iPhone. One of these diagnostics is a battery test, and it’s pass/fail. In all my time at Apple, I believe I saw a total of two iPhones with batteries that did not pass that test — and I saw a lot of iPhones.
If your iPhone passes the battery test, and there’s a 99% chance it will, Apple will not replace your batteryeven if you’re under warranty. If you haven’t already taken the steps I’ve described in this article, they’ll send you home to do them. If you have done what I’ve suggested, you can say, “I tried that already, and it didn’t work.”
In ConclusionI sincerely hope that you have enjoyed reading and learned from this article. Writing it has been a labor of love, and I’m grateful for each person that reads it and passes it on to their friends. If you’d like to, leave a comment below — I’d love to hear from you.