10 Settings you can change to improve your iPhone’s battery life.

Most people use their phones all day. Browsing social media, navigating in traffic, placing orders online, taking calls, answering emails… it’s the go-to device for everything we do. And even when you’re not using your phone, it’s always doing something in the background. All this puts a strain on your battery and especially as your device gets older, you might find yourself struggling with a phone that dies way too soon. Luckily, there are things you can do to make your iPhone’s battery last longer, and we’re listing 10 things below that will help you get the most battery life out of your phone. We’ll explain these steps below, and you can see where to access these settings in the video above.

Before we dive into battery-saving tips, it’s worth mentioning that portable USB chargers are relatively cheap these days and can charge your phone from empty to full several times. Investing in a good charger has been a game changer for me, so I’m linking a few of my personal favorites below.

Small portable option: https://amzn.to/3vk4SIM

High capacity for long travels: https://amzn.to/4axslX3

Low Power Mode

This is sort of obvious, but it’s the easiest one-click fix for most people. Enabling low power mode on your phone will automatically disable a handful of background activities allowing your phone to stretch the remaining battery life longer. When your battery hits 20% left iOS will suggest turning on low power mode, but you don’t need to wait until you’re at 20%. If you want to maximize your battery life, you can turn on low power mode as soon as you unplug your phone from the charger.

The problem with low-power mode is that you have no control over what gets disabled, so if you’re like me and want to have more control over what’s running in the background, there’s a lot of settings you can adjust manually.

Display & Brightness

Your phone’s display is one of the biggest consumers of battery, so naturally adjusting your display settings is a good place to start. Lower the brightness as much as you comfortably can, and set the auto-lock duration to a shorter interval so your screen turns off faster when not using your phone. You can also disable Raise to Wake so your phone’s screen won’t light up every time you pick up or move your phone.

Background App Refresh

Next, we’ll check our background app refresh settings. This is a list of apps that are allowed to reload and refresh in the background even when you’re not using the app. This can affect your battery life a lot so I highly recommend disabling background refresh for any apps you don’t need to be running in the background. Depending on the app this could affect things like getting notifications for new messages and things like that, so some apps you may want to keep enabled here. I’m just going to disable all the ones I know for sure I don’t need running in the background.

Location Services

Another big cause of battery drain is location services. This is a bit similar to background app refresh, but this is a list of applications that use GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, and cell towers to determine your geographic location. GPS and location data drains a lot of power, so I recommend disabling this for apps you don’t want to share your location with, or if it’s something like Google Maps where you need location services, you can set it to be enabled only when you’re using that application. This way none of your apps are draining your battery by running the GPS in the background when you’re not using the app.

Cellular Connection, WiFi & Bluetooth

A couple of things you can quickly change from your control center – display brightness, but also WiFi and Bluetooth settings. If you’re not using any Bluetooth devices turning off Bluetooth will help your battery life. Likewise, if you’re not using WiFi, your phone will appreciate it if you give it a break and allow it to stop looking for open WiFi networks. The biggest power saver is airplane mode – this will turn off your cellular connections as well, so you won’t be getting any calls or texts, but your battery life will see a massive increase. Sometimes if you’re in an area with poor cellular connection your phone will constantly search for the strongest signal, switching from one cellular tower to another, and this often makes your battery drain pretty fast. If you’re off the grid and don’t need cellular connection, turning on airplane mode will save your battery a lot.

Motion & Fitness Settings

As I said earlier, anything running in the background will drain the battery, and one background process we haven’t covered yet is here. Motion and fitness. This is basically the health and fitness apps on your phone tracking your movement. Your iPhone is analyzing your daily moves, counting your steps, stairs you climb, and things like that, so obviously measuring all that in the background 24 hours a day will affect your battery life. If you want some extra juice left for other activities, you can turn this off.

Siri & Search Settings

Another background process, once again draining your precious battery life, is Siri. Your iPhone is constantly scanning the microphone, waiting to hear that “Hey Siri” command. I like using Siri but I always do it by pressing the side button on my phone, so I’ll tell my phone to stop listening for the “Hey Siri” command here.

Other Things to Consider

One thing worth mentioning is that the physical temperature you’re in also plays a big role in your battery life. Avoiding extreme cold and hot temperatures as much as you can will help your battery life. The battery in your iPhone performs the best with 62° to 72° F (16° to 22° C) as the ideal comfort zone. Exposing your device to temperatures higher than 95° F (35° C) can on the other hand permanently damage your battery capacity, so it’s good to avoid leaving your phone on a hot car dashboard or sitting in direct sunlight for an extended period of time.

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