How to make your phone battery last longer every day

Your phone battery should last all day without needing a charger. Most people see their screen go red by lunch time because a few hidden settings are eating up all the power. You can fix this in minutes by changing how your phone talks to towers and apps.

The quickest way to make your phone battery last longer is to turn down your screen brightness and turn off background app refresh. These two changes alone can save you hours of life. If you are in a rush, just turn on Low Power Mode or Battery Saver in your main settings menu. This stops the phone from doing extra work you do not see.

Lower your screen brightness and use dark mode

The screen is the part of your phone that uses the most energy. If it is glowing like a light bulb, it is draining your juice. I used to keep my phone at 100 percent brightness all the time. My battery died by 4 PM every single day until I learned to keep it at half or use the auto setting.

Go to Settings, then tap Display and Brightness. Look for the slider and move it to the left. Most phones have a feature called Adaptive Brightness or Auto-Brightness. Turn this on so your phone gets dim in dark rooms and bright only when you are outside in the sun. It saves you from having to fiddle with it constantly.

You should also switch to Dark Mode if your phone has an OLED screen. On these screens, black pixels are actually turned off. They do not use any power at all. To turn this on, look for Dark Mode in your Display settings. It looks cool and it gives your battery a break. My friend switched his phone to dark mode and noticed he had 20 percent more battery at the end of the night.

Check your Screen Timeout setting while you are there. This is how long the screen stays on after you stop touching it. If it is set to five minutes, your phone is wasting power while it sits on the table. Set it to 30 seconds or one minute. It is a small change that adds up over a whole day of use.

Stop apps from working behind your back

Many apps keep running even when you are not using them. They check for new emails, fetch weather updates, or track your location. This constant talking to the internet kills your battery. You might think closing the app window helps, but the code is often still running in the background.

On an iPhone, go to Settings, then General, and tap Background App Refresh. You can turn this off for everything or just for apps you do not care about. Does your game really need to update while you are sleeping? Probably not. I turned mine off for everything except my email and map apps. My phone stayed cool and the battery felt much stronger.

On Android, go to Settings and then Apps. Tap on an app you do not use much and look for Battery or Background usage. You can choose Restricted to make sure it only works when you actually open it. This is great for social media apps that love to send you alerts all day long. Getting fewer alerts is also a great way to stay focused while you do a kitchen cabinet declutter in five steps at home.

Be careful with apps that use your location. GPS is a huge battery hog. Go to your Privacy settings and check Location Services. Set most apps to While Using the App. If an app is set to Always, it will track you even when your phone is in your pocket. That is a fast way to see your battery percentage drop like a stone.

Manage your wireless connections and signal

Your phone is always looking for a signal. If you are in a place with bad service, your phone works extra hard to find a tower. It pumps more power into the antenna to try and stay connected. This is why your phone gets hot when you are on a train or in a basement. It is literally fighting to stay online.

If you have no bars, just turn on Airplane Mode. This stops the searching and saves a ton of energy. You can still turn on Wi-Fi while in Airplane Mode if there is a local network. Using Wi-Fi is much better for your battery than using cellular data. It takes less work for the phone to talk to a router ten feet away than a tower three miles away.

Bluetooth is another thing to watch. Modern Bluetooth does not use much power when it is just sitting there, but it still adds up. If you are not wearing a smart watch or using wireless headphones, turn it off. You can do this quickly in the Control Center or Quick Settings shade. Every little bit helps when you are trying to reach the end of the day.

Check if your phone is constantly searching for Wi-Fi networks too. In your Wi-Fi settings, turn off the option to Ask to Join Networks. This stops the phone from scanning every five seconds as you walk down the street. It is better to just connect to the places you know and trust. Keeping your wireless radios quiet is a key part of computer security and power management for any mobile device.

How can I see what is killing my battery?

You do not have to guess which app is the problem. Both iPhone and Android phones have a special menu that shows you a list of power users. It is like a receipt for your electricity. You might be surprised to see that a simple photo app or a news app is using 30 percent of your daily power.

On iPhone, go to Settings and then Battery. Wait a few seconds for the list to load. It shows you the last 24 hours or the last 10 days. If you see an app at the top that you barely used, that app is broken or poorly made. You should delete it or change its settings immediately. I once found a weather app that was using half my battery just to check the clouds every ten minutes.

On Android, go to Settings and then Battery or Battery Usage. It shows a graph of your power level over time. Look for big drops in the line. Below the graph, you will see the apps listed by percentage. If you see a game you played for five minutes using a lot of power, it might be running ads in the background. You can find more tech tips for your phone to help manage these rogue apps.

Sometimes the system itself is the problem. If you see Google Play Services or Home Screen at the top, it might mean your phone is struggling with a sync error. Try restarting your phone. It sounds simple, but a restart clears out the memory and stops any stuck processes. I try to restart my phone at least once a week to keep it running fresh and clean.

Keep your software updated and clean

Software updates often include fixes for battery life. Engineers find ways to make the code run faster with less heat. If you see a little red dot on your settings icon, do not ignore it. Plug your phone into a charger, connect to Wi-Fi, and let it update. It might take ten minutes, but it could give you an extra hour of life every day.

Delete the apps you do not use. Every app on your phone takes up space and might try to run a process in the background. If you have five different fast food apps and three different maps, pick your favorite and ditch the rest. A clean phone is a fast phone, and a fast phone uses less battery because the processor does not have to work as hard.

Check your email sync settings too. If your phone is set to Push, it stays connected to the mail server 24/7. This is fine for work, but it drains the battery. Change it to Fetch every 15 or 30 minutes instead. You will still get your mail, but your phone gets to sleep in between the checks. It is a much calmer way for your smartphone to handle data.

Avoid using live wallpapers. Those moving backgrounds look pretty, but they require the graphics chip to work every time you look at your home screen. A simple, still photo is much better for your battery. The same goes for having too many widgets. Each widget has to refresh its data to show you the latest info, which pulls power from the battery.

Take care of the physical battery

Heat is the number one enemy of a battery. If your phone gets too hot, the chemicals inside start to break down. Never leave your phone on the dashboard of a car on a sunny day. If it feels hot while charging, take the case off. This lets the heat escape into the air instead of trapping it against the back of the phone.

Try to keep your battery between 20 percent and 80 percent. You do not always need to charge it to 100 percent. Modern batteries stay healthy longer if they are not pushed to the very top or bottom of their range. Many new phones have a setting called Optimized Battery Charging. It learns your routine and waits to finish the last bit of charging until right before you wake up.

Use the original charger that came with your phone or a high quality brand. Cheap chargers from the gas station can have shaky power flow. This can damage the battery over time or make it run much hotter than it should. It is worth spending a few extra dollars on a good cable to protect your expensive phone. I once used a cheap cable that made my phone so hot I couldn't touch it. I threw it away immediately.

If your battery is several years old, it might just be worn out. They only last for a certain number of charges. If you have tried all these tips and your phone still dies in three hours, you might need a new battery. Most repair shops can swap a battery in about an hour. It is much cheaper than buying a whole new phone and it makes your old device feel like new again.

Which one of these settings are you going to change first? Start with the brightness slider right now and see how much longer your phone lasts today.