IOS software
Swipe away your touchscreen troubles and rekindle your love of Apple’s mobile devices Batteries suddenly draining faster
Some causes of the battery being drained aren’t normally obvious
QI had to make a small change to my Apple ID username. Since I signed back into my account afterwards, the batteries in my iPhone, iPad and Watch have all drained significantly faster. Why is that, and how can I correct it?
ABefore looking for other causes, check battery health on each of your devices, in Settings > Battery > Battery Health. Older versions of iOS don’t provide as much detail there as more recent ones, and you may find coconutBattery from bit.ly/mac353cbty more useful; that app runs on a Mac and can diagnose most iOS devices.
When you’re confident that this isn’t the result of an ailing battery, try to discover exactly what’s draining your batteries. This is broken down by app in Settings > Battery, but some important causes of the battery being drained aren’t normally obvious from that. Among these is syncing with iCloud: if you’ve recently started sharing more, or enabled Desktop and Documents on a Mac, your iOS devices may now be syncing more frequently as the contents of your iCloud Drive change more often.
One way to discover these issues is in Settings > Mobile Data, for System Services and specific apps listed there, although the information here tells you how much data they’ve transferred rather than how much battery power they’ve used. Transferring more data takes more power.
Don’t forget the basics. Shut each device down for a minute or two before starting it up. Check their display brightness settings, and on your Watch disable its Wake Screen: do that in the iOS Watch app in General > Wake Screen, or on your Watch.