Frequently Asked Questions

Need to get more life out of your iPad or iPhone battery? Here’s how.

1. Do not put your iPad in too high or low of a temperature.  Heat and or cold can harm your battery and cause a decrease in battery life.
2. Turn off your Wi-Fi, cellular service, and/or Bluetooth, especially if you are not using them.  Go to Settings, select the Wi-Fi feature, and slide the first slider to the off position. For 5G, go to Settings, then Cellular Data, and select the “off” option. If you aren’t using any Bluetooth accessories, turn it off by going to Settings -> Bluetooth, and sliding to “off.”  This is especially helpful since your iPad will actively search for 5G, wifi, or Bluetooth signals, causing your iPad to work harder and use more battery life.
3. Lower your screen brightness: Go to Settings -> Display & Brightness.  Move the brightness slider to the left.  You may also want to turn off Auto-Brightness.
4. Disable location services, which is what apps use to customize your current location. (This is not related to “Find my iPad.”) Go to settings -> Privacy.  Then turn the location services off entirely or for individual apps.  This may also help reduce your data usage.
5. Turn on Auto-Lock. This determines when your device will go to sleep.  The sooner it sleeps, the more battery you save.   Go to Settings -> General -> Auto-Lock and set the number of minutes.  You will still be able to receive phone calls, text messages, and notifications.
6. Close your apps.  It’s easy to have a log of apps running even when you are not using them.  Double click the home button to show what apps are running.  To close one, swipe it up off the screen.
7. Turn background app refresh off; it allows apps to update their content even when you aren’t using them. Go to settings -> General, then touch Background App Refresh. Then swipe the slider left to turn it off or turn it off for any number of individual apps.
8. Finally, TURN YOUR PHONE or IPAD OFF when you aren’t using it.  Since startup takes a fair amount of energy, however, only do this if you are going to keep it off for a while.  Hold the lock button until the power down slider appears on the screen, then swipe the slider to the right. Or hold the lock button and the home button for 10 seconds.

For these and other suggestions directly from Apple, see also https://www.apple.com/lae/batteries/maximizing-performance/.