Today we are going to see how to identify apps draining iPhone battery life in iOS 12.
Apple has supercharged the Battery stats screen in the Settings app in iOS 12. You can now see data for the past 10 days and if you wish, drill down to see battery usage for a particular hour of the day.
What does all this wealth of knowledge mean? It’s now much easier to identify apps that keep draining your iPhone battery! And you can now use multiple metrics before you decide to finally remove a rogue app. Pretty cool, right?
Let’s dive in:
24 Hour View
There’s an awesome new chart right at the top and you can distinguish between the screen on and screen off time as well.
When you go to Settings -> Battery, you’ll find two tabs on top. Last 24 hours and Last 10 days. The 24 hours is the default so let’s start with that.
You’ll find a graphic that’s split into two parts: On top, you’ll see the battery level and below is your usage time. You’ll also see the screen on and screen off usage for the day.
Scroll down and you get to the meat of the matter. Listed here are apps that used up the battery in the last day. You’ll see the foreground and background usage time. Tap on Show Battery Usage and you’ll be able to see exactly how much battery an app used.
What’s crazy though is the fact that the graph on the top is interactive. So if you tap on one of the sections of the graph, you’ll see the apps that used the most battery in just that amount of time (it can be an hour or a couple of hours sections).
Last 10 Days View
If you’ve been using iOS 12 for more than 10 days, you’ll find that the second tab on top says Last 10 days. Switch to it and you’ll see new data show up in the same graphs. In the Activity section, you’ll be able to tap on one of the bars to see detailed battery usage for the corresponding day.
On the other hand, if an app has very little screen time but its background activity is off the charts, you know that the app has been draining the battery life in the background.
Step-by-Step Guide to Identify Apps Draining iPhone Battery
Now that you have access to data from last hour to 10 days, browse around in the section until you find the apps that are draining a lot of your battery. Use both the percentage metric and the background activity stats to figure out which app has been consistently draining your battery.
Step 1: Go to the Last 10 Days section and tap on the Show Battery Usage feature. The app on top here has been draining the most battery over the last 10 days.
Step 2: Switch to the Show Activity option and now you can see which apps have been active the most time. If an app has been using a lot of energy in the background, you’ll find the background time stats to be in hours instead of minutes.
Step 3: To view apps using the most battery life in the last day, switch to the Last 24 hours tab. Again, the app on the top of the list will be the app which drained the most battery life.
In the screenshot below, notice the Google Photos option. It’s has used as much battery life by operating two hours in the background, as Instagram has used by active on screen for 5 hours. Clearly, Google Photos is draining my battery unnecessarily in the background.
Clearly, I’ll have to do something about the background syncing process on Google Photos. If you’re in the similar boat and you can’t just delete the app outright, try disabling Background App Refresh for the given app.
Find Apps That Went Rogue For a While
It happens sometimes. Your iPhone battery will drop by 40% in an hour and you have no idea why. Well, thanks to iOS 12’s new battery charts, you drill down the particular hour where the battery drain happened.
Go to the 24 Hours section and from the Activity graph, pick a bar that corresponds the hour where the battery drain happened. The culprit should be listed at the top.
How is Your iPhone Battery Life in iOS 12?
Has the battery life on your iPhone or iPad improved after upgrading to iOS 12? What about the performance? Share with us in the comments below.
