How to deal with iPhone battery draining quickly

Do you find yourself constantly having to charge your iPhone because Low Power Mode keeps turning on? While your phone's battery will degrade over time, no one wants their device to shut down in the middle of navigating a busy road trip or an important conversation.

The good news is that there are ways to optimize battery life even if your iPhone isn't new. By tweaking a few default settings, you can get more battery life out of each charge, which is especially useful when you're on the go or can't charge right away.

Additionally, the Battery Health menu in iOS also provides important information like battery wear (above 80% is considered fine), number of charge cycles, and the overall health of the battery.

This article will point out 3 features in iOS that are silently consuming energy and guide you how to disable them, thereby significantly improving iPhone battery life.

Turn off widgets on lock screen

Lock screen widgets like weather forecasts, sports scores, or calendar events are convenient, but they require apps to constantly run in the background to update data. This silently drains battery, especially on iOS 18, where more personalization of the lock screen can lead to higher battery drain.

If you want to maximize your battery life, you should consider removing widgets from your lock screen (and home screen) entirely. The easiest way to do this is to switch to a widget-free lock screen style, just press and hold on your current lock screen, then swipe to the widget-free layout.

In case you want to keep the current lock screen but remove the widgets, press and hold the lock screen, selectCustomize>Lock screen, then tap on the widget area and tap the minus "-" icon to remove each widget from the list.

Turn off motion effects

Smooth animations are an integral part of the iPhone's intuitive experience, from the animations when opening apps, to the color effects when activating Siri with Apple Intelligence, to the parallax motion when you tilt the device. However, these aesthetic elements are also the "culprits" that silently shorten battery life.

If you prioritize performance and battery life over visual effects, iOS allows you to reduce animations through a simple setting. To enable this option, visitSetting>Accessibility>Move, then activateReduced movement(Reduce Motion).

Turning off these effects not only saves battery but also makes operations on the device faster, especially useful for older iPhone models.

Turn off keyboard vibration

It wasn't until iOS 16 that Apple added haptic feedback to the iPhone keyboard, providing a slight vibration when you type, making the typing experience more immersive. However, this feature can affect battery life.

According to Apple’s support document, haptic feedback from the keyboard “may impact battery life,” though the company doesn’t provide specific numbers. If you’re trying to optimize battery life, especially on older devices, turning this feature off is a good option to consider.

Luckily, haptic feedback isn't enabled by default. If you've enabled it, you can turn it off by going toSetting>Sound & Haptic Feedback>Keyboard feedback, then turn off the itemHaptic feedback.