As the Sept. 12 Apple event and presumed announcement of the iPhone 15 draw nearer, there’s been a lot of chatter about the iPhone battery. Some users have reported that the battery capacity of their iPhone 14 dropped sharply at the beginning of August, raising echoes of Apple’s “Batterygate” settlement for iPhone 6 models.
While some iPhone users continue to report battery drain and heat issues, most iPhone battery issues can be prevented by taking a few simple steps — use “optimized charging,” avoid overheating your iPhone and don’t let the battery drain to zero.
However, along with those iPhone battery best practices, there are a number of other battery-saving tips for iOS 16 that are less obvious but can help you keep your iPhone’s battery alive longer.
In this story, we’ll cover two new features in iOS 16 that both put a strain on your iPhone’s battery in varying degrees, and how you can turn them off to help 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 iPhone 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 power.
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.
Watch this: So Many iPhone Battery Complaints, but Why?
Turn off your iPhone’s haptic keyboard feedback
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.
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.
Watch this: We Tested the Batteries on the New iPhone 14 Models