Do you also feel frustrated by a sluggish iPhone? Don’t worry, you are not alone, if you’re looking for “How To Speed Up iPhone?” this is the place to be. We’ve made a list of seven proven methods for optimising your phone’s performance and restoring that lightning-fast experience you enjoy.
As your iPhone gets older, it may begin to slow down, making even simple tasks difficult. But don’t worry, there is still hope! In this post, we’ll look at 7 genuine and efficient techniques to speed up your slow iPhone and breathe new life into it.
These simple tips can not only speed up your phone, but will also improve your overall experience, allowing you to use your smartphone as if it were brand new. Let’s get started and make your iPhone snappy again!
Why does an iPhone slow down?
The slowing down of an iPhone is caused by a range of issues. The most common of them is ageing. When a device gets old or ages the hardware inside suffers a lot of wear and tear. Due to this the battery capacity of many iPhones start to decline. Since the new shiny iPhones have better hardware in terms of CPU, GPU and battery the software is made keeping them in mind instead of the older hardware. As the iPhone starts to age the battery health gets deplorable. This can cause several problems in the device like if the CPU is demanding more power to execute a task and the worn-out battery is not able to give all of the demanded power which results in sudden shutdown. To prevent this Apple intentionally slows down the processor through some software updates.
Apple admits slowing down older iPhones with iOS updates. You might be pondering that Apple would be slowing down the older iPhones 6’s and iPhone 5’s however, the story doesn’t end up here Apple is even slowing down the iPhone X, iPhone 8, iPhone 7, and below. Disgruntling! By the way, this is to preserve the deteriorating battery capacities of relic iPhone models.
What’s the Solution?
People tell you problems, but see here I am with umpteen solutions! Today I’m going to share 7 ways to speed up old iPhone, If you are tired of searching “how to speed up iPhones”! Implement these tricks and find out yourself how these tips & tricks can optimize your iPhone.
Restart or Reboot your iPhone
Earlier a very common strategy to prevent slowing down of an iPhone was to close running apps however, this trick nowadays, has been ditched! Useless! Rebooting the iPhone is a newer strategy to improve an iPhone’s speed. If your iPhone is suffering from software issues that are making the phone slow a quick restart can help because it reloads all the software, re-starts backend processes, and closes all the running apps to give the iPhone a new start!
iPhone Storage Management – free up some space
An iPhone with nearly full storage capacity tends to run slower than before! At least 10 Gigabytes (GB) or 10% of storage should be available. To figure out how much storage your iPhone is using then head towards Settings > General > iPhone Storage. You would see a colorful chart showing how much storage is occupied. One must give a sigh of relief to your iPhone by clearing up some unwanted apps, unwanted photos, and videos. The easiest and the quickest way to empty your iPhone’s storage is to start storing data on iCloud. For now, let’s look at a few free methods.
Delete unwanted apps
Figure out the apps that are eating bigger chunks of the iPhone’s storage by going to Settings > General > iPhone Storage. Scroll through the various apps you’ve installed on your iPhone and see how much storage an app is demanding. When you click on an app you’ll get 2 options first to offload the app which means that iOS will delete the app and keep its data, reinstalling the app will reinstate its data with the app. The second option is to delete which removes both the app and its data. For example, here I have installed a game called Call of Duty. By deleting this app I can save up to 3 GB of space on the iPhone.
If you are running an earlier version on iOS then you need to click on Storage & iCloud Usage, under storage click manage storage. You can also delete apps directly from the home screen.
Delete WhatsApp Attachments
If you use WhatsApp or Telegram it can take up a considerable amount of space on your iPhone. I’ve been using WhatsApp on my new phone for 6 months and it has taken up around 9 GB of Storage on my iPhone. Storage Hungry! So, to clear unnecessary WhatsApp file attachments head towards Settings > Storage and Data > Manage Storage. Now you would be seeing All your WhatsApp attachments. Removing text messages from Whatsapp or any other text message app does not free storage a lot. Deleting Whatsapp attachments can really help save storage at a bigger level such as videos, audio, and images.
You can also turn off media auto-download on WhatsApp which will stop downloading any media received automatically. This is a fantastic method to only download the required media and leave the unnecessary media. I really got sick seeing forwarded messages cluttering my iPhone. Trust, this trick can help you a lot in saving storage. In simple terms, when unnecessary media is not downloaded it saves a lot of space on your iPhone because no media will get downloaded automatically. To turn off media auto-download you need to go to Settings > Storage and Data; below MEDIA AUTO DOWNLOAD click on Photos and then Never. Do the same for Audio, Video, and Documents.
Delete Messages
Like WhatsApp, if you use the iPhone message app it also consumes a whole lot of your phone’s storage if you send or receive media like photos, videos, and audio.
The better way is to sync your messages to iCloud. To do this go to Settings > Apple ID > iCloud and then turn the messages checkbox green. With this setting turned on your messages will be stored in iCloud instead of your phone. I have around 10 GB of messages right now but, the problem is nothing is free in the world. You’ll have to pay some bucks to Apple to access the iCloud storage!
If you don’t want to pay and want to do empty storage for free then you need to delete messages. You can remove messages on your iPhone very easily!
Open up your messages and swipe left to delete them.
Delete threads with only text won’t solve your problem. You will need to delete media like images, video, audio, etc.
Delete Photos
The simplest way to free up space on an iPhone is to subscribe to iCloud to start storing photos in iCloud. To turn on iCloud Photos on your iPhone you need to go to Settings > Photos > iCloud Photos and then click on the switch to make it green. Congrats You’ve Successfully turned on iCloud Photos on your iPhone. If iCloud photos are turned on, on your iPhone then you need to select “Optimize iPhone Storage” so that the high-resolution images and videos are stored on the iCloud and the photos on your iPhone would be replaced by smaller, device-sized versions. You can download full-resolution files at any point in time. Keep in mind the file on your iPhone is not occupying a lot of space once you have iCloud Photos turned on. As always if you want to store something beyond 5 GB on iCloud you would need to pay Apple for their services!
If you don’t like to spend money to store your photos on iCloud then you can store your photos on your Mac. To backup your photos on your Mac, you need just need to plug your iPhone into your Mac, open the Photos app on your Mac, and then import your iPhone photos on your Mac.
Another way of doing the same thing is that again you need to plug your iPhone into your Mac and open the image capture app on your Mac. Check the button “Delete after import”. Now select the photos you want to copy by pressing the shift key, then you only need to drag and drop the selected images and wait for the green tick to appear in image capture.
How can we forget to delete unwanted photos from the phone itself? Open the photos app, select the images that you don’t want to keep on your phone, and then tap on the bin icon to delete the images and the videos you selected.
By chance, if you have deleted any image or video which you did not intend to then you can go to the Recently Deleted folder in the Photos app on your iPhone and then select the photos you want to recover.
Turn off Automatic Background Processes and Background App Refresh
It is extremely easy to turn off Automatic Background Processes in your iPhone. The Low Data Mode in the iPhone kills Automatic Background Processes in turn preventing apps from using data in the background. When you have Low Data Mode turned on there will be no automatic app updates or downloads, emails wouldn’t be automatically retrieved. Switching on Low Data Mode won’t only save you data, can also help in speeding up your slow iPhone. To turn on Low Data mode open Settings > Mobile Data or Cellular > More Data Options now turn on Low Data Mode by clicking on the button on the right side.
To do the same for WiFi tap on WiFi in Settings click on the network on which you wish to apply this setting and tap on Low Data Mode.
Next, you need to turn off background app refresh. To do so, as always you need to open Settings > General > Background App Refresh. You should turn off the background app refresh for the apps you do not use much and keep it on for the ones in your regular schedule. If you turn on Low Data Mode and turn off Background App refresh, then your iPhone can save a lot of battery, and most importantly it will speed up!
If you’re running on iOS 12 or below you would not get this “Low Data Mode” feature as it was first introduced with the iOS 13. However, you should not worry, if your iPhone is currently running on iOS 12 or below then can turn off automatic downloads. If you turn off Automatic Downloads your iPhone will still have chances of increasing speed. To turn off Automatic Downloads on your iPhone you need to go to Settings > iTunes & App Store and turn all the automatic downloads off!
Turn down the Graphics
Back in time when Apple introduced the iOS 7, it came with tonnes of new features, the key feature was fancy visual graphics. But, if you turn off these features it can really help improve your iPhone’s performance and speed.
The first one is to Reduce Motion. To reduce the graphics of your iPhone’s operating system hit Settings > Accessibility > Motion and set Reduce Motion to On. (In older versions of iOS Accessibility was found in Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion)
This feature simply turns off the parallax effect of the icons and reduces the motion of the entire operating system. With this feature on, your iPhone will consume less battery which is super awesome!
The second is Reduce Transparency effects which slow down the older iPhones. Tap on Settings > Accessibility > Display and Text Size > and switch Reduce Transparency on. When transparency effects are reduced older iPhones can work faster.
Upgrade your version of iOS (helps most of the time)
Updating the iOS version helps most of the time because it may fix bugs that may be affecting your iPhone’s performance so, consider tapping on Settings > General > Software Update and then update if an update is available.
Is your iPhone’s battery OK?
Back in time when iOS 10.2.1 was released (launched in January 2017), Apple started slowing down iPhones with chemically aged batteries in order to increase the lifespan of the iPhone. This basically means that Apple has started to cut down the performance of older iPhones with aged batteries. Older and aged batteries, Low Charge and Cold Weather can shut down your iPhone without any warning or alert.
Apple did receive some counter-blast for this decision since then has made it possible to turn this setting off. To turn this setting off you need to tap on Settings > Battery > Battery Health now peak performance capability. Beware your battery is giving signs that it is not in a good condition that’s why this setting was turned on.
Factory Reset
The most drastic and disheartening step of all, you need to perform a full factory reset which deletes all the data present in the iPhone and returns you a fully clean iPhone, like the time you bought it. Keep in mind that it can’t restore the hardware which has suffered all the wear and tear till now!
Since the iPhone will delete all its data you need to backup all your data either to your computer using iTunes or to iCloud. To backup your iPhone to iCloud by opening the Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > Your Device and the turn-on iCloud Backup.
To factory Rest this phone you need to Settings > General > Reset and then Erase All Content and Settings
After you factory reset your iPhone you will see a welcome page now you can set up your iPhone again.
Final Words
So, there you have it, now you know “How To Speed Up iPhone” with our seven tried-and-true methods. We’ve turned your slow iPhone into a speedster while keeping everything simple and easy to use.
By using these methods, you’ve taken control of your device’s performance and said goodbye to those annoying lags. Your apps now open in a flash, and your iPhone’s overall responsiveness is excellent.
So keep these essential points in mind: upgrade your iOS, clean your device, optimise settings, manage background apps, utilise lighter apps, clear off Safari, and give your iPhone some breathing room. With these tips in your arsenal, you’ll be able to enjoy a faster, more fluid iPhone experience.
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