Each year Apple switches from prioritizing performance to battery health on all its version of iPhones like iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and iPhone SE, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, and the newly added iPhone XR and XS. With these perks of iPhone and iPad comes the problem of a slowdown. Many people daily struggle with the question of how to fix a slow iPhone or iPad?
If you feel that your iPhone and iPad have been getting slower over time, you are probably right. Apple no doubt addresses concerns about the slowdowns with a battery replacement program and upcoming software update. But this is not the only reason for a slow or frozen iPhone or iPad as there are several other factors one should consider.
The decline in the speed of your iPhone 11 and other models happens and gradually you will realize that even your apps will respond slowly, menus getting sluggish, and Safari taking forever to load websites.
iPhone is known for speed especially along with other features. So if you have updated iOS or experiencing performance issues for a while making it frustratingly slow down for you, then here is the guide on how to fix a slow iPhone or iPad.
Reasons why your iPhone is So Slow
Apart from the other mentioned reasons, there are a few more factors that can slow down or freeze your iPhone.
- Your iPhone is out of available storage space. iPhones come in variants like 16GB, 64GB, and 128GB varieties which is its storing capacity. After when you take lots of pictures, download music, and install a bunch of apps, it can easily run out of available memory.
- All your apps get loaded in the memory at once when you open an app. And when you go back to the home screen, the app necessarily does not gets closed.
- If you are using outdated software then it is likely that your iPhone or iPad might get slow down.
How to fix a slow iPhone or iPad?
Now keeping in mind the factors above, in this guide you will find the various methods that you can use to fix a slow iPhone.
Method 1- Update iOS – Quickest method to fix a slow iPhone or iPad
The current operating system of Apple for its iPhone and iPad in iOS 13 that got released on 19 September 2019. And with each OS comes a few reports of bugs in the initial release of the software, but Apple apparently addresses these bugs in various different versions of iOS 13.
Normally the initial fix for slowdown iPhone is to update it to the latest version of iOS and updating it will grab the latest patches for known problems.
But at the same time, one needs to be cautious when it comes to large software updates, like switching from iOS 12 to iOS 13. This is because the latest will comes with a feature-packed update, designed with the latest chartbuster hardware that could actually slow down an iPhone
Note- iOS 13 is compatible with any iPhone from the iPhone 6s and iPhone SE upwards. On one hand, it may improve your experience or it might end up slowing down your iPhone.
Now, to check whether your iPhone is up to date, Go to Settings > General > Software update.
Method 2- Restart your iPhone – The famous method to fix a slow iPhone or iPad
Well, one common strategy to fix a slow iPhone or iPad is that you close down unused apps by swiping it up from the bottom of a Home button for iPhone X-series or later, or 2018 iPad Pro. But this always does not comes as a rescue. Instead, the best solution is to restart the iPhone completely.
If you are using iPhone 5s or earlier, press and hold the Sleep button and you’ll find it on the top right. There will be a Power Off slider. Swipe it and wait for the iPhone to turn off.
Similarly, for iPhone 6, 7 or iPhone 8, you need to press and hold the Sleep button from the right side until the Power Off slider appears. Swipe it and wait for the iPhone to power off.
In case of iPhone X and onwards, you need to press the volume up then the volume down, and then press the Side button. You will then see the Power Off slider and then you can restart your iPhone.
Once you are done shutting down then start the iPhone up again by pressing and holding the Sleep button for about 5 seconds. You will soon see the Apple icon, and the iPhone will restart.
But in the case for some reason your iPhone is not getting restart or shut down, you will have to force reset. And to do this, press and hold the Sleep button for about 30 seconds until you see the Apple logo.
Method 3- Use the Reduce Motion feature
iOS comes with the fancy animations that take up resources causing some lag. You can easily turn them off and to make your iPhone speeds up again. To do this, follow these steps-
Step 1- Launch the Settings app and tap on General.
Step 2- Choose Accessibility.
Step 3- Tap on Reduce Motion and turn the feature ON.
This feature will turn off animations when opening and closing apps as well and disable the parallax effect.
Method 4- Kill automatic background processes
Well, as a default rule you need not to manually manage apps on iOS but practically, there are times when rogue processes or excessive background activity will consume enough resources making your battery drain unacceptably fast thus slowing down the performance of your iPhone/iPad.
Now with iOS 13, you get a quick and easy way to stop some of these background processes. For this you have the new Low Data Mode that stops apps from using data in the background, stopping any automatic app downloads, and even emails will not be automatically retrieved. Switching off these will not only save the data but will also speed up your iPhone.
Follow the steps to do so-
To turn on Low Data Mode-
Go to Settings > Tap Mobile Data > Tap on Mobile Data Options. Now tap on the slider beside Low Data Mode to stop these background processes.
You can also turn off it in Wi-Fi too. Select the Wi-Fi network by open Settings > Wi-Fi > tap on the network and then choose Low Data Mode.
Method 5- Tweak location and background settings
Put bad apps in the penalty box if you see them causing you problems like slowing down your performance, and using much up of your battery life.
One way of doing this is that you tweak the apps having access to the option of my location and background app refresh. If you have tons of apps installed on your device and if all of them are constantly refreshing in the background, will slow down your iPhone and drain the battery.
You can change the settings by following these steps-
- Launch the Settings app.
- Tap on General.
- Choose the Background App Refresh.
- You can either turn the feature OFF altogether or individually choose which apps can refresh data in the background
It is recommended that you let your apps use your location only while using the app.
Method 6- Restore backup with iTunes, not iCloud
iCloud updates are convenient but sometimes while making the transfer the bits and pieces of bad data also get transferred. On the contrary, iTunes extracts as well as decompresses the files on your computer as opposed to your iPhone or iPad, instead of an incremental update gets you a fresh version of iOS.
Also backing up to iTunes and then restoring from that backup instead of iCloud backup is always recommended. Once your data gets restored, go back to back up to iCloud as normal.
Once you are done with creating an iTunes backup, you can restore by following these steps:
Step 1– Plug your iPhone into your PC. Now launch iTunes.
Step 2- Open the device summary page by clicking the phone icon in the upper left corner.
Step 3- Click on Restore iPhone. Then follow the on-screen prompt instructions.
Step 4- If you have to Find My iPhone enabled, it will prompt you to turn that off before you can continue.
Once the restore is done, it will ask you whether you want to set up as a new iPhone or restore from a backup. You can choose the backup created before restoring and your iPhone will run as fast as possible.
Method 7- Clear Safari’s cookies and data
The next method that you can try to fix a slow iPhone is by emptying Safari’s data, and cookies to free up some memory. To do so-
Step 1- Open the Settings app.
Step 2- Scroll down to Safari.
Step 3- On the next page scroll down to ‘Clear History and Website Data’. Now tap on that.
But doing this Safari will forget all your favorites and the URLs you have been visiting thus not suggesting them as you type unless bookmarked.
Method 8- Free up space on your iPhone
If your iPhone is running out of space then this could cause sluggishness. Your iPhone tends to run better if it has around 10% of the available storage.
To find out the storage capacity, Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage. This will tell you how much storage space is left on your iPhone and which apps are using the most of the space.
It is generally Music and Photos & Camera that use most of the storage space for it includes music, images, and videos.
One quick way to free up space is to delete a few apps, photos, music or switch to storing data in iCloud.
Method 9- Get your Battery Replaced
Back in iOS 10.2.1 version, Apple started slowing down older iPhones having aging batteries to elongate their lifespan. And older batteries, cold weather, and the low charge could shut your phone down without warning reducing the performance.
And now with iOS 11.3 and onwards it is possible to disable this setting under Peak Performance Capability. This might speed up your iPhone, but if your battery is showing signs of degrading, then it is best to get it replaced.
Apple has also reduced the price of battery replacements down to US$29 for devices like iPhone 6 and later.
Wrapping Up!
So these were the ways in which you can fix a slow iPhone or iPad. You can try any of the above-mentioned methods and it will work for you.
