If you’ve ever caught yourself scanning a room for outlets, or worrying about how long you can eke out a charge on your iOS device, then these iPhone battery-saving hacks are for you.
These iOS Battery saving hacks are helpful even if you’ve got iPhone 14, iPhone SE, iPhone 13, iPhone 12th, iPhone 11, or earlier iPhone models.
Four hacks to boost your iPhone’s battery life right now
1. Turn on low power mode Automatically
Every iPhone user is familiar with the drill — our battery drops to 20% and we get a familiar pop-up alert noting, “Low Battery. 20% battery remaining.” If you choose to ignore it, you’ll get another alert when the battery drops to 10%. But if you enable Low Power Mode, you can extend the remaining battery life a bit until you’re able to charge your iPhone again.
Apple introduced Low Power Mode with iOS 9 as a way for you to keep using your iPhone longer when the battery charge is weak. You might wonder what exactly Low Power Mode does, and if it saves battery life, why not use it all the time?
Low Power Mode is an iOS setting that disables some iPhone features to save battery charge when it is low. Your iPhone will ask you if you want to turn on Low Power Mode when your battery drops to 20%, and then again at 10%.
Apple says that Low Power Mode reduces the amount of power that your iPhone is using to make your battery last longer.
You can tell when you are in Low Power Mode because your battery icon will be yellow. Your iPhone automatically turns off Low Power Mode when your battery charge reaches 80%.
According to the official Apple support page, Low Power Mode makes these changes to conserve your battery’s charge:
- Turns off 5G (except for video streaming)
- Sets your iPhone screen to turn off after 30 seconds of inactivity
- Reduces display brightness
- Lowers display refresh rate for iPhones with ProMotion
- Eliminates some visual effects
- Pauses iCloud Photos sync
- Suspends automatic downloads
- Pauses email fetch
- Stops background apps from refreshing
Low Power Mode also disables viewing videos in HDR, turns off the always-on display in iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, disables video autoplay, and reduces CPU and GPU performance.
You can turn on iPhone Low Power Mode manually by going to Settings > Battery and toggling on Low Power Mode. You can also turn on Low Power Mode manually with the iPhone Control Center or with Siri.
The manual way to keep Low Power Mode on all the time would be to simply put your iPhone into Low Power Mode every time after you charge it. But there’s an easier, automated way to “set it and forget it.” To automatically keep your iPhone in Low Power Mode at all times, you’ll need to get a little crafty and make your own Personal Automation using the Shortcuts app.
There are many ways to automatically set Low Power Mode using Shortcuts, but for me, the easiest method is to turn on Low Power Mode whenever the battery is less than 100%. That way, your iPhone is essentially in Low Power Mode all the time, but it can also create backups, complete downloads and receive updates when it’s plugged in and charged at 100%.
- Scroll all the way to the right on your iPhone home screen to get to your App Library, then scroll down and tap Shortcuts.
- Once the app is running, select Automation at the bottom of the screen, then tap the blue Create Personal Automation button.
- On the New Animation screen, scroll down and select Battery Level.
- Tap the bottom option, Falls Below, and then move the slider all the way to the right for 100%. Then click Next. You’ve set your condition for triggering an action.
- Now create the action to set your iPhone to Low Power Mode. On the Actions screen, click the blue Add Action button.
- You can then type in ”Low” in the search box and tap Set Low Power Mode, or tap Scripting and find it under Device.
- Once you’ve selected Set Low Power Mode, it will show up on your Actions screen as “Turn Low Power Mode On.”
- Click Next. On the following New Automation screen, toggle Ask Before Running off to let Lower Power Mode be turned on automatically. If you want, you can request a notification for every time the automation runs.
- Confirm “Don’t Ask,” then tap Done to finish. You’re all set. Every time your battery drops below 100%, your iPhone will automatically switch into Low Power Mode.
2: Delete Rogue apps
Apps can put a serious drain on your iPhone battery life, so deleting the most power-hungry ones can seriously boost your life-per-charge.
Inside your smartphone are tiny chips called processors, which let it run the camera, watch a video, and everything else.
The more difficult the task (or badly designed the app), the harder processors have to work – draining more juice from your battery.
Some tasks happen in the background, like tracking your location for Google Maps, or checking with Facebook for new notifications.
You don’t see these tasks happen, but they’re still draining your battery life.
Sometimes a poorly coded app can tear through your battery. I’ve even seen very popular apps such as Facebook or the YouTube app have bugs that cause them to rip through a fully-charged battery in a few hours, even when they are not in use!
Your iPhone has a built-in tool that lets you uncover exactly which apps are draining your battery life.
Here’s how to find the most draining iPhone battery life apps:
- Open Settings on your iPhone.
- Choose Battery.
- Scroll down and you’ll see a list of the apps that have used the most battery life. In my case it’s Safari, but yours might be different. You might even spot an app that’s draining your battery far faster than anything else.
- Tap ”Show Activity.” You’ll see how long you’ve spent using each app. If there’s one that drains your battery a lot with just a little bit of usage, then you may want to consider uninstalling it.
- Tap ”Last 10 Days.” This shows the apps that used the most battery over the last 10 days. This is where you might find some surprises: I thought I spent most of my time in Mail and Slack, but it turns out I spend more time in GroupMe over the past 10 days.
That’s the gist of it. It’s simple to see the apps that are using up your battery. This is particularly useful if you download a new app and notice that your battery starts draining really quickly. Sometimes bugs might cause this to happen, and you’ll know what’s causing the problem and to delete the app until it’s fixed.
So if you’ve spent very little time on an app but it’s high on the list for usage, that means it’s a battery killer.
Watch out for apps that use lots of battery and rack up lots of background usage time – they’re particularly bad for your battery life.
You can delete any apps that are causing problems.
3. Set your iPhone to Join Wi-Fi networks automatically
Your iPhone can remember network and login information so that you can automatically reconnect to that network when you’re in range.
On iPhone, battery drains fast if it is connected to the LTE (4G) network. It has been noticed that with being connected to a cellular network, the phone’s battery starts draining fast suddenly. Even fluctuating between 4G and 3G due to poor network coverage can increase battery consumption.
One way to fix this problem is to set your iPhone to automatically connect to known Wi-Fi network. This can save your phone battery from draining faster.
If you don’t have auto join Wi-Fi network enabled, you’ll get home and you’re still connected to your cellular data, that will just drain the battery out of your iPhone, and you probably will even forget to connect your wi-fi for a few minutes, or maybe even hours. By having Auto Join Wi-Fi enabled, everything of course is done automatically, so you’re always on your wi-fi and not consuming a ton of data and battery with cellular data.
If your iPhone doesn’t automatically join a Wi-Fi network, follow these steps:
- Open Settings and tap Wi-Fi.
- Tap the info button (i) next to your known Wi-Fi network.
- Make sure Auto-Join is enabled for this.
From now on, when you enter this area with both known Wi-Fi networks, your iPhone will always automatically join to it.
4. Turn on dark mode to save your battery
If you don’t want to have to repeatedly adjust your screen’s brightness, you can use your phone’s dedicated dark mode. Dark mode converts all of the white backgrounds in apps to, more often than not, a black background. In turn, your phone is able to save battery power thanks to the darker colors.
But not every device gets a battery-saving boost from dark mode. If your phone has an OLED display, turning on dark mode is like turning off a bunch of lights in your house, and the net power gains add up over time.
The hardware explanation for the sudden uptick in dark interfaces is that newer OLED screens light up differently than traditional LCD screens. Each OLED pixel generates its own light, while LCD screens light all pixels from the edges. OLED pixels that are black draw no power, and are closer to pitch-black than LCD screens, which draw the same amount of power whether they’re displaying an all-white image or an all-black one. So if you have a fully black wallpaper on your OLED phone, it’ll only light up the pixels it needs to create the icons and text, while leaving the background pixels off entirely.
OK, I’m going to be the first to admit that although I’m well aware of what an OLED screen is, I have no idea if my phone is OLED or LCD. How do I find out? Well, here is a complete list of iPhones With OLED Displays:
- iPhone XS/XS Max
- iPhone 11 Pro
- iPhone 11 Pro Max
- iPhone 12
- iPhone 12 mini
- iPhone 12 Pro
- iPhone 12 Pro Max
- iPhone 13
- iPhone 13 Mini
- iPhone 13 Pro
- iPhone 13 Pro Max
- iPhone 14
- iPhone 14 Plus
- iPhone 14 Pro
- iPhone 14 Pro Max
Now, here’s how to turn on Dark mode on your iPhone:
- Go to Settings.
- Tap Display & Brightness
- Select the Dark option at the top of the screen.
Apple’s apps will automatically switch to a dark color scheme, and most third-party apps have also adopted the feature.
Your favorite iPhone Battery saving hacks?
Which hacks do you use to extend the battery life of your iPhone? — is it one of the four highlighted here, or do you use different tricks? I would love to hear your feedback in the comments below.