Apple’s newest iteration of its mobile operating system debuted last week in the form of iOS 15 and slowly and gradually everyone is enrolling in the latest experience that’s offered to them. As you may expect, iOS 15 brings with it a ton of new features worth praising for but not everyone is happy about them. After updating to the new version, many users on Reddit and Twitter have reported that iOS 15 has taken a toll on the battery life of their iPhones and is also heating it up to uncomfortable levels.
If you’re one of those who are affected by battery drain problems after the iOS 15 update, you may want to consider the following fixes before you take your iPhone to your nearest Apple Support.
Related: How to unsilence iPhone on iOS 15
Fix #1: Check if Spotify is draining your battery (or any other app)
If you’re someone who’s subscribed to Spotify and you use it as your primary music streaming app on your iPhone, you may want to check if the Spotify app is what’s taking up a significant chunk of your battery. We’re saying this because many users of the music streaming service have recently complained that the Spotify app on their iPhones consumed as much as 30% of the battery, which is a lot for an app that works mostly in the background.
The issue appears to be part of a bug that’s present on the latest version of the Spotify app on iOS and it isn’t just limited to iPhones running iOS 15 as users on the stable iOS 14.8 are also encountering similar issues. You can verify if your iPhone is affected by this issue by going to Settings > Battery and checking at the ‘Battery Usage by App’ for the Spotify app.
We’ve prepared an in-depth post with fixes for the issue in the link below.
▶ iOS 15 Spotify Battery Drain Issue: How to Fix
Fix #2: Disable Background App Refresh on iOS
The easiest way to prevent your iPhone battery from draining quickly is by disabling the ‘Background App Refresh’ function on iOS. Background App Refresh allows apps on your iPhone to check for new information while running in the background. If you think an app is affecting your battery life significantly, then you may either prevent it from taking up resources in the background or stop all apps from running when not actively open.
To disable Background App Refresh on iOS, open the Settings app on your iPhone and select ‘General’.
On the next screen, select the Background App Refresh option.
If you’ve kept your phone on Low Power Mode, Background App Refresh will already be disabled as part of the battery-saving process. If Low Power Mode is disabled, you can disable Background App Refresh for an app by tapping on the (green) toggle adjacent to the app’s name until it turns grey.
If you wish to disable Background App Refresh entirely for all your iOS apps, you can tap on the ‘Background App Refresh’ section at the top and select the ‘Off’ option on the next screen.
Related: Remove “Shared With You” in Safari on iPhone and iPad
Fix #3: Turn On Low Power Mode
Apple offers iPhone users a native way to save their device’s battery using the Low Power Mode option. When enabled, iOS will turn off automatic fetching of emails, automatic downloads, background app refresh, iCloud Photos, animations, 5G, and reduces auto-locking time for the display to 30 seconds.
You can enable Low Power Mode on your iPhone by going to Settings > Battery and enabling the toggle adjacent to ‘Low Power Mode’.
An easier way to enable/disable Low Power Mode is to add its shortcut to the Control Center. You can do so by going to Settings > Control Centre and tapping on the ‘+’ button on the left side of ‘Low Power Mode’ under ‘More Controls’.
When the Low Power Mode shortcut has been added, you can quickly toggle it on/off by tapping on the shortcut inside the Control Center.
Related: What does Blue Arrow Icon Mean on iPhone?
Fix #4: Enable Dark Mode
Modern iPhones come with OLED displays where each pixel lights up individually and don’t need any kind of backlighting, thus saving power in scenarios when the majority of the screen is colored in black. When you enable Dark Mode on iPhones with an OLED display (like the iPhone X, iPhone XS/Max, Phone 11 Pro/Max, iPhone 12 series, iPhone 13 series), you may be able to extend your battery life significantly as it applies a dark grey/black background all across iOS including the Settings app and other third-party applications.
Note: This doesn’t help iPhone with LCD screens. For eg., iPhone 11, iPhone XR, iPhone SE, and older models.
You can enable Dark Mode on your iPhone by going to Settings > Display & Brightness and then selecting the ‘Dark’ option under the ‘Appearance’ section.
An easier way to toggle Dark mode on your phone will be to add its shortcut to the Control Center. You can do so by going to Settings > Control Centre and tapping on the ‘+’ button on the left side of ‘Dark Mode’ under ‘More Controls’.
When Dark Mode is added to the Control Center, you can quickly toggle it on/off by tapping on the shortcut after swiping down from the top right (or upwards from the bottom of the screen on iPhones with a home button).
Related: What’s the issue with Messages on iOS 15 ‘Do Not Disturb’?
Fix #5: Disable Location Services
Some apps on your iPhone like Find My need access to your whereabouts on regular basis. This may take a toll on your battery life since the GPS sensor will need constant battery resources. You can thus disable Location Services on iOS by going to Setting > Privacy > Location Services and then turning off the (green) toggle adjacent to ‘Location Services’ until it turns grey.
Fix #6: Remove animations with Reduce Motion
Modern iOS versions come with a handful of animations created to enhance your user experience. These animations include screen transitions, animations inside apps, and the parallax effect that applies to your wallpaper and Lock Screen. While this may look nice on your phone, it may consume additional processing power, thus chewing up more of your iPhone’s battery. You can prevent this battery drain by toning these animations down a little.
For this, go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion and enable the ‘Reduce Motion’ toggle at the top.
Fix #7: Switch to 5G Auto
Both the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 series come with support for 5G cellular service but since 5G itself is relatively new, you may find it hard to find a 5G near you at all times. If you had previously set your network preferences to ‘5G On’, it may be affecting your battery life since your phone will then constantly be in search of a 5G network. This may in turn reduce your device’s battery life.
If you wish to save your battery while still using 5G, then you may want to use ‘5G Auto’ which allows you to connect to 5G when available and use LTE at all other times. To enable this option, go to Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options and select the ‘5G Auto’ option on the screen.
Fix #8: Update all your apps to their latest versions
With the release of iOS 15 and its new features and requirements, most apps you may use may already have new versions that are optimized for Apple’s newest mobile OS. App developers constantly update their apps to resolve incompatibility issues and bugs and it’s thus important that you remain on an app’s latest version to make sure they’re running as intended and not taking up too much of your iPhone’s resources.
To update apps on your iPhone, open the App Store, tap on your account picture, and tap on the ‘Update All’ option on the screen.
Fix #9: Switch off Bluetooth manually
Many of you may think that turning off Bluetooth from the Control Center is enough to disable it until you turn it back on again the next time. But that’s not how it works on iOS. Since iOS 11, Apple only allows you to disconnect devices from an active connection instead of fully turning off the Bluetooth radio. This may affect the battery life of your iPhone significantly which you can prevent by turning off your Bluetooth manually.
For this, open the Settings app, go to Bluetooth, and tap on the (green) toggle adjacent to ‘Bluetooth’ until it turns grey.
Fix #10: Restart your iPhone
After following the above fixes, if your iPhone still continues to drain battery significantly, you may want to restart it so that iOS resets the RAM and cache memory of the system and all of its background services. If you haven’t yet restarted your iPhone since updating to iOS 15, you should do that as there may still be some incompatibilities and apps that the system needs to fix by itself.
To restart your iPhone, and hold the Power button (or Volume up and Power buttons) until you see Power off slider, slide over the setting, and wait for your iPhone to power off. When the device has completely switched off, press and hold the Power button again until you see the Apple logo appear to restart the device.
Fix #11: Reset all Settings
By this point, if none of the above fixes work in your favor, there’s one way you can get your iPhone battery sorted without needing to erase your iPhone. You can reset your iPhone’s settings entirely which removes your configuration and the way your iPhone is run. There is nothing to fear about resetting all settings as you can set it up back again in a matter of minutes. This should tell you whether there’s something wrong with the way you’ve set up your device.
To reset all settings, go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset and select the ‘Reset All Settings’ from the menu that appears. When you do that, iOS will ask for your device passcode and once you enter that, your iPhone will start resetting all settings and then restart the device when done.
Fix #12: Check if you’re running iOS 15 beta
Apple only released the stable iOS 15 build for everyone over a week ago. But if you’ve been running iOS 15 on your iPhone for much longer, chances are that your device is enrolled in the iOS beta program. As beta builds are not fully stable, there may be a few bugs and issues that may arise when you continue using it, some of which may also cause your battery to drain. To prevent iOS from causing even more problems to your iPhone, you should remove the beta profile from the device and update it to the latest stable build of iOS 15.
To remove the iOS 15 beta profile from your iPhone, go to Settings > General > VPN & Device Management and check if you can see an “iOS 15 Beta Software Profile” section appear under ‘Configuration Profile’.
If it’s visible, tap on it and select the ‘Remove Profile’ option on the next screen.
Once you’ve removed the beta profile, your iPhone will restart and after that, you can update your iPhone to the latest stable version by going to Settings > General > Software Update.
Fix #13: Erase your iPhone and set it up as new
If your iPhone battery continues to drain rapidly despite the above efforts, your only viable option is to perform a factory reset so that your iPhone runs on a fresh copy of iOS 15. Before you proceed, you must know that this would erase all the data from your iPhone. So, you should back up all of its current data over iCloud before getting started.
To erase your iPhone, go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone and select the ‘Erase All Content and Settings’ option.
That’s all we have to share about fixing iOS 15 battery drain issues.
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