The longer you hold onto an iPhone, the more familiar a certain frustration becomes: a battery that used to last all day now struggles to make it to dinner. Lithium-ion cells degrade gradually with every charge cycle, losing capacity so slowly that most people don’t notice until the drop-off is impossible to ignore. A new phone or a battery replacement are both options, but before you spend the money, it’s worth trying a few targeted settings changes that can meaningfully extend what your aging battery still has to give.

Over time, the maximum charge a battery can hold is reduced. While this is completely normal, there are other things that can put a strain on your battery that makes this happen faster, leaving you with a shorter battery life per charge. Couple this with new software updates that may have features that are more power-hungry and you can quickly find yourself with an aging battery that struggles to keep up even under less demanding circumstances. However, there are a few things you can do to help your battery age a bit more gracefully.

If you aren’t quite sure what to do to help prolong your iPhone battery’s life span, who better to advise you than Apple? Below you’ll find a few tips directly from the company that’ll help keep you from having to replace your battery sooner rather than later.

For more, don’t miss the top settings to change in iOS 18.3 to make your iPhone more personal. 

Now on to the battery tips…

Make sure Optimized Battery Charging is enabled

You can’t overcharge a battery, but you can put your battery under a bit of stress when you charge up to 100%. To help limit that strain, your iPhone has a setting that learns from your daily charging routine (say you always plug in your phone right before you go to bed and then unplug it in the morning). It then waits to finish charging past 80% until right before you need it, instead of just quickly charging the battery all the way to 100%. 

This can help reduce battery aging, and although the setting should be enabled by default, it’s still good to check if it’s on. In Settings, go to Battery > Battery Health & Charging and make sure that Optimized Battery Charging is toggled on.

Don’t expose your iPhone to extreme temperatures

The life span of your iPhone battery can be affected by extreme temperatures. A higher temperature increases the speed of chemical reactions inside the battery, which forces the battery to work harder and faster, thus also causing it to degrade faster. 

According to Apple, it’s important to avoid exposing your iPhone to temperatures higher than 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) to avoid permanent damage. Fortunately, the fix is simple — keep your iPhone out of hot temperatures. If you’re at the beach, don’t leave your iPhone on your towel in direct sunlight. Instead, toss it into a bag or put a shirt over it for protection. Also, don’t leave your iPhone in the car for an extended period of time, especially if it’s a hot day.

Apple does have a few settings to prevent overheating and damage, like disabling your phone or preventing further charging when your phone is too hot, but you don’t want to rely on these features to save your phone’s battery health. It’s better to take preventative actions than wait for your iPhone to overheat.

Your case may cause your iPhone to retain heat

If your iPhone gets hot any time you charge it, you may need to take off your case before doing so. Certain cases, especially the bulkier and more protective ones, can trap heat and make the iPhone overheat, affecting the battery’s life span.

Apart from removing the case, consider avoiding processor-intensive apps, like games, when your phone is charging. Using these apps while charging could also cause your phone to overheat.

Tips to protect the batteries of iPhones in long-term storage

Maybe you got a new phone and want to stash your old iPhone for a bit. If you want to maintain the battery’s life span, you should do the following before putting it away:

• Keep the charge at around 50%. You don’t want your battery to be full or empty before you turn it off, or else it could stop holding a charge (if full) or lose capacity and have a shorter life span (if empty).
• Turn your iPhone off. This prevents your phone from using up more battery.
• Store your phone in a cool and moisture-free environment. Ideally, the temperature should be less than 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius).
• If you’re putting your iPhone away for longer than six months, turn it on and charge it to 50% every half a year.

If you store your iPhone for a long time, it may be in a low-battery state, which just means you may need to charge it for 20 minutes before it turns on.

For more, check out the top settings in iOS 18.3 to tweak and how to perform conversions with the iPhone calculator app.