If your iPhone has been in use for several months or even years, it often doesn’t run quite as smoothly as it did right after purchase. This is not unusual, after all, a lot of apps have been installed and data backed up on your smartphone over time. But if the applications open only slowly and commands are not executed directly, this can significantly influence the user experience and, above all, be quite annoying.
But don’t worry! With a few tricks, you can give your iPhone a speed boost to make everything run smoother again. We’ve rounded up the top tips to help you make your iPhone faster.
CREATE MORE STORAGE SPACE ON IPHONE
If your apps start slowly or keystrokes don’t work, it may be due to too much memory. This slows down the speed of the iPhone. In Settings, you can see what takes up the most space on your iPhone. This gives you an impression of where there is potential for optimization. Now, there are several ways to free up space on iPhone: In addition to simply deleting pictures, videos and messages, you can clear memory and browser cache and uninstall apps.
CLEAR MEMORY
Similar to a PC, full memory can reduce the speed of a smartphone enormously. Basically, iOS uses RAM quite efficiently – in some cases, emptying it can still be worth it. This is how the whole thing works with an iPhone with a home button (i.e. up to the iPhone 8).
- Press the power button until the power button appears.
- Do not turn off the device, but now press and hold the home button.
- After a few seconds, the home screen is displayed again and the memory of the iPhone is emptied. As soon as you open an application, it will be reloaded.
Even without a physical home button, the memory can be emptied by setting up a virtual home button. Here’s how to do it for models starting with iPhone X:
- Open the device settings and navigate via “Accessibility” to the item “Tap”.
- Here you activate “AssistiveTouch” with the slider and a kind of virtual home button or a small menu with different options appears.
- Tap the icon and press and hold the virtual home button until the screen lights up briefly. The memory is now cleared.
CLEAR BROWSER CACHE
Being able to access the Internet anytime and anywhere is one of the greatest advantages of a smartphone. However, frequent surfing with the iPhone accumulates a lot of data in the Safari app. Content downloaded from the Internet is saved in order to be displayed more quickly when the website is called up again. They are backed up in the cache and you can empty it manually if the iPhone slows down a bit.
Depending on your browser usage, you can create a few megabytes of storage space. The speed of the Safari browser can thus increase significantly. If you want to clear your iPhone’s browser cache, go to Settings, navigate to “Safari” and select the option “Clear history and website data”.
DELETE IPHONE APPS
Apps usually take up a large part of iPhone storage and offer you many great features. In between, however, it’s worth sorting out apps and uninstalling those you no longer use. This frees up valuable storage space, which can significantly increase the speed of your device. To remove apps from your iPhone:
- On the home screen, press and hold the app’s icon and select the “Edit Home Screen” option so that all app icons will start shaking.
- Now go to the minus in the top corner of the app icon so that more options open.
- Here you select “Delete app” and confirm that you want to uninstall the application. Attention: There is also the option “Remove from home screen”, but the apps are only moved to the app library and not deleted from the iPhone.
DOES QUITTING ACTIVE APPS IMPROVE IPHONE SPEED?
A myth in which the spirits are divided. For years, the claim has persisted: Manually exiting apps relieves the memory and extends the battery life. However, Apple’s software chief Craig Federighi officially refuted this claim.
Apple support also advises against terminating iPhone apps in this way. Manually closing the apps only makes sense if an application freezes or no longer works properly.
TURN OFF BACKGROUND UPDATES AND IMPROVE IPHONE PERFORMANCE
Apps on iPhone usually work in the background all the time, so they’re right up to date every time they’re opened. The weather app, for example, regularly loads up-to-date data and WhatsApp updates your chats. The background updates are therefore basically a useful and practical feature.
However, the updates that many iPhone apps perform in the background not only cost battery, but can also slow down the speed of your iPhone. Especially for applications that you don’t use on a daily basis, you can think about disabling automatic background updates. To change the setting:
- Go to settings and select the menu item “General”.
- On the level that appears, navigate to the “Background Update” item.
- Now you can turn off background refresh next to each app using the sliders. If you want to turn off the function completely, go to “Background Update” at the top and select “Off”.
MAKE IPHONE FASTER: TURN OFF AUTOMATIC APP UPDATES
Automatic app updates on the iPhone have the advantage that the applications always stay up to date and you do not have to worry about updates. However, you also have a few disadvantages: The updates cost performance, data volume and battery life.
To disable automatic updates, go to “App Store” in iPhone settings. Under “Automatic Downloads” you will find the option “App Updates” – you can simply deactivate them with the slider. You can also choose whether or not to make automatic downloads from your mobile data.
If you now want to update your applications, this can also be done manually. To do this, open the App Store and tap your profile picture in the top right. In the view that opens, you can see the upcoming updates below and can, for example, select “Update all” or the update of individual apps.
TURN OFF SPOTLIGHT SEARCH AND INCREASE IPHONE SPEED
Spotlight search on Apple devices can be a useful tool to search your phone for content. It gives you the ability to search all apps and files on the entire iPhone for the entered term directly with one request – this saves the tedious task of calling up the individual apps, especially if you do not know exactly in which app the information you are looking for can be found. However, if you do not need the search function, you can partially deactivate it. The function cannot be switched off completely, but you can specify to which applications the search should be limited.
- Open iPhone Settings and go to “Siri & Search”.
- In the lower area, you will now see a list of apps.
- If you select the individual applications, you can deactivate the options “Show app in ‘Search'” and “Show content in ‘Search'” with the slider.
WITHOUT THE SIRI VOICE ASSISTANT, YOUR IPHONE WILL BE FASTER
The siri voice assistant can simplify the operation of your phone in many situations: the intelligent software understands hundreds of commands, executes processes for you and answers your questions. However, Siri is not only helpful, but also costs performance. If you don’t want to use the software, it’s best to disable Siri right away to make your iPhone faster. Here’s how to do it:
- Open iPhone Settings and go to “Siri & Search”.
- Here you will find the submenu to Siri with several options.
- To turn off Siri, turn off the options “Pay attention to ‘Hey Siri'”, “Press side hate/home button for Siri” and “Allow Siri in lock state” with the slider.
REDUCE OPTICAL EFFECTS AND MOVEMENT
Apple is known for making the operation of the iPhone visually appealing with special features. These include, for example, animated backgrounds, such as the parallax effect. This ensures that the app icons change depending on the orientation of the smartphone in such a way that a 3D effect is created.
This feature is visually appealing to users, but it can reduce the performance of the iPhone. Equally pretty to look at are the transparency effects on the iPhone – but even these are true processor eaters. If you want to make your iPhone faster, it’s best to do without these features and effects.
- In Settings, > Accessibility > Motion > Reduce Motion, use the slider to turn off certain screen effects. These include, for example, the parallax effect, weather animations in the weather app or screen transitions and zoom effects.
- You can turn off the transparency effects under “Settings” > “Accessibility” > “Display & text size” > “Reduce transparency”.
