Streaming videos, browsing the internet, texting your friends, checking out new posts on Facebook, replying to emails, and everything else you do on your iPhone affects its battery level. Luckily, there are ways to prevent your phone from running out of juice at the worst possible moment.

Below, we'll look at the most effective tips that can prolong your iPhone's battery, plus a few factors that do not affect its life whatsoever.

How to Check Battery Health on Your iPhone

It's normal for a smartphone's battery to degrade over time. When your phone is two years old, it won't hold as much of a charge as it did when it was brand-new. This is referred to as "battery health," while "battery life" refers to how long you can go in between charges.

Apple allows users to check their iPhone's battery health easily. With just a few taps, you can determine whether your phone's battery is still healthy. So, follow these simple instructions on your iOS device:

  1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
  2. Scroll down and tap on Battery.
  3. Select Battery Health & Charging. The higher the Maximum Capacity number is, the healthier the battery. For example, 95 percent means that when full, your battery holds 95 percent of the charge it did when it came from the factory.

You may start to notice the degraded performance when your battery holds 80 percent or less of its original charge. While you can still use the tips below to extend your iPhone's battery life, expect worse battery life overall.

If the battery capacity is particularly bad and it doesn't last nearly as long as it's supposed to, you should consider getting a replacement from Apple or upgrading your iPhone.

How to Make Your iPhone's Battery Last Longer

Active iPhone usage and background activity both drain your phone's battery. These tips cover both, allowing you to get the most from a full battery charge and keep your phone going a bit longer when it's almost dead.

1. Manage Your Screen Brightness

A brightly lit screen drains the iPhone's battery much faster than a dim one. You can quickly lower your brightness from the Control Center. Swipe down from the top-right of your screen and drag down the brightness slider.

Disabling automatic brightness can also help save your iPhone's battery. Otherwise, the feature will automatically raise your screen's brightness when necessary, regardless of your brightness setting, such as when you're outside under bright light.

To do this, go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size, scroll to the bottom of the page, and disable Auto-Brightness. Remember that you'll need to manage your brightness more closely with this disabled. Don't leave your phone at high brightness for long periods of time when using it.

2. Switch to Dark Mode

Switching to Dark Mode is beneficial for phones with an OLED display, as it slightly improves the battery life. Here's a list of iPhone models that have this type of display at the time of writing:

  • iPhone X
  • iPhone XR
  • iPhone XS/XS Max
  • iPhone 11 Pro/Pro Max
  • iPhone 12/12 mini/12 Pro/12 Pro Max
  • iPhone 13/13 mini/13 Pro/13 Pro Max
  • iPhone 14/14 Plus/14 Pro/14 Pro Max

If you own these iPhone models, switching to Dark Mode isn't just for aesthetics. OLED displays can turn off individual pixels, meaning that any black pixels don't consume any power to light up.

Turning on Dark Mode is easy: head to Settings > Display & Brightness and tap on Dark. Alternatively, you can turn it on through the Control Center toggle you can find by long-pressing the brightness slider.

3. Use Low Power Mode

This feature does an awesome job of saving battery life, but it has trade-offs to squeeze out more battery life. When you switch to Low Power Mode, some of your iPhone's features are disabled, such as automatic downloads, iCloud backups, and email fetching.

Your phone will ask whether you want to switch to this mode when the battery level drops down to 20 percent. But you can also turn it on manually. Simply go to Settings > Battery and toggle on Low Power Mode.

You can also add a toggle for this feature to the Control Center for quicker access. Just open Settings > Control Center and tap the green icon next to Low Power Mode. Then, you can toggle it without going to Settings every time.

4. Turn Off Push and Fetch Emails Manually

If you receive many emails daily, make sure that you disable push syncing, which updates your device with new messages as they come in. Instead, you can increase the fetch interval so that it only checks for new emails on a set schedule. For a drastic change, you can fetch manually at all times to ensure your phone doesn't sync mail until you ask.

This can be quite inconvenient. But as soon as you can charge your iPhone or aren't worried about the battery as much, you can change the settings back to usual.

To adjust this feature, head to Settings > Mail > Accounts > Fetch New Data. At the top of the screen, disable the Push slider, then at the bottom, tap on Manually or set a schedule.

After this, tap each of your accounts in the list to change the settings from Fetch to Manual as desired.

5. Lower the Auto-Lock Timeout

Auto-Lock is a feature that locks your iPhone's screen when you haven't used it for a certain period of time. You can choose from 30 seconds all the way to 5 minutes before this feature activates. Choosing the shortest duration is ideal for conserving your iPhone's battery life. You can also choose to turn Auto-Lock off.

To turn on Auto-Lock, head to Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto-Lock. Now, select the duration before your screen goes dark.

6. Avoid Apps That Drain Your iPhone's Battery

Your iPhone collects data about the apps you use that consume the most battery life. To check out this information, head to Settings > Battery. This section will tell you how much battery a certain app has used in the past 24 hours and the last 10 days.

If you see Background Activity under an app's name, it means that it drained your iPhone's battery while you weren't actively using it. To prevent this from happening again, you should turn off Background App Refresh for the app under Settings > General > Background App Refresh.

Most of what you see on this screen should make sense based on your use. While all apps drain the battery by keeping the screen on, apps that need a lot of resources, like video streaming or heavy games, will use the battery much faster.

7. Reduce Notifications

When you receive a notification on your iPhone, the screen lights up, consuming its battery. By managing these, you can cut down on battery drainage.

Decide which app notifications aren't important for you and turn them off. To do this, go to Settings > Notifications. Then, select an app from the list and toggle off Allow Notifications to disable it.

If you don't want to turn off an app's notifications for good, enabling Do Not Disturb on your iPhone will also prevent notifications from waking your device. Use that when you need some extra battery.

What Doesn't Help Save Your iPhone's Battery?

Some say that manually closing apps can help to prevent battery drainage. But in fact, doing this can use up even more battery life. While apps running in the background can affect your battery level, iOS does not let apps run rampant in the background. As a result, the only apps using resources in the background should be messaging apps, navigation apps, music streaming services, etc.

However, closing out an app and reopening it constantly wastes battery power because your phone has to keep starting and stopping the process. It's best to think of the App Switcher as a set of shortcuts instead of running tasks that need to be closed.

Another common misconception is that Wi-Fi and Bluetooth drain the iPhone's battery when turned on. While this was once somewhat true, neither feature is a big battery drain these days. Using a Bluetooth device will consume a battery, but simply having it turned on will be negligible.

And unless you're at the edge of a Wi-Fi network and your phone keeps disconnecting and reconnecting, having Wi-Fi on won't significantly affect the battery. Wi-Fi also powers some location services, and Wi-Fi is more battery-friendly for pulling your location than GPS.

More iPhone Battery Life for Your Day

Utilizing these tips, you can keep your iPhone running as long as possible. And with a few adjustments to your workflow, you can go much longer between charges.

Saving your iPhone's battery life is one thing, but maintaining its battery health, in the long run, is a whole different story. It's equally, if not more, important to ensure you get the most battery life out of your iPhone.