iPhone performance and speed can reduce in quality the more you use the device. There are several reasons that could be causing this decrease in phone performance and lead to a slow iPhone.
Fortunately, there are also ways to combat these issues, and increase performance quality and speed once again. If you’re looking to get your iPhone to run faster, we’re going to run through the best ways to do so.
How to make iPhone run faster – The Guide
If you want to make your iPhone run faster than before, you should;
- Make sure to close down all of your background tabs.
- Disable all background activity on your phone (which can be done quickly by enabling lower power mode).
- Delete all of the unwanted data from your memory to free up space.
- Clear your search history, cache and cookies.
- Make sure you’re connected to a solid Wi-Fi network or mobile data.
- As a last resort, restart your mobile device.
We’ll go through a few methods you can use to increase phone performance and speed in more detail.
1. Close Background Tabs
The first method is closing unneeded background tabs. Having too many tabs open simultaneously can greatly decrease phone performance, as your phone will be using too much power at once.
Close the background tabs you don’t need, or close all tabs except the one you’re using.
Double-press the home button to show all open tabs.
Then, swipe up on each tab to close them.
2. Disable Background App Activity
Another method you can use to improve phone performance, is disabling background app activity.
This will decrease the amount of power your phone uses overall, since apps will no longer be running in the background – many apps will clean themselves to get rid of any temporary storage that’s taking up space on your iPhone.
There are three ways in which you can disable background app refresh for apps.
Disabling the ‘background app refresh’ option
One way to disable all background app refresh, is to manually turn it off in the settings.
Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh. This should take you to a list of apps, which have background activity that can be enabled or disabled.
Press the ‘background app refresh’ option at the top. It should have either the word ‘on’ or ‘off’ next to it. If the word ‘on’ is next to it, it means background app refresh is currently enabled.
After pressing the ‘background app refresh’ option, press the ‘off’ option to disable background app refresh for all apps.
Disabling background app refresh for each app
Another method for disabling all background app refresh, is to manually disable it for each app in the settings.
Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh. This should take you to a list of apps, which have background activity that can be enabled or disabled.
There should be a green switch next to the apps that have background app refresh enabled. Press every green switch to disable all background app refresh.
This is a more tedious task, but only if you have many apps with background app refresh enabled. It also gives you more control over the task.
But beware that if you were to download a new app afterwards, it will have background app refresh enabled if applicable.
You can check if that’s the case in the settings. If you wish to prevent this from happening, one of the other methods for disabling background app refresh would be more suitable.
You should prioritise disabling background activity for apps that take up a lot of your phone’s battery usage. You can which apps use up most of your battery by checking your battery usage.
How to check battery usage
Go to Settings > Battery.
Scroll down to see your battery levels throughout the day. Or, scroll even further to see a list of apps by battery usage percentage. This will tell you how much battery each app consumed recently.
3. Enable low power mode
The third method for disabling background app activity is by enabling low power mode.
This will automatically disable background app activity, and decrease battery usage overall; which can increase phone performance.
You can check if low power mode is enabled by looking at the small battery icon in the top right of your screen.
If low power mode is enabled, the battery icon should be yellow. If it’s not yellow, then low power mode is off.
There are two ways in which you can turn on low power mode.
Using the settings
Go to Settings > Battery.
Press the switch next to the low power mode option. This will enable low power mode.
Using the control centre
The option should be in your control centre if you’ve previously added it there. You can check whether this is the case by swiping up on your screen.
Make sure to swipe up from the bottom of the screen. This will open your control centre.
Check if there’s a battery icon in your control centre. This symbolises the low power mode. It there is a battery icon, press it to enable low power mode.
If there isn’t a battery icon, then you don’t have the low power mode option in your control centre. It isn’t placed there by default, so you must manually add it from the settings.
This will give you quick access to low power mode so that you can enable and disable it with ease.
Go to Settings > Control Centre, and scroll down to find the low power mode option. Press the plus icon next to the low power mode option to add it to the control centre.
Now, you can open the control centre and press the low power mode icon.
4. Clear cache and cookies
When you clear history of your cache, you’re essentially deleting all the temporary files that your iPhone saves over time. Those these can prove useful, eventually these files can become corrupted, so it’s worth doing.
You can clear history on your browser from within the settings of your device. If you find your device running slow, this could be the reason why.
5. Check your data
If you’re suffering with a slow iPhone then it could be down to the internet connection you’re using. This is either going to be your Wi-Fi network having issues, or it could be down your your mobile data connection instead.
This is actually not the fault of your device but its connection to the internet. Making sure the connection is good is one of the best ways to make your iPhone faster.
6. Perform a factory reset
If you’ve tried everything else and can’t make your iPhone run faster, then it’s a good idea to hard reset your device. Not just restarting it – a full reset back to factory settings.
When you do this, your phone will be wiped clear – this will delete unused apps and pretty much everything from your iPhone storage, so it can be worth backing up your files first. However, you’ll get a lot more storage space free on your device when you do this.
This will also ensure that any system updates on your device have been performed too – make sure that auto updates is enabled in your settings if you want to prevent your iPhone from running slow in the future.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are several ways in which you can improve phone performance.
The main goal should be to decrease battery usage, which prevents the phone from overheating or struggling to maintain performance quality.
You can decrease battery usage by disabling background app activity, enabling low power mode, or closing unnecessary background tabs. An older iPhone will gradually become slower anyway, but using these tips you can make your iPhone faster and maximize its shelf life.
