11Ways to Stop iOS 7 From Killing Your iPhone Battery
There are a few basic things you might be doing to make precious hours of running time slip away. Here are a few quick fixes to keep iOS 7 devices powered for much longer.
1. Background App Refresh
The battery-draining culprit that perhaps bears the most responsibility is a new feature called Background App Refresh, whose default is set to "on" in iOS 7. It lets apps run in the background while you multitask and continually refreshes content when running on Wi-Fi or a cellular network. To disable this feature, visit Settings > General > Background App Refresh. Here, you can turn off the entire function or just disable that apps you don't need to refresh on an automatic basis.
2. Location-Tracking Apps
Many apps — from
Google Maps to
Twitter and even the iOS camera — are tracking your location at all times. You can turn off Location Services completely (Settings > Privacy > Location Services) or disable certain apps one by one. We recommend the latter option, so you can still leave on key location-based functions such as Find My Phone if it's ever lost.
There's more, too. Selecting the System Services option under Location Services will reveal a collection of other app features that are stealing away battery life, including "Popular Near Me" and "Frequent Locations."
3. Parallax
Apple has added a bunch of new animations and a parallax feature — which makes it seem like the wallpaper can move behind the apps — but they eat away at your power slightly faster. Some people have complained the movements are dizzying anyway, so there's no harm in turning it off. To do so, visit Settings > General > Accessibility and click Reduce Motion to "on.
4. Automatic Updating
iOS 7 lets you automatically download new app updates whenever they're ready without visiting the App Store to do it yourself. It's a smart function, but the last thing you want to do is run app updates when your battery is down to fumes. To disable this, visit Settings > iTunes and Apple Store and uncheck the Updates option.
5. Turn Off AirDrop
AirDrop lets you share files with other users on the same network, but when you're not using it (or Bluetooth, for that matter), do your battery a favor and shut it off. AirDrop is great when you are AirDropping. The rest of the time it's just fidgeting in its seat, looking for another device to play with. Turning it off is easy, just swipe up your Control Center, and hit the toggle.
6. Stop searching for Wi-Fi
There's no need to have your phone searching for Wi-Fi when there's no trusted network in sight. You'll save yourself some trouble if you get in the habit of turning of Wi-Fi from the Control Center when you leave the house. Alternatively, you can go to Settings>>Wi-Fi and turn Ask to Join Networks to off. This way your phone will hop on Wi-Fi networks it knows, but won't look around for more without direct orders.
7. Turn Down the Brightness
This has long been a helpful way to save battery life on any device and iOS 7 is no exception. Use the Control Center or visit Settings > Wallpapers & Brightness and disable Auto-Brightness and decrease the setting manually.
8. Spotlight
Apple's internal search functionality (called Spotlight) can now be accessed from any screen, but because it's continually indexing new data, it's killing your battery. Check out Settings General Spotlight Search and disable what you don't need.
9. Disable location services (for apps that don't need it)
Google Maps needs to know where you are, yes. But Facebook? Hop over toSettings>>Privacy>>Location Services to get a full list of the apps that are asking about where you are. You can probably turn off about half, and cut down on a lot of GPS polling.
10. Go on a push notification diet
Not every app needs to push its notifications; that stuff takes power. Go toSettings>>Notification Center and scroll down to the Include section. Then go on a toggling spree.
11. Don't push; fetch
If your email isn't that important, or you have a couple of accounts, go turn the low-priority ones to Fetch instead of Push, which means your phone will go retrieve mail at set intervals instead of having it pushed to you every single time Uncle Harry or a spambot blasts you. This one is pretty dependent on how often you get emails and how crucial they are, so you'll have to feel it out, but you can set to fetch in Settings>>Mail, Contacts and Calendar>>Fetch New Data
