iOS 11: How to Improve Battery Life

Getty

Since the most recent update to iOS 11, many iPhone users are reporting issues with a dwindling battery life.

A recent poll by 9to5mac shows that 70% of users are now experiencing issues with their battery life. It takes an average of only 96 minutes for the phones to be completely void of charge. In order to enjoy the many new features offered by the recent update, you’re going to need to improve your battery life in order to take advantage of them.

Here’s how to do that:

 1. Figure out what’s going on with your battery life. 

To do that, go to Settings > Battery. There, you’ll find an overview of how much battery power your apps are using. Close the apps that are draining your battery.

Here, your phone will also give you suggestions about your battery usage. It’ll tell you different ways to reduce battery drain.

2. Turn on Low Power Mode

To turn on low power mode, go to Settings > Battery. When your battery life is at 20% or below, low power mode can suspend background app refresh and block automatic downloads.

You can also turn on low power mode by heading to iOS 11’s control center. Go to Settings > Control Center > Customize Controls and click on the green plus sign next to Low Power Mode.

3. Time your auto lock

Go to Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto-Lock to change the amount of time your screen stays on.

Whenever your screen is on, your phone is draining battery. To decrease the amount of time that your screen stays on when you’re not using it, set your auto-lock timer to a smaller amount of time. You can choose between 2 minutes, 1 minute and 30 seconds.

Under this same setting, you can adjust your phone’s screen brightness. The brighter your screen, the quicker your battery will drain.

4. Turn off location services

Head to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and either turn off your location services completely or toggle them on and off for certain apps. Turning them off will save you more battery than just turning them off for certain apps, but you won’t be able to use anything that requires GPS.

Be sure to change any setting that says “Always” to either “While Using” or “Never” so the app is only draining your battery while you’re actually using it.

5. Toggle background app refresh

If you’ve turned on low power mode already, then background app refresh will already be turned off. However, you can customize which apps use the feature when low power mode isn’t turned on.

To change background app refresh settings, go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh.

5. Turn off “push” for your email apps 

Go to Settings > Accounts & Passwords > Fetch New Data. Decide which emails you need to receibe when and change the non-critical or secondary accounts to fetch new data every 30 minutes or every hour.

With any luck, changing these settings will help improve your battery life while you wait for a new version of the iOS to fix it permanently.

Keep in mind that there are also battery cases and power banks that can be used to extend battery life when you’re running out on the go.

Also, don’t forget that fast charging is supported on the new iPhones. Read more about how to enable that from Heavy here: