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Your iPhone battery can be really fickle. One day it seems like it lasts the entire day (and into the next day), while the next day your battery becomes drained before evening rush hour. Some things that are making the biggest impact on your iPhone battery are the number of apps you’ve downloaded, the type of apps you’re using, and other features on your phone that seem helpful, but could be responsible for major battery drainage.
In general, the apps you use the most tend to drain your battery the most. But some apps are far worse than others. Sometimes the best thing you can do for the sake of your phone is permanently delete these apps and find better alternatives or other ways of accessing the same content. And the same holds true for features like screen brightness, which may be convenient when you’re in a dark place, but are terrible for your battery.
Here are seven things you didn’t know you could delete from your iPhone for better battery life right now.
No list of things to delete from your iPhone for a batter battery would be complete without mentioning the Facebook app.
Inc.com‘s mobile economist John Koetsier actually discovered that the background activity of his Facebook app used up 47 percent of his battery life. The moment he deleted the app he gained back twice the charge, according to Marie Claire UK.
It may be painful to delete Facebook, and you can certainly experiment with turning off notifications and location settings, but the one true way to ensure the Facebook app is not draining your battery is by deleting it and accessing FB through your Safari browser.
Rogue Apps
When ZDNet refers to “rogue apps” that are killing your battery fast, it means any and all apps that may have bugs in them. The only way to find out whether you have a rogue app on your device is by going to Settings > Battery and looking at your list of apps to see which ones have a large amount of background activity. Try deleting the app to see if it helps improve your battery.
Notifications
This one is not an app, but a service that your iPhone apps often provide: they can send notifications and alerts to your device whenever you, for example, receive a message from someone. As helpful as this feature can be, it also drains your battery faster. Turn off Notifications by going to Settings > Notifications and find the apps that provide this service. Then individually tap on those apps and disable the Show on Lock Screen, according to ZDNet.
The Background App Refresh Feature
Most of your apps needn’t refresh constantly, and when they do it just chips away at your battery life. Prevent this from happening by going to Settings > General > Background App Refresh. Toggle the Background App Refresh setting to Off or go into individual apps that are refreshing and disable this feature.
Screen Brightness
Again, you can’t delete your screen brightness setting, but you should be aware that it is very likely on a very bright setting that isn’t doing your iPhone battery any favors. Fix this problem by swapping up to access the control center and simply adjusting the brightness level. You can also go to Settings > General >Accessibility > Display Accommodations and toggle Auto-Brightness off.
Netflix
Sorry to have to say it — because who doesn’t love binge-watching shows on Netflix? — but the Netflix app is murder on your battery. All of the shows that you stream take up major battery power and it may be better to just watch Netflix on a device like your laptop.
Spotify
Like Netflix, Spotify relies on streaming content to listen to your favorite songs and albums and is a complete battery drain. You can switch streaming music apps and use either Pandora or Google Music, both of which were found to consume much less battery than Spotify. Another option is to pay extra for Spotify Premium, which allows you to download music instead of streaming it.
