Overlooked buttons give every iPhone instant battery life upgrade – three free tricks for boost
DON’T let your iPhone battery run dry without putting up a fight.
There are some settings you’ll want to try changing to reduce battery drain if you’re in a pickle.
Low Power Mode
The easiest way to instantly slash your iPhone battery drain is to switch Low Power Mode on.
“Low Power Mode reduces the amount of power that your iPhone or iPad uses when the battery gets low,” Apple explained.
Here’s the list of features that the mode will “reduce or affect”:
- 5G (except for video streaming) on iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 models
- Auto-Lock (defaults to 30 seconds)
- Display brightness
- Display refresh rate (limited up to 60 Hz) on iPhone and iPad models with ProMotion display
- Some visual effects
- iCloud Photos (temporarily paused)
- Automatic downloads
- Email fetch
- Background app refresh
The battery icon on your status bar will turn yellow, signalling that Low Power Mode is active.
It will automatically switch off once your iPhone returns to 80% charge or higher.
To activate Low Power Mode, go to Settings > Battery and turn it on.
Alternatively add it to the Control Center via Settings > Control Center > Customize Control.
Then you can quickly engage it without having to go into the Settings app.
Location Services
Location Services are immensely useful – but they do cause battery drain.
This setting allows apps to use your location.
Sometimes that’s in an obvious way, like with Google Maps or Uber.
But it might be in more subtle ways, like Instagram using your location to recommend local content.
And sometimes the reason for Location Services might be very hard to guess.
Whatever the case, you can temporarily shut Location Services off to preserve battery.
Just go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and switch the toggle to Off.
Background App Refresh
Background App Refresh is what allows your apps to be active in the background.
For instance, your mail app needs to be able to check for new emails even when you’re not actively using it.
But you might be willing to temporarily ditch this benefit if you’re in need of a long-lasting battery.
It’s probably not a good idea to leave it switched off forever, however.
If you want to turn it off, just go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh.
Some apps use a lot of power in the background, so this is a great way to get a quick battery boost.
You can also turn off Background App Refresh for specific apps in your settings too, which may be a preferred option.