Apps aren’t the only culprits on your phone that are responsible for battery drainage. If you aren’t being careful about the settings that you have enabled on your iPhone, some of them can do a number on your device and battery power. These three settings, specifically, have been called out time and again for how they rapidly deplete battery power and can make you stop everything and search for a charger at the most inconvenient times.
The simple solution? Disable these settings or, in the case of one, change it completely to conserve battery power. You’ll wonder why you didn’t take these steps sooner — because they are truly effective.
Disable Background App Refresh
You don’t need Background App Refresh enabled on your phone. Is it a nice convenience to click on any app and have it refreshed automatically so that you don’t have to wait even five seconds for new content? Sure. Is that worth the price you’ll have to pay with your battery power? We don’t think so.
The truth is that you won’t even realize you have this setting disabled, but you will benefit from a longer lasting battery that retains its charge. Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh and turn it off completely.
Location Services
Some apps need you to have Location Services turned on to do their jobs properly. Weather apps? Yes. Navigation apps? Absolutely. Social media apps? No, probably not — and having this service turned on not only depletes your battery power quicker, but it could also put your privacy more at risk.
Head to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services. Here’s the thing: You may not want to disable this setting completely because, as we mentioned, it is helpful if you use certain apps that require it. But you should adjust your settings so that only the apps that need it have access to it — and only when you’re using them.
Display Brightness
How bright is your screen right now? And honestly, can you live with an iPhone screen that’s a bit dimmer, for the sake of a longer-lasting battery?
That’s the trade-off, unfortunately. The brighter you keep your screen, the more taxing it is on your battery — there’s no way around this one. You can turn on Automatic Brightness to allow your phone to adjust your screen’s brightness depending on how light or dark it is in the room — that’s one way to help minimize this problem. Or you can manually toggle your brightness so that it’s lower by going to Settings > Display & Brightness > and then drag the slider down as much as possible.
Changing or disabling this three settings will help boost your battery and make it last longer — and you won’t even realize anything has changed.
