Introduction
Tips to Make Your iPhone Battery Last Longer, With each new operating system update, there are complaints about battery life, and iOS 16 is no exception. There are oftentimes periods of rapid battery drain after an update due to behind the scenes syncing and updating, but sometimes problems can persist longer. Apple’s new features, faults that need to be fixed, or just a rise in usage following an update can all lead to issues with battery life. Whatever the reason, we’ve compiled some tips on how to get more battery life out of your iPhone in circumstances where every last bit counts.
There aren’t many recommendations that don’t eliminate important iPhone capabilities, so you’ll have to strike a balance between energy consumption and the feature set you want enabled, turning items on and off as necessary when longer battery life is needed.
1. Turn Off Live Activities
With iOS 16.1, Apple added a Live Activities feature that allows apps to keep an ongoing notification on the Lock Screen or in the iPhone 14 Pro‘s Dynamic Island. Live Activities can be used for things like tracking a sports game, following along with a flight, progressing through a workout, and more, right from the Lock Screen or Dynamic Island.
Live Activities and all other activities on your iPhone use battery. It’s not surprising that turning off a continual notification stops excessive battery consumption; there have been posts on Reddit about turning off the feature boosting battery life. The steps below can be used to disable Live Activities :
- Open up the Settings app.
- Go to Face ID & Passcode.
- Enter your passcode to unlock the iPhone.
- Scroll down and toggle off Live Activities.
This will prevent Live Activities from showing up on the Lock Screen, but you’ll want to take this one step further. In the individual app sections in the Settings app, you can disable Live Activities on an app-by-app basis, or avoid using Live Activities features within apps.
2. Delete Lock Screen Widgets
With iOS 16, Apple overhauled the Lock Screen, adding the option for widgets. Widgets are constantly visible on the Lock Screen and many are refreshing in the background, which means they’re eating up battery. Widgets can also go on your Home Screen, a pre-iOS 16 feature. We recommend not using Home Screen widgets for those concerned about battery life.
3. Disable Haptic Keyboard Feedback
Apple in iOS 16 also added a fun feature that gives you haptic feedback when you use the on-screen keyboard. It vibrates with each key tap for a more satisfying typing experience, but what you might not know is that it drains battery.
- Open up the Settings app.
- Tap on Sounds & Haptics.
- Tap on Keyboard Feedback.
- Toggle off Haptic.
4. Turn Off Always-On Display (iPhone 14 Pro)
Always-on display isn’t an iOS 16 feature, but it is tangential because it was introduced with the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, the first devices to come with iOS 16 pre-installed. As the name suggests, always-on display leaves the time, your wallpaper, widgets, and Live Activities visible on the Lock Screen even when your iPhone is locked.
While Apple has some clever tricks, such as turning off the display when a connected Apple Watch is no longer within range (indicating that the iPhone owner is leaving the room) or when the iPhone is in a pocket, an always-on display still consumes battery more quickly than one that is not.
You can turn off the always-on display by following these steps:
- Open up the Settings app.
- Tap on Display & Brightness.
- Toggle off Always On.
It’s not really clear just how much battery life the always-on display drains because it’s going to vary from use case to use case, but even if it’s only a few percent, it’s worth turning off, especially if it’s not a feature that you find useful.
5. Avoid utilizing the iCloud Shared Photo Library.
With the help of the iCloud Shared Photo Library feature in iOS 16.1, you may utilize a regular Photo Library with up to five other people. Anyone can upload, edit, and remove pictures. When using iCloud Shared Photo Library, it’s possible that photos from other people will sync to your iPhone at random intervals, wasting battery power.
If you’re worried about the battery, it might be beneficial to avoid utilizing one of the functions by not setting it up and rejecting requests to join. You can enable a setting that only permits Wi-Fi syncing if you want to use iCloud Shared Photo Library while still conserving battery and bandwidth.
- Open up the Settings app.
- Scroll down to Photos.
- Tap on Cellular Data.
- Toggle off Cellular Data.
Uploads will be restricted to Wi-Fi, so photos shared with you won’t download to your device when you only have a cellular connection.
6. Choose Non-Animated Wallpapers
Some of the fancy wallpapers that Apple added with iOS 16 are animated, and an animated wallpaper will drain just a bit more battery than a static wallpaper. If you’re optimizing and don’t care much for the animations, choose something that’s not going to update throughout the day.
7. Use Focus Modes
Less notifications imply less opportunities for apps to wake up your display and drain your battery, so using Apple’s built-in Focus option can help you receive fewer alerts throughout the day.
You can limit the number of work-related notifications you receive during your personal time and ensure that only work-related notifications are sent to you during working hours with Focus Modes. When you’re driving, sleeping, exercising, or in any other situation you can think of, you can limit notifications. You can even exclude specific emails, messages, calendars, and other items using Focus Filters.
When the Focus mode expires, you’ll still receive all of your notifications, but they’ll come in a single alert rather than several. The best way to conserve battery life is still to disable unused app notifications, however Focus allows you to maintain your alerts while reducing the quantity you receive at any given time.
8. Use App Summary
Additionally, it is vital to move any app that provides unimportant notifications to the App Summary, which collects notifications and sends them to you once or twice each day. Although App Summary isn’t a part of iOS 16, it’s worth utilizing if you haven’t before.
9. Limit When and How Often Apps Can Access Location
Limiting the apps that have access to your location and how often apps can access that data can save battery life.
- Open up the Settings app.
- Choose Privacy.
- Tap Location Services.
- Review the list and edit settings by tapping on the name of each app in the list.
You have four possible choices for location settings for each app, though not all four choices will always be available for every app depending on what it does. You can select the following: Never, Ask Next Time or When I Share, While Using the App, and Always.
Never will prevent an app from ever accessing your location, and unless there’s a specific need for an app to know where you are, such as a mapping app, setting location access to Never is the best choice. When an app requests your location in the future, Ask Next Time will prompt a popup asking you to temporarily allow it.
10. Limit Apps Using Bluetooth
Your iPhone lets you know when apps have requested Bluetooth, and there are quite a few apps that want Bluetooth access for location tracking, scanning for Chromecast devices, or other not so useful reasons.
Checking on the apps using Bluetooth is worthwhile to make sure that you don’t have a sneaky app connecting to Bluetooth sources without your permission and draining battery. To get to Bluetooth settings:
- Open the Settings app.
- Tap on Privacy.
- Tap Bluetooth.
Apps like Facebook, HBO Max, Hulu, and others don’t need Bluetooth access for the most part, so toggle off any app that doesn’t need a Bluetooth connection to function. If a feature in an app stops working, you can just turn it right back on.
11. Use Low Power Mode
Using Low Power Mode liberally is an obvious choice for maintaining battery without having to hassle with a lot of settings, and you can toggle it on from Control Center, the Settings app, or using Siri. Low Power Mode cuts down on background activity, turns off your display after inactivity more quickly, limits display refresh rate, limits email fetch, cuts down on visual effects, Low Power Mode can be set to turn on at a certain battery percentage using Shortcuts, which is a handy way to have it automatically turn on when you need it.
12. Use Wi-Fi and Airplane Mode
One of Apple’s power-saving suggestions is to connect to Wi-Fi whenever you can to maximize battery life. Make sure to connect to Wi-Fi rather than a cellular signal at home or at the office.
This obviously only works when you don’t currently require a cellular connection, but it can make a significant difference since you definitely can’t accomplish much with low signal.
13. Manage Apps Draining Battery
Your iPhone tells you which apps are eating up the most battery so you can make sure nothing is secretly draining your battery without your knowledge. You can check your battery usage statistics by opening up the Settings app and tapping on the Battery section
You may view your battery level for the past 24 hours or the previous 10 days on battery consumption statistics, and you can also check which apps have consumed the most battery life. Delete any apps that are using an excessive amount of battery and that you don’t require. If you do require the app, limit how frequently you use it and the capabilities it has, such as location.
14. Limit Background Activity
Almost all apps use background refresh to update even when they’re not open, and limited background activity and background refresh is a longtime favorite option for cutting down on battery usage.
You can turn off Background App Refresh all together or choose which apps can refresh in the background.
- Open the Settings app.
- Select General.
- Choose Background App Refresh.
From here, you can tap the Background App Refresh option again to turn Background App Refresh off all together or choose to have it activate only when connected to WiFi, which doesn’t drain battery as much as downloading over cellular.
You can also choose to turn Background App Refresh on just for your most used apps by tapping on the toggle next to each app in the list.
15. Change Your Mail Settings
Along with turning off Background Refresh, changing when and how often the Mail app checks for new emails can save you some battery.
- Open up the Settings app.
- Tap Mail.
- Tap Accounts.
- Tap “Fetch New Data” at the bottom.
From here, you can turn off Push (which lets you know right away when a new email message is available) and adjust Fetch settings on a per account basis for accounts that don’t support Push (like Gmail accounts). You can choose the following settings: Automatically, Manually, Hourly, Every 30 Minutes, and Every 15 Minutes.
