Your iPhone can be so slow at times — and it might be difficult to figure out the source of its slowdown. Everything from the outdated apps that you’re still using to certain settings that are taking up battery power and storage space can be to blame. But when your phone is simply refusing to operate at a pace that meets the needs of the tasks you have at hand, you may find yourself frustrated and searching for ways to speed up your device.
You don’t have to spend money or lots of time correcting this issue. Tech experts recommend following a few simple steps that can speed your phone up:
Try these tips for a faster, more efficient phone that won’t drive you up a wall.
Disable Background App Refresh
Background App Refresh is a setting that makes it possible for apps to refresh their content all of the time — which means the moment you’re ready to click on that app, it is ready for fresh, new content for you. But if you think about how often this feature is actually helpful, and whether the tradeoff (a slower phone) makes it worth it, you may discover it’s not all that necessary.
Head to Settings > General > Background App Refresh. Disable Background App Refresh altogether, for all apps, or handpick the ones that you want to keep on and turn off.
Remove Widgets
Widgets can be cute. Convenient. And a complete waste of your phone’s resources Being very particular about the widgets you allow on your phone and the ones you don’t keep on your device can help make your phone run faster and more efficiently.
Close Your Apps
How many apps do you actually have open — or have you lost count by now? If your apps are open, it could be stalling your phone down. The simple solution is to swipe up from the bottom of your home screen, pause in the middle of the screen, and swipe right or left to find the app you want to close. Then swipe up on the app’s preview to close the app.
Update Apps
It’s important to make sure you’re running the latest version of whatever app you are using — an outdated version of the app can leave your phone vulnerable to bugs, hacking attempts, and major slow-down in how your phone operates. Open the App store and tap on your profile icon. Scroll to see which pending updates are available and update every app that requires it.
Free Up Storage Space
One of the most important steps you can take to make your phone run faster is to free up as much storage space as you can on your device. Depending on what’s eating your storage, this can look different on different devices. If you take and store a ton of videos and photos, figure out what you can delete and store on iCloud to gain back storage space. For others, that might mean deleting podcasts, movies, and other large files. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage to see what’s eating the most storage space for you — and adjust as needed.
Keep these tips in mind if your phone is slow and stalling — they should help get things back up to speed.
