iPhones are a high quality and a fairly reliable mobile phone, but things can sometimes go wrong. If you’ve recently started noticing that your iPhone is running slow, then it could be due to various reasons ranging from issues with a recent software update to resource intensive apps and features.

If you bought your iPhone just recently and have started facing this issue, then it is surely not due to hardware issue. Most of the times, you can fix this issue by simply getting rid of apps that are consuming a lot of memory or features that are resource intensive.

In this article, we will go through the 7 troubleshooting steps to help you fix an iPhone that is running slow. We’ll first begin with the simple steps before diving into more complex solutions that can fix this problem with your iPhone.

7 Tips to Fix an iPhone That is Running Slow

1. Hard Reboot your iPhone

Most of the times, you can fix a slow iPhone by simply performing a hard reboot. This helps to fix any issues that your iPhone is facing due to a minor software problem or an unstable app.

Performing a hard reboot is quite easy and simple. Press and hold the Power and Home button together for a couple of seconds until your iPhone restarts and the Apple logo appears. At this point, you can release the buttons and let your iPhone boot up as normal. If you’re using an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus, you have to hold the Power and Volume down buttons instead.

2. Update to the Latest iOS Version

New software updates always come with bug fixes and performance improvements that improve the speed of your iPhone. They also contain security fixes that keep your iPhone more safe. You might be thinking that new iOS updates will slow down your iPhone, but that’s a false belief. These updates usually go through several iterations of beta phases to fix all the known issues and bugs before they are released to the public, so it’s pretty safe to update to the latest firmware.

If you’re iPhone is running slow, then it might be because of software issues or bugs that Apple might have fixed with an update.

• Open Settings.
• Go to General -> Software Update.
• Now update your iPhone to the latest available version of iOS.

3. Enable Reduce Motion

iOS features many fancy animations which might be making your iPhone look like its slow. If you have an old iPhone, then these animations could be causing your device to slow down or lag. Luckily, Apple allows users to disable these fancy animations, so give it a try and see if it improves the speed of your iPhone.

• Open Settings and go to General.
• Tap on Accessibility.
• Tap on Reduce Motion, then toggle it on.

4. Clear App Caches

Many apps will cache data such as images and videos so that they load quickly the next time you want to view them. This is a common practice in web browsing apps such as Safari and Google Chrome. Over time, the cached data will pile up to take a considerable amount of space and may slow down your iPhone.

There’s no single button for clearing the cache of all your apps. Instead, you have to go to the settings of each app and clear their cache. For Safari, you can clear cached data by going to Settings > Safari, then tap on Clear History and Data.

5. Limit Background App Refresh

Background App Refresh is a nice feature in iOS that allows apps to continue running in the background and process data while you’re using other apps. However, some apps can go rogue and cause performance issues. For example, the Facebook app is very resource intensive and runs a lot of background processes. Such apps could be causing your iPhone to slow down.

You can selectively disable Background App Refresh for certain apps. Here’s how:

• Open Settings.
• Go to General > Background App Refresh.
• Here can view the apps that can run processes in the background. Toggle off the apps that you think are causing performance issues.

6. Selectively Enable Location Services for Apps

Location Services is a resource intensive feature and if many apps have access to your location even while they’re not open, it will cause your iPhone to slow down or lag randomly. Location Services also causes your battery to drain much faster, so you have to be mindful of which apps have access to your location.

• Go to Settings.
• Tap on Privacy.
• Open Location Services.
• Here you can manage the apps that can access your location. You can either disable an app from accessing your location, allow it to access only when the app is open, or let it track your location even when in background.
• To improve your iPhone’s performance, I’d recommend that you disable location services for as many apps as possible, mainly the ones that you don’t use frequently.

7. Reset your iPhone

As a last resort, if none of the above method fix the problem and your iPhone is still running slow, then there could be an issue with the software itself. Therefore, you should try resetting your iPhone to start afresh.

Before doing this, take a backup using iTunes or iCloud. For best results, we recommend that you don’t restore from an iTunes backup after resetting. Set it up as a new phone and only download necessary apps.

To reset your iPhone:

• Open the Settings app and go to General.
• Scroll to the bottom and tap on Reset.
• Choose Erase All Content and Settings.

These are some of the ways that you can fix your iPhone when it begins to run slow. Hopefully at this point of the article, your iPhone should be back to normal without any performance issues. If you used a different method for fixing this problem, then do let us know in the comments below.