How to save battery on iPhone and improve autonomy
There are some tricks and tips that allow you to improve the autonomy of the iPhone by saving battery and reducing consumption.
In today’s guide, we see the 20 best ways to save battery and improve iPhone autonomy.
With each new iOS update, the battery of our iPhones seems to last less and less and battery drain phenomena are increasingly frequent, which leads to high consumption even with reduced use of the smartphone.
In the last period, I have noticed drastic drops in my battery and for this reason, I decided to create this guide where I have collected the main methods to save the iPhone battery and improve autonomy.
Many of these tricks consist of disabling secondary features, while others are small tips to get some improvement. My advice is to try them one at a time, understand which ones may be right for you, and then decide which ones are worth using or not based on your needs and the type of use you make of your smartphone.
On many guides, I have seen “creator” recommending absurd, stupid, and even counterproductive methods. Among the methods that I advise you NOT to use, there are certainly these 3 and then I refuse to mention the reduction of brightness, because then how do you use the phone if you can’t see the screen?
1 – DO NOT disable geolocation
It is not essential, but the location is used in many applications and, above all, it can help you find your phone if it is lost or stolen. More than disabling it completely it makes sense to limit its use, you can check which apps use location by following this path:
- Open Settings
- Click on Privacy and Security
- Open Location Services
- From here you can choose which apps have access to your location and which don’t, remember not to turn off System Services.
2 – DO NOT disconnect WiFi, Data, and Bluetooth connections
WiFi and Bluetooth have very low consumption and disabling them has very little influence on autonomy. Data instead consume, but at that point, if you have to use an iPhone without a data connection you should buy a Nokia 3310 or an Amico Brondi. If you have the option of using a WiFi connection, always try to prefer it over a data connection.
3 – DO NOT close all applications
It certainly often happens to swipe up and close all open apps, especially for those who come from the Android world, this thing does not increase the battery of your iPhone.
The open apps remain in the RAM memory and in fact, do not consume battery, it consumes more opening and closing of an app because the system has to use more resources to be able to reload it from scratch.
It is advisable to close the apps if they give us problems, if we are experiencing high consumption or if we do not intend to use them for many hours or days.
The things to DO to improve the autonomy of the iPhone and the advice to follow
There are many methods, tricks, and tips that allow us to improve the autonomy and increase the battery of the iPhone by reducing consumption.
Below you will find a fairly extensive list of tips that can lead to more or less evident improvements.
As I said at the beginning of the article, I suggest you try them out one at a time to understand which secondary functions you think are superfluous, and therefore can be deactivated, and which ones you consider essential and should be left active. Other than these, don’t forget to always keep your apps and iOS up to date.
4 – Check which apps consume the most battery
First of all, it is good to understand which applications consume the most battery, an anomalous battery drain could simply be linked to a bug, a malfunction, or excessive consumption. To figure out which apps use the most battery on iPhone follow these steps:
- Open Settings
- Scroll to Battery
- On this page, scrolling down, you will find the percentage of battery used by the apps on your phone
- Here you will then be able to notice any anomalous consumption and understand if there are problematic apps that are eating up all the battery
5 – Disable Always On display on iPhone 14 Pro
The always-on screen of the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro is undoubtedly one of the most popular features of the new model thanks to its usefulness and excellent workmanship. However, the Always On screen leads to higher consumption and you can therefore decide to deactivate it if you do not deem it essential.
To turn off the always-on screen on iPhone 14 Pro follow these steps:
- Open Settings
- Tap on Screen and Brightness
- Turn off the Always-on screen
6 – Remove widgets from the home and lock screen
iOS widget support is pretty awesome, but you don’t necessarily need to use them on both the home screen and the lock screen. If you use widgets that you don’t think are essential, you can remove them and save a lot of battery.
The widgets that consume the most are those related to the weather and news because they continue to receive data in order to give you updated information, with the consequent negative impact on the battery.
To remove a widget from the home you simply hold down on it and remove it, for the lock screen, you have to hold down on the background and then click on Customize.
7 – Disable keyboard haptic feedback
With iOS 16 haptic feedback of the keyboard was finally introduced which leads to a slight vibration with each press of a key on the virtual keyboard of the iPhone.
This vibration certainly improves the typing experience, but on the other hand, negatively affects battery life. According to some reports, it can even reach 10% of daily consumption if the keyboard is used frequently. If you don’t think it is necessary, you can simply disable haptic feedback by following these steps:
- Open Settings
- Navigate to Sounds & Haptics
- Click on Keyboard Feedback
- Then turn off the feedback by pressing the side button.
8 – Detach Activities in real-time
With iOS 16.1 Real-time Activities were introduced which allow you to constantly view on the lock screen, and on Dynamic Island, a notification that follows the result of a game, the progress of a training session, the status of an expedition, or live flight updates.
This function is very convenient on several occasions but naturally involves high battery consumption given its constant presence on the display and the continuous request for updated data. To reduce consumption, you have two alternatives: limit the apps that use this function or disable it completely.
To disable Live Activities you can do this:
- Open Settings
- Click us Face ID and code
- Enter the unlock code
- Scroll down and turn off Real-Time Activity
9 – Turn off the background app and refresh
One of the features of the iPhone that leads to greater battery consumption is certainly the background update of the applications. This update allows applications, even those not open, to stay up to date, download data, and send notifications.
Of course, the background operation of hundreds of applications can have a significant impact on the battery, and it is therefore recommended to disable this feature for all applications that we do not consider essential and for which we do not need to have updated data or receive notifications.
To disable the background update of individual applications, just follow these steps:
- Open Settings
- Go to General
- Click on Background App Refresh
- From here we can simply turn off the feature for apps that don’t interest us. Disable it completely by selecting No from the first item above or allow it to run only when connected to WiFi to save some data and battery.
10 – Use a dark theme and black wallpapers
From the iPhone X onwards, Apple has always used OLED screens, this type of display allows for reduced battery consumption because the black color is reproduced by turning off the pixels, with a consequent increase in battery power and really deep blacks.
Therefore, using dark mode and black wallpapers allows you to have significant energy savings at the end of the day, so my advice is to go and activate the dark theme for the whole day and find a black-toned background that you like.
To activate dark mode follow these steps:
- Open the usual Settings
- Click on Display & Brightness
- Now select the Dark appearance and make sure you turn off the Automatic item.
11 – Deactivate raise to activate
As you will have understood, the screen is the element of greatest consumption of our iPhones and by limiting the number of times the display is switched on, you can save a lot of battery.
In this sense, it can certainly be useful to deactivate the raise to activate function which automatically turns on the iPhone display when we lift it from a table or desk, you can always turn it on by touching the screen or pressing the power button.
To disable the raise to activate function do the following:
- Open Settings
- Tap on Screen and Brightness
- Turn off the Raise to Activate switch.
12 – Limit the number of times the screen is turned on with scheduled summary and full immersion mode
Always in order to reduce the time it takes to turn on the display and the number of times we activate it, we can use the Full Immersion mode in a smart way, the scheduled summary of notifications, and disable notifications on the lock screen for some applications .
Full immersion
Thanks to the Full Immersion mode, it is possible to significantly reduce the number of notifications and switching on of the display, and therefore obtain better battery life when we are not using the phone.
In Full Immersion mode, which you can use when you work or study, you can choose which applications will be able to send notifications and turn on the display during the hours this function is used.
To activate and customize the Full Immersion mode, proceed with these simple steps:
- Open Settings
- Click on Full Immersion
- Choose the mode that interests you and customize it according to your needs by choosing apps and contacts that can disturb you while you work or study.
Notification summary
With the Summary of notifications, on the other hand, you can then merge all incoming notifications and view them all together at certain times of your day.
This mode can come in handy if you can’t use your phone for many hours, for example when you’re at work, and you want to prevent the screen from turning on unnecessarily every time.
Of course, you can set it to your liking and select which apps should enter this type of summary.
To activate Notification Summary :
- Open Settings
- Click on Notifications
- Click Scheduled Summary
- Activate it and choose which apps to enter in this mode and the times at which to display these notifications.
Block app notifications
The simplest solution then remains, that is to block the notifications of individual applications from the Settings by completely deactivating them or removing them from the lock screen.
13 – Disable Hey Siri
Personally, I don’t often use the “Hey Siri” voice command to activate the voice assistant on the iPhone, I use it much more often on the Apple Watch and Mac. Of course, to work properly, the iPhone always remains active and ready to listen. hear the command and start the voice assistant, with a consequent consumption of energy.
If you don’t often use the “Hey Siri” feature to activate Siri on your iPhone, you can deactivate it by following these simple steps:
- Go to your iPhone Settings
- Press on Siri and search
- At this point, you have to disable the button next to the “Enable Hey Siri” item
14 – Make smart use of airplane mode
Airplane mode disables the WiFi, Bluetooth, and data connections of our iPhone but, if used in a smart way, it can also help reduce the consumption of our phone’s battery. The main consumption of our Apple smartphones is linked to the “field” search and to maintaining the telephone and data connection online.
When the signal is weak or absent, our iPhone increases the power of the antennas in order to try to improve reception or to be able to capture even a weak signal to avoid sending us offline.
Naturally, the increase in power of the antenna in areas with poor telephone coverage leads to an increase in consumption which therefore considerably affects the autonomy.
To reduce this phenomenon we can go to activate airplane mode when we are aware of being in an area with little coverage and not having to make calls or send messages.
In my case, I often activate the airplane mode while I’m in the garage doing some chores because I know that the phone will have no signal, in this way I avoid the iPhone increasing the power of the antennas to go looking for the signal, consuming battery unnecessarily.
To activate the airplane mode just swipe down to open the Control Center and activate the function.
15 – Put the iPhone face down
It seems silly but putting the iPhone with the screen facing down, or placed on a table or desk, allows us to save some battery.
The iPhone, in fact, recognizes that it is upside down and therefore automatically blocks the display from turning on when you receive a notification. This method is trivial but allows you to avoid a lot of switching on the screen with a consequent improvement in autonomy.
16 – Limit Spotlight search indexing
The latest iOS versions have expanded the search functionality of Spotlight which has now improved considerably and is now able to search for the content you need within each application installed on your phone.
I know many people who have practically never used Spotlight or who certainly don’t need to carry out global searches within all the contents of the smartphone, if you are one of these you could disable the search and indexing of at least the apps you don’t use or that you think are useless.
To turn off Spotlight indexing in individual apps follow this path:
- As always open the Settings
- Click on Siri and search
- Scroll down to find the app to turn off Spotlight for
- Now disable the button next to the item “Show content in search”
17 – Beware of duplicate photos
iOS 16 introduced a new feature in the Photos app that allows you to find duplicates. This new feature scans all the photos we have saved in our gallery in order to find identical photos and allows us to delete them to avoid duplicates that use up memory unnecessarily.
This process, therefore, involves an important use of the battery but is performed only when the iPhone is online and connected to the power supply, in this case, you should therefore leave it connected and charged for a few nights in order to complete the process smoothly.
Now maybe it’s already too late to follow this advice, but remember to follow it at the next iOS update.
18 – Change the Mail update frequency
Personally, I use the Gmail app, but certainly, the most used iPhone application for email management is Mail. This app is really well done and allows us to have real-time reception of all our mail, but this mode involves more energy consumption.
If you don’t have a particular urgency in receiving your emails, you can set up a less frequent download thus saving some battery, to do so follow these steps:
- Open Settings
- Click on Mail
- Now press on Account
- Tap Download New Data
- From here we need to disable Push Mode at the top
- Now we have to go and set a frequency to our liking in the lower part of the display
- If you hardly read the emails you can set it Manually, otherwise choose a frequency between 15, 30, and 60 minutes
If you use email frequently, I suggest you read our in-depth look at the best email apps for iPhone.
19 – Use Energy Saver
If you’re running out of battery or you know you can’t charge your iPhone for many hours or if you’re worried that you won’t have enough battery left to get through the day, you can use Energy Saver. This mode, which we talked about in our in-depth analysis, activates most of the advice I have given you so far on the iPhone.
With energy saving, the iPhone goes into a low-consumption mode by disabling many functions including 5G, email updates, animated wallpapers, photo synchronizations, and background updates, and reduces processor performance and display brightness.
This model is therefore the ideal solution to reduce consumption and improve the iPhone battery, potentially you could activate it while you’re at work or when you don’t need your phone.
To activate Energy Saver you can press on the battery icon on the Control Center or activate it from Settings – Battery.
20 – Restart your phone regularly
It may seem like the dumbest tip, but I saved it for last, but regularly restarting your iPhone when you notice excessive battery consumption can solve many problems. In fact, with a restart, you will restart all the processes and close those previously open and which could cause problems. The good old “turn it off and on again” always works.
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