13 Powerful Battery Life Tips For iPad Users
Powerful Power-Saving Tips For Your iPad
(Skipping the intro because you need to quickly read this post before your battery dies)
Widgets
Widgets drain my battery more than playing Subway Surfers while connected to an external monitor without low power mode (not really, but you get what I mean).
Widgets that use your location (like the Weather widget) can be draining. Same thing goes for widgets that constantly connect to the internet (think the News widget).
If you really wanna save your battery life, only use first-party widgets (ironically, this includes the Weather and News widgets).
Leave 31.4159265% of Storage
More storage = less time optimizing (I think).
Use Focus Modes
Buzz.
Buzz.
BUZZ.
For those who don't know, Focus Modes are essentially customizable "Do Not Disturb" modes. They filter notifications, restrict app usage, and can even change your home screen layout.
Using Focus Modes reduces notifications. If you're disciplined, you'll also play less games (aka saving battery).
Scheduled Summary
BUZZ.
Turning on Scheduled Summary (Settings → Notifications → Scheduled Summary) condenses your notifications into one mega-notification whenever you want.
In other words, less buzzes. And less buzzes = longer battery life.
Useless Notifications
You might see a common theme here: notifications tend to be bad for your battery life.
Turn off any useless notifications—you don't need to get notified every time your third-favorite YouTuber uploads a video (and this is coming from someone with a YouTube channel).
Use Ad-Blockers
"Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there"
Unless you live under a rock, you've probably seen ads plastered over your iPad screen before. These ads constantly drain your battery life, especially when there are multiple on a single page.
Ad-blockers get rid of these ads. In other words, battery life 📈.
Close Your Tabs
I have a friend that keeps hundreds of Safari tabs open (looking at you Bhagat 👀).
These tabs are kinda like ads: they're slowly chipping away at your battery life.
There's no reason to have hundreds of tabs open. Don't be THAT person: close your tabs.
Don't Put Your iPad In An Oven
This should be common sense (though that's a rare commodity these days).
Don't put your iPad in extreme heat (or extreme cold).
Don't put your iPad in an oven or a freezer. Don't keep your iPad in a car on a sunny day. Don't keep your iPad outside on a cold day. And so on.
Don't Let The [Insert Your Country's Intelligence Agency] Track You
Location services suck up a lot of battery.
The Weather app can be a notorious perpetrator: make sure not to permanently enable location access unless you 110% need it.
Check other apps too: Go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services. You should be able to see which apps access your location (and how often they do it).
Disable the ones you don't need. Personally, I keep most of my apps on "Never" and a few on "While Using."
Don't Let The [Insert Your Country's Security Agency] Spy On You
Go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements, and turn off "Share iPad Analytics."
Apple has sold over 500 million iPads (according to my very brief research on Google). They probably don't need your data.
Disable Background App Refresh
Settings → General → Background App Refresh.
This feature will drain your battery more than that one annoying friend who constantly texts you.
Background App Refresh does pretty much exactly what the name suggests: it refreshes apps in "the background" (aka closed apps).
Auto Lock
Settings → Display & Brightness → Auto-Lock.
If you ever need to leave your iPad on your desk to go to the bathroom, Auto-Lock means that you don't need to worry about your iPad losing battery life while you're sitting on the toilet.
Auto-Lock automatically locks your iPad after a set time (I keep my iPad in Low Power Mode, which automatically sets Auto-Lock at 30 seconds).
Screen Time
Here's the biggest discovery so far in 2023: USING YOUR IPAD = LOWER BATTERY LIFE!!! 😱
Keeping track of your Screen Time can stop you from using your iPad for an unhealthy amount of time. AKA better battery life.
Final Thoughts
Real talk now:
This month has been huge for me: my college decisions have rolled in. And woah—I got accepted to 2/19 universities I applied to (with a perfect ACT/GPA as a nationally competitive debater with a nonprofit marketing project that manages $840,000 in advertising grants for nonprofits).
My battery has been low for the past few hours (I'm writing this 2 hour and 51 minutes after my final rejection).
Writing this post, however, has brought my battery back.
As a random iPad user, you probably don't care (there's probably only around 5 of you reading right now). But in case someone sees this: find a charger (for me, it’s this blog).
Thanks for reading!
Adi
Worth the read!