10 settings to tweak to increase iPhone battery life, including turning off the always-on display and reducing your screen refresh rate. Also, stop quitting your apps…it doesn’t help!
Advertise here with Carbon Ads
This site is made possible by member support. ❤️
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
Discussion 4 comments
I know the article mentions it afterwards as a bonus, but many (most?) of these are set automatically when putting the phone in Low Battery Mode. The tradeoff of experience vs battery is real, but many may prefer keeping the features of the phone and not having to mess with settings as often. If I plan to be out for a while without ability to charge, I'll put my phone in Low Battery Mode even if I'm at 100% charge—an easy control center toggle.
Or more extreme: Airplane Mode. When we go camping in places where the signal is spotty, putting my phone in Airplane Mode unless I actively need to get a signal helps the battery last an entire long weekend without charging (with the added bonus that I then only pull it out to take photos).
What will be nice in iOS18 is the ability to add shortcuts to Control Centre, to which I’ll be able to add shortcuts which actually fully disable WiFi and Bluetooth - instead of the “Off but not really” option Apple have stuck us with.
If you’re really really concerned about battery life I guess I get this, but a lot of this is just like “turn off these features of your phone that are useful”.
Like I know my battery will last longer with the always on display turned off but I love it. And it is smart enough to turn off when it’s in my pocket or if I’m far enough away from it. Same with live activities and haptic keyboard feedback. They’re awesome.
I should say I charge my phone every night and I’ll often throw it on a MagSafe charger when I’m not using it. And I carry a battery charger and backup battery if I’m going to be out all day with it. (But even then I rarely need them.) Okay, so maybe I’m not normal here. But I just find that way I just use my phone however I want and still don’t really worry about the battery.
Hello! In order to leave a comment, you need to be a current kottke.org member. If you'd like to sign up for a membership to support the site and join the conversation, you can explore your options here.
Existing members can sign in here. If you're a former member, you can renew your membership.
Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or extensions that you have installed on your browser...sometimes they can interfere with the Memberful links. Still having trouble? Email me!
In order to leave a comment, you need to be a current kottke.org member. Check out your options for renewal.
This is the name that'll be displayed next to comments you make on kottke.org; your email will not be displayed publicly. I'd encourage you to use your real name (or at least your first name and last initial) but you can also pick something that you go by when you participate in communities online. Choose something durable and reasonably unique (not "Me" or "anon"). Please don't change this often. No impersonation..
Note: I'm letting folks change their display names because the membership service that kottke.org uses collects full names and I thought some people might not want their names displayed publicly here. If it gets abused, I might disable this feature.
If you feel like this comment goes against the grain of the community guidelines or is otherwise inappropriate, please let me know and I will take a look at it.
Hello! In order to leave a comment, you need to be a current kottke.org member. If you'd like to sign up for a membership to support the site and join the conversation, you can explore your options here.
Existing members can sign in here. If you're a former member, you can renew your membership.
Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or extensions that you have installed on your browser...sometimes they can interfere with the Memberful links. Still having trouble? Email me!