How to Save Your iPhone Battery Today
If you want to get more life out of your iPhone battery without a lot of trouble, the best things to do are often the simplest. Things like turning down your screen brightness, switching on Low Power Mode when you're running low, and being a bit stricter about which apps can run in the background can make a huge difference. Honestly, these little changes can add hours to your day.
Quick Wins for a Longer Lasting iPhone Battery
When you're staring at that low-battery warning, you don't have time to look through lots of settings. You need fixes that work right now.
The good news? Some of the biggest battery drainers on your iPhone are also the easiest to fix. These are the quick wins—the emergency tools for your battery that can get you through the rest of the day.
Control Your Screen Brightness
Your iPhone's beautiful screen is, without a doubt, the part that uses the most power. It's a simple fact: the brighter the screen, the faster your battery drains. The quickest way to save power is to just swipe down to open the Control Center and manually lower the brightness.
For an easier approach, let your iPhone handle it by turning on Auto-Brightness. This feature uses a light sensor to adjust the screen's brightness for you, keeping it easy to read without wasting power. It’s a classic "set it and forget it" solution. Based on real-world tests, just lowering your screen brightness from 100% to 50% can make your battery last up to 30% longer during heavy use. You can see the full details of these iPhone battery performance tests on reboxed.co.
Use Wi-Fi Whenever Possible
Ever notice how your battery dies quickly in places with bad cell service? That's your iPhone working extra hard, constantly searching for a good signal. It's a surprisingly fast way to drain your battery.
A simple yet powerful habit to build is connecting to a trusted Wi-Fi network whenever you can—at home, the office, or your favorite coffee shop. Wi-Fi uses much less power than cellular data, making it one of the easiest battery-saving tricks in the book.
These are just a few of the basic tips, but they're very effective. The picture below sums up the key areas to focus on for a quick improvement.
It really comes down to managing your screen, your apps, and how you connect. Get those right, and you're on your way to better battery life.
If you're short on time, here are the five most helpful changes you can make right now.
Top 5 Quick Battery Saving Actions
| Action | What It Does | Estimated Battery Savings |
|---|---|---|
| Enable Low Power Mode | Reduces background activity, email checking, and fancy visuals. | Up to 50% |
| Lower Screen Brightness | Reduces the power used by the display. | Up to 30% |
| Switch to Wi-Fi | Uses less power than cellular data for internet. | 10-20%, depending on signal |
| Disable Background App Refresh | Stops apps from updating content when you're not using them. | 5-15% |
| Turn Off Push Mail | Stops your phone from constantly checking for new emails. | Up to 10% |
Doing even a couple of things from this list will give you an immediate and noticeable boost in how long your iPhone lasts between charges.
Tweak These Settings to Stop Battery Drain
Besides the obvious stuff, your iPhone is running dozens of tasks in the background. A lot of these features are made for convenience, but that convenience costs you battery life. They're constantly sipping power, all day long.
The good news is you can go into your Settings app and make a few specific changes that have a huge impact. This isn't about turning your powerful smartphone into a basic phone; it's about making it work smarter, not harder. You'll probably be surprised by how many of these power-hungry features you can easily live without.
Tame Your Location Services
One of the sneakiest battery drainers is Location Services. It’s absolutely needed for apps like Maps, but countless other apps ask for your location when they have no good reason to. Really think about it—does that game you play or your social media feed really need to know where you are 24/7?
Every time an app checks your location, it uses a lot of power. You can easily take back control.
- Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services.
- Just go through the list and set as many apps as you can to Never or, at most, While Using the App.
- Avoid the Always setting unless it's for something you truly need, like a weather widget that updates on your home screen.
Being a little more selective here can dramatically cut down on this background activity. It’s a simple change that saves a surprising amount of power without you even noticing a difference in your day.
Stop Unnecessary Background Refreshes
Another feature that loves to eat your battery is Background App Refresh. This lets apps pull in new content in the background so everything is up-to-date the moment you open them. It sounds great, and it is for things like messaging apps. But it's often turned on for apps that just don't need it.
For example, do you really need a news app updating itself every few minutes? It's burning through power for content you might not even look at. Some reports suggest that background refresh can be responsible for up to 15-20% of your battery drain over a single day. In one test, an iPhone with this feature fully enabled lost about 25% of its battery overnight—that number dropped to just 5-7% after it was turned off. You can discover more insights about iPhone battery drain on Vegerpower.com.
By turning off Background App Refresh for apps that aren't important, you're basically telling your iPhone to stop wasting energy on things you aren't actively looking at. This one change can solve a lot of "mystery" battery drain.
Fine-Tune Your Notifications
Every single notification you get wakes up your screen. It might only be for a few seconds, but when you're getting alerts hundreds of times a day from social media, news, and promotional emails, that screen time adds up fast.
Each buzz, chime, and screen wake-up uses a tiny bit of power. Take a minute to choose which apps are actually allowed to interrupt you.
- Head to Settings > Notifications.
- Scroll down your app list and just turn off notifications for anything that isn't essential.
- For the apps you want to keep, you can get even more specific by turning off Sounds or disabling alerts on the Lock Screen.
This not only saves your battery but also helps cut down on digital noise. Making these simple, thoughtful adjustments is one of the most powerful ways to keep your iPhone's battery going when you really need it.
Better Charging Habits for a Healthier Battery
How you charge your iPhone is just as important as the settings you choose. Getting into the right habits can seriously extend your battery’s overall lifespan, keeping it healthy for years, not just a few months. It's all about working with your battery instead of fighting against it.
Let's talk about the big one: is charging your iPhone overnight really that bad? The simple answer used to be a definite yes, but Apple has built a pretty clever solution right into its software.
The Myth of Overnight Charging
The old worry about overnight charging was that leaving your phone at 100% for hours puts a lot of stress on the battery. Think of it like holding a muscle in a tense position for way too long—it’s just not healthy. That long period at a high charge is what makes the battery get older faster.
This is where Apple’s Optimized Battery Charging feature comes in.
When you turn this on, your iPhone starts learning your daily routine. It'll charge up to 80% fairly quickly and then just… wait. It cleverly pauses the charge, only adding that last 20% right before you typically wake up and grab your phone. This means your battery only sits at that stressful 100% level for a very short time. If you want to get into the details, you can learn more about how Apple's Optimized Battery Charging works in our guide. It's a real game-changer.
Embracing the 40-80% Sweet Spot
While Optimized Battery Charging is great for when you're asleep, the single best habit you can adopt for daily use is the "40-80% rule." The batteries in your phone are happiest when they’re kept in this middle zone, avoiding the extremes of a full charge or a complete drain.
Constantly pushing your battery to 100% or letting it die to 0% is what causes the most wear and tear. By keeping it within the 40-80% range as much as you can, you'll dramatically slow down how fast it ages.
This doesn't mean you have to watch your battery percentage all day. Just try to build a couple of simple habits:
- Plug in around 40%: Instead of waiting for that low-battery warning, give your phone a quick charge during the day.
- Unplug around 80%: If you’re charging at your desk, just try to remember to unplug it before it gets full.
It takes a little bit of awareness, but this approach pays off big time in keeping your battery healthy for longer. Small, regular top-ups are so much better for your battery than long, stressful full charges.
Use Quality Chargers and Cables
Finally, the gear you use actually matters. A lot. Not all chargers and cables are made the same, and using cheap, uncertified accessories can lead to uneven power that can quietly damage your battery over time.
You should always look for MFi (Made for iPhone) certified cables and stick to power adapters from well-known brands. These are designed to meet Apple's own safety and performance standards, giving you a stable and safe charge. If you want to keep things organized and charge multiple devices, a good multi-functional Magsafe wireless fast charging dock can be a great option. Using certified gear protects your phone and makes sure your battery gets the clean power it needs.
Why Keeping Your iPhone Cool Is Essential
If there's one villain in the story of your iPhone's battery life, it's heat. Heat is, without a doubt, the single most destructive thing for your battery.
Think of your battery as a tiny, sensitive power plant. When it gets too hot, the parts inside start to break down. And unlike a bad day you can recover from, this damage is permanent.
This isn't just about your phone feeling warm during a heavy gaming session. It's about the slow damage that builds up over time. Each time your iPhone overheats, it loses a tiny bit of its total ability to hold a charge. Over months and years, those small hits add up, leaving you with a battery that just can't make it through the day.
Common Heat Traps and How to Avoid Them
The most common cause of overheating is also the most obvious: the sun. Leaving your iPhone on a car dashboard, even on a mildly warm day, can make its internal temperature shoot up into the danger zone—well past 95° F (35° C), the upper limit Apple considers safe.
But the sun isn't the only thing to watch out for. Other common heat traps include:
- Charging with a thick case: Those heavy-duty, super-protective cases are great for drops, but they can be terrible for heat. They basically wrap your phone in a blanket, trapping the heat made during charging and slowly cooking the battery. It's a great habit to take off a bulky case before plugging in.
- Intense tasks in direct sunlight: Trying to use GPS navigation or playing a demanding game while sitting in the sun is a perfect recipe for overheating.
- Placing it near other heat sources: It might seem harmless, but don't leave your phone on top of a running laptop, a game console, or a cable box. That combined heat can be surprisingly damaging.
The link between heat and battery health is very important. High temperatures speed up the chemical processes inside a battery, causing it to wear out much faster than it would under normal conditions.
If you really want to get into the science, you can explore the impact of temperature on battery degradation in our detailed guide.
Don't Forget About the Cold
While heat is the main enemy, extreme cold isn't great, either.
Ever been outside on a freezing day and watched your phone suddenly die, even though it showed 30% battery just a minute ago? You've seen this happen firsthand.
Cold temperatures temporarily reduce a battery's ability to deliver power. The good news? This effect usually isn't permanent. Once your phone warms back up to a normal temperature, its battery should work normally again.
The key takeaway here is simple. Treat your iPhone like you'd treat a pet—don't leave it in a hot car, and bring it inside when it's freezing. Simply managing its temperature is a free and very effective way to protect your battery for the long run.
How to Find Which Apps Drain Your Battery
Your iPhone has a built-in detective, and it's located right inside your Settings app. This tool tells you exactly where every bit of your battery power is going, showing you which apps are behaving and which ones are secretly draining power behind your back. Learning to read this screen is the first step to taking back control.
Think of it like a detailed receipt for your battery. Instead of just seeing the final total, you get to see every single item.
To start your investigation, just head over to Settings > Battery. The first thing you'll see is a graph showing your battery level over the last 24 hours or the last 10 days.
This graph is more than just a line; it’s the story of your day. See any steep drops? Tap on that part of the graph, and the app list below will instantly update to show you exactly what was running during that time. This is how you connect a sudden battery drain to a specific activity, like that long video call or a navigation app you forgot to close.
Reading the App Usage List
Below the graph is where the real evidence is: a detailed list of every app that has used your battery. Each entry shows a percentage, which is that app's share of the total power used.
Don't panic if your most-used apps are at the top—that's totally normal. If you spend three hours on YouTube, it's going to use a lot of power. The real red flags are the apps you barely use, yet they're still showing up high on the list.
Interpreting Your Battery Usage Screen
To really make sense of this screen, you need to know what you're looking at. It's packed with useful information if you can understand it.
This table breaks down the key parts of the battery usage screen.
| Metric/Graph | What It Shows | What to Look For |
|---|---|---|
| Last 24 Hours / Last 10 Days | Switches the view between a short-term and long-term battery usage report. | Use the 10-day view to spot sneaky, ongoing battery drainers. |
| Battery Level Graph | A visual timeline of your battery percentage over the chosen period. | Steep downward slopes, which show moments of rapid power use. |
| Activity Graph | Bars showing when your screen was on versus when it was off. | High activity when your screen was off—a clear sign of background tasks. |
| Battery Usage by App (%) | A ranked list of apps and how much of the total battery they used. | Apps with high percentages that you rarely use or that say "Background Activity" underneath. |
Think of this screen as your main tool for finding battery problems before they get out of hand.
Spotting a Problem App in Action
Let’s walk through a real-world example. Imagine you check your battery stats and see that a social media app you only opened for five minutes somehow used 25% of your battery. Right under the app's name, you see the words "Background Activity." This is your proof.
This tells you the app was running constantly in the background, probably getting new content, tracking your location, or doing something else you never asked it to. This isn't normal usage; it's a problem app taking over your power.
Once you’ve found a power-hungry app, you've got a few options. You can go into its specific settings to turn off Background App Refresh or limit its access to Location Services. If that doesn't fix it, sometimes just deleting and reinstalling the app can clear up a bug that was causing the drain.
Ultimately, this simple screen gives you all the evidence you need to make smart choices and keep your iPhone's battery healthy.
Common Questions About iPhone Battery Life
Even after learning about all the best practices, you probably still have a few questions. That's totally normal. Let's answer some of the most common concerns people have about their iPhone's battery so you can feel confident you're doing the right thing.
Does Closing Apps Really Save Battery Life?
This is one of the biggest debates in the iPhone world, and the truth might surprise you. Apple's official answer is a clear no—you should only force-quit an app if it’s frozen or not working right. The apps you see when you swipe up are mostly just paused, not actively draining your battery.
Now, there is a small exception. If an app is acting up and running in the background when it shouldn't, closing it will absolutely help. You can usually find the problem app by checking your battery usage in Settings. But for most of us, constantly swiping away every app is not only pointless but can actually use more battery, since the phone has to restart them from scratch every single time.
Will Using Low Power Mode All The Time Harm My Battery?
Not at all. Think of Low Power Mode as a perfectly safe way to get more juice out of your battery whenever you need it. It won't cause any physical damage to the battery's health, whether you turn it on at 90% or 20%.
Low Power Mode just temporarily turns down a few features that aren't essential. It reduces background app updates, tones down some fancy visuals, pauses automatic downloads, and might limit 5G. The only "catch" is a slight dip in performance, but it's a fantastic tool for saving power when you need it.
What Is Optimized Battery Charging And Should I Use It?
Yes, absolutely. If you do nothing else, make sure Optimized Battery Charging is turned on. This clever little feature learns your daily routine to reduce the time your battery spends sitting at a stressful 100% charge.
For instance, if you plug your phone in overnight, it will quickly charge to 80% and then just… wait. It smartly holds off on charging that final 20% until just before you usually wake up. This simple delay makes a huge difference in slowing down battery aging over time.
This is one of the most effective ways to protect your battery without lifting a finger. You can check that it's active by heading to Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging. Learning how to check battery health is a great first step to understanding what's going on inside your device.
Why Does My Battery Drain So Fast After An iOS Update?
If you've noticed your battery life gets worse right after a major software update, don't panic. Your battery hasn't suddenly failed. Your iPhone is just working overtime in the background, handling a bunch of one-time tasks.
It's busy with things like:
- Re-organizing all your files for the search feature.
- Scanning your entire photo library for new features.
- Re-learning how to manage the battery itself.
This intense background work can last anywhere from a few hours to a day or two, making the phone run warmer and use more power. The best thing you can do is be patient. Keep it plugged in when you can, stay on Wi-Fi, and just let it finish its job. Your battery life should return to normal within a couple of days.
If you're serious about taking your battery management to the next level and want to automatically use healthy charging habits, Chargie can help. It's a smart little device that stops charging at a level you set, protecting your battery from the stress of sitting at 100% overnight and greatly extending its lifespan. You can learn more about taking control of your charging at https://chargie.org.