iOS 17 Battery Life is Bad? iOS 17 Battery Draining Fast? Here’s Why & How to Fix It

Now that iOS 17 is here, you may have updated your iPhone to iOS 17, but now feel that your battery is draining faster than usual, or that iOS 17 has made your iPhone battery life worse.

iOS updates causing battery drain is a familiar story that happens every year when a major new iOS release is made available for iPhone, and iOS 17 is no different. The truth is, it’s entirely possible that iOS 17 is making your battery drain faster! But, the good news is, that’s usually just a temporary issue, and soon your iPhone battery will be back to normal again, even with iOS 17.

We’ll explain what is going on, and why your iPhone battery life may be worse after updating to iOS 17, and what you can do about it, and how you can fix it.

Just updated to iOS 17 and your iPhone battery life is worse? Here’s Why

If you updated to iOS 17 and your battery is draining faster than usual, don’t worry. It’s normal because your phone is working in the background to get things sorted, clean house, organize stuff, index your content, and much more.

When you update iOS, your phone does tasks like reorganizing your notes, photos, and apps, which can use up more battery than usual, temporarily. The more stuff you have on your iPhone, the longer this process takes. If you have a giant collection of photos and videos, and tons and tons of local files, this may take a while to get everything figured out.

Just be patient; it’ll get better in a few hours, or maybe a few days.

The best thing to do is to charge your iPhone overnight while connected to a power source and Wi-Fi to help speed up the normal indexing processes that go on in the background after an iOS 17 update. After a night or several of this, your iPhone will be back to normal again.

Being patient and keeping your iPhone plugged in and connected to wi-fi for a few nights is really the primary solution to this issue issue. Do this before anything else.

“My iPhone is hot and the battery is bad with iOS 17”

If your iPhone feels hot to the touch, and the battery life is worse after updating to iOS 17, this is yet another indicator that your iPhone is performing background tasks, and performance will be temporarily impacted until those tasks are completed.

Once again, charging the iPhone overnight for a day or few, typically resolves this issue.

The reason the iPhone feels hot is because the processor is engaged in a lot of heavy activity in the background, which is also why the iPhone may feel slower, or the iPhone battery drains faster than usual. It’s all related!

“I charged my iPhone overnight and the battery is still horrible with iOS 17!”

If you charged your iPhone while connected to wi-fi overnight, for several nights in a row, and your battery life is still bad, you can take some actions and troubleshooting activities to help the issue, and potentially fix it. Let’s get to that next.

1: Update Your Apps

Keep your apps updated so that they don’t carry any bugs, and are most compatible with the latest iOS 17. This can help to prevent them from using too much battery.

Go to the App Store -> tap your Apple ID in the top-right -> find the Updates section -> update your apps.

2: Find Out What Apps Are Draining Your Battery

Sometimes a particular app is causing your battery issues, so let’s figure that out.

Check which apps are using your battery in the Settings app by going to Settings -> Battery to see the list of apps and understand their behavior.

3: Check Battery Health

Sometimes your iPhone battery health is poor and drops below a critical threshold, leading to dramatically reduced performance. For example, if your iPhone reports that your battery needs service, or it has dropped below the 80% capacity threshold, don’t be surprised if the performance is significantly worse than expected. Your iPhone may even feel slower too!

You can check iPhone battery health in Settings app by going to Settings -> Battery -> Battery Health & Charging.

If your battery is significantly degraded, replace the battery through an authorized Apple repair center, or an Apple Store, and you’ll have the performance you expect of battery life again.

4: Turn Off Background App Refresh

Background App Refresh lets apps update when you’re not using them, which can drain your battery.

Go to Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh and switch it off.

You may not even notice much difference in behavior with how apps work as they have to refresh when you reopen them now, but it’ll help save battery life.

5: Use Low Power Mode to Extend Battery Life

Low Power Mode helps your battery last longer by pausing some background tasks and reducing some features. Use it when you want to extend your battery life, but remember that it may delay some tasks and make your iPhone feel slightly slower, but you will get better battery life by enabling this feature.

Turn it on in Settings -> Battery -> Low Power Mode.

6: Force Restart the iPhone

If you already went through several nights of the iPhone being connected to a power source, and connected to wi-fi, and the battery performance is still not that great, you can try force restarting the iPhone.

Sometimes, a simple restart can fix battery issues.

On all iPhones with Face ID, you can force reboot by pressing Volume Up, then Volume Down, and hold the Side/Power button until you see the Apple logo on screen.

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Have you noticed any changes in your iPhone battery life since updating to iOS 17? Is it better or worse? Did the tips above help you improve your battery life of your iPhone? Do you have additional tricks that can help battery life of an iPhone? Are you waiting to update to iOS 17 for this or any other reason? Share with us your experiences and thoughts in the comments!