2 iOS 16 Tips to Help Save Battery Life on Your iPhone
There are things you can do to extend the life of your iPhone battery.
Stephen Beacham/CNET
If your iPhone is always dying, it could be time to make some changes to the way you use your phone. Maybe you need to charge it differently, with the appropriate cables or invest in a decent power bank that allows you to charge your iPhone from anywhere. You could also?turn on Low Power Mode permanently.
There are many ways to preserve your iPhone’s battery, many of which are simple to do, like throwing your phone into airplane mode or turning it off completely. However, not all battery saving tips are obvious, and if you’re running iOS 16, there are a few new ways that help your iPhone keep its battery charge for longer.
In this story, we’ll cover two new features and settings to iOS 16, both of which consume your iPhone’s battery in varying degrees, and how you can turn them off to preserve battery life. Here’s what you need to know.
And if you want some more battery savings tips and tricks, check out how to stop background apps from refreshing and how to replace your iPhone’s battery (cheaper than Apple).
Remove widgets from your lock screen
All the widgets on your lock screen force your apps to automatically run in the background, constantly fetching data to update the information the widgets display, like sport’s scores or the weather. And because these apps are constantly running in the background due to your widgets, that means they continuously drain battery.
If you want to help preserve some battery on iOS 16, the best thing to do is simply avoid widgets on your lock screen (and home screen). The easiest way to do this is to switch to another lock screen profile — press your finger down on your existing lock screen and then swipe around to choose one that doesn’t have any widgets.
However, if you want to just remove the widgets from your existing lock screen, press down on your lock screen, hit Customize, choose the Lock Screen option, tap on the widget box and then hit the “—” button on each widget to remove them.
If you’re already low on battery, it’s best to just switch to a wallpaper that doesn’t have lock screen widgets.
Nelson Aguilar/CNETKeep haptic keyboard feedback turned off
Surprisingly, the keyboard on the iPhone has never had the ability to vibrate as you type, an addition that was recently made on iOS 16, known as haptic feedback. Instead of just hearing click-clack sounds, haptic feedback gives each key a vibration, providing a more immersive experience as you type. However, according to Apple, the very same feature may also affect battery life.
According to this Apple support page about the keyboard, haptic feedback “might affect the battery life of your iPhone.” No specifics are given as to how much battery life the keyboard feature does drain, but if you want to conserve battery, it’s best to keep this feature disabled.
Fortunately, it is not on by default. If you’ve enabled it in yourself, go to Settings >?Sounds & Haptics > Keyboard Feedback and toggle off?Haptic to turn off haptic feedback for your keyboard.
Every single time you type, you’ll feel a slight vibration for each key you hit.
Nelson Aguilar/CNET
And although they haven’t been released yet, Live Activities and the iCloud Shared Photo Library are two iOS 16 features that may also drain your battery, so look out for an update to this story on how to disable them.