Smartphones lag sometimes — it’s not uncommon. And, though the culprit could very well be that your phone is getting old and its battery is slowly starting to deplete, this isn’t always the case. The problem could also be something that doesn’t take money to fix and just requires a little good old-fashioned iPhone maintenance.
One thing is certain: you didn’t pay all of that money for an iPhone just to watch it load webpages or download files at a snail’s pace. Here are some simple tips you can follow that can speed up your device and make it run like brand new.
Close Unresponsive Apps
According to Apple, one of the first things you can do to help a slow phone is to close out any apps that are frozen and unresponsive. These are the steps Apple recommends taking:
From the Home Screen of iPhone X or later or iPad, swipe up from the bottom of the screen and pause slightly in the middle of the screen. On iPhone 8 or earlier, double-click the Home button to show your most recently used apps.
Swipe right or left to find the app that you want to close.
Swipe up on the app’s preview to close the app.
Keep Your Phone at Room Temperature
Another big reason your phone could be lagging is because it is positioned in an extremely cold or hot room. Even leaving your phone in the car can cause its battery to become affected by extreme temperature changes and result in a slower phone. Move your phone to a room temperature room and you should start seeing a difference.
Delete Files to Gain Back Storage
Lacking enough storage space is one of the main reasons why your phone lags when you try to get it to complete a task that requires storage. To find out what’s eating up your storage in the first place, go to Settings > General > [Device] Storage. Ideally, Apple says, you should have 1GB of free space. If you’ve gone over this, you can purchase more storage. You can also check out which apps are taking up the most storage and make some difficult decisions. Should you delete an app you love that streams movies, for example, when you find out how much storage it takes up?
In many cases, deleting apps won’t be necessary. You can start by going through photos and videos, which take up a lot of storage, and deleting the ones you no longer need, or saving them to a cloud service and then deleting them (be sure to remove them from your deleted folder, as well). You can also remove old files from podcast and streaming apps and keep the apps themselves.
Sometimes, a few simple steps — let’s call it regular maintenance — are all that is required to ensure your phone runs efficiently and at a speed you can live with.
