iOS 26 Battery Life Suffering? Here’s Why & How to Fix It

iOS 26 is in the wild, and aside from the mixed reactions to the Liquid Glass interface, there are also wildly different reports of battery life performance post-update. A notable number of iPhone and iPad users are complaining throughout social media and online forums that iOS 26 battery drains faster than it did before, and sometimes these are accompanied by complaints that iPhone feels hot to the touch.

Reports of reductions in battery life are fairly common after iOS updates, and iOS 26 is no different in this regard. It’s important to understand some of the reasons why this might be happening, what’s normal and not, and what if anything you should do about it on your iPhone or iPad.

Apple Acknowledges the Battery Drop Issue After iOS Updates

First, it’s useful to know that Apple has updated a support document specifically detailing some of the battery, performance, and heat related issues that many iPhone users complain of after installing major system upgrades like this:

Apple’s hardware and software are designed together to deliver great performance and great battery life. As new features and improvements are added, they can change the way we use our devices, as you explore and utilize these new capabilities. Here are some important things to keep in mind:

Immediately after completing an update, particularly a major release, you might notice a temporary impact on battery life and thermal performance. This is normal, as your device needs time to complete the setup process in the background, including indexing data and files for search, downloading new assets, and updating apps.

New features are exciting and help you get even more out of your Apple product, though some may require additional resources from the device. Depending on individual usage, some users may notice a small impact on performance and/or battery life. Apple continually works to optimize these features in software updates to ensure great battery life and a smooth user experience.

In short, Apple is acknowledging that it’s normal for devices to temporarily experience performance degradation after a major system update, like iOS 26, and that the background processes will typically resolve the battery situation on their own.

Why is iOS 26 battery life draining faster?

There are multiple reasons why iOS 26 is likely to drain your battery life faster than normal, especially in the hours and even days after first performing the system update on your iPhone or iPad.

First, there are post-update tasks that run in the background on iPhone and iPad, and this includes things like system cleanup, reindexing of files, reindexing and rescanning of photos, reindexing messages and apps, re-syncing of data with iCloud, and more. This all happens so that your device works as intended, including features like Spotlight search, Photos search, Message search, Siri, and Apple Intelligence work as expected. These background tasks usually resolve themselves over time, especially when the iPhone or iPad is plugged in and not in use.

Next up is the Liquid Glass interface, and with the increase in visual effects like transparency, animations everywhere, dynamic lighting effects, and more, this is typical to lead to a reduction in performance and even battery life. You can mitigate some of this by turning off a lot of the Liquid Glass UI changes in iOS 26 but that’s not always desirable for all users.

Finally, since it’s a new operating system with some pretty major changes, it’s very common for users to simply use their iPhone or iPad more than they were previously, as they’re exploring the new features and new interface look. And, obviously, using a device more, will lead to a reduction in battery life, which is normal.

How to Fix & Restore iOS 26 Battery Life

If you think the iPhone battery life is draining notably faster after updating to iOS 26, there are some steps you can take to mitigate and improve the situation.

1: Plug in to power and wait

As mentioned above, after installing a major system software update, it is normal for iPhone or iPad to perform many background tasks as indexing, re-indexing, analyzing, syncing, downloads, and optimizations occur behind the scenes. This is completely normal, and there’s not much you can do to speed this up other than to connect the iPhone/iPad to a power source, and wait. Usually this type of battery life drain will resolve itself within a day or two.

2: Disable Background App Refresh

Apps running in the background will reduce battery life, as this adds to more system overhead. Most apps do not need to run in the background, and you can save a bit of battery life by turning off this feature completely.

Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh > toggle OFF

3: Reduce Transparency & Reduce Motion

Eye candy looks great but it can reduce performance of any device.

Go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Reduce Motion to ON

Go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Reduce Transparency to ON

Less motion and fewer visual transparency effects reduces the load on CPU and GPU, thus reducing power usage.

We have an entire article dedicated to improving the Liquid Glass experience on iOS 26 that is focused on usability and legibility but many of those tips will also help battery life too by eliminating unnecessary visual effects.

4: Turn Off Unneeded Location Services

Just about every app wants to use your location, but you should be very discriminating about which apps you allow to have your location. Perform an audit of this behavior, and use some logic; Does an online shopping app need your location? Probably not. Does a social media app need your location? No, probably not. Does a maps app need your location? Yes. Be aggressive here, turn off as much location stuff as you can, it’ll help your battery life and privacy.

Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > and make necessary adjustments

5: Update your apps

Running apps that are not yet optimized for iOS 26 may not perform as intended, so make it a habit of installing app updates. This will give you access to potential new features from those apps too, but also improve compatibility with modern iOS releases.

Go to App Store > Updates and install

6: Check Battery & Low Power Mode always helps

Using Low Power Mode reduces a fair amount of background tasks and throttles some other system behavior, and the result can be a notable improvement in battery life. I personally like to toggle Low Power Mode on anytime I leave the house for an extended period away from any charger, or even anytime my iPhone drops below 60%.

Go to Settings > Battery > Low Power Mode > toggle ON

Investigate the Battery settings to determine if anything stands out, if you’re simply using your device more than usual because it has a new OS on it.

7: Restart iPhone / iPad

Sometimes simply force restarting your iPhone or iPad can resolve a battery issue, especially if there’s some bug or quirk causing an errant process or situation.

Press Volume Up, press Volume Down, then press and hold the Power/Lock button until you see the  Apple logo on screen to issue a force restart of iPhone or iPad.

Force restarts have resolved many annoying situations for myself and others I know, including a recent problem where the touch screen became completely unresponsive after updating iOS and the iPhone was hot to the touch while unresponsive too. After THREE (yes three!) forced restarts in a row, the touch screen worked again and the iPhone started to behave.

Does your battery life drain faster with iOS 26?

If your battery life feels worse after updating to iOS 26 you aren’t alone at all, there are many widespread reports of this issue happening on iPhone and iPad after the update. But much of this is normal behavior especially in the first few days after major upgrades like this, and letting the device settle can make a world of difference. For the vast majority of iPhone and iPad users, any temporary reduction in battery life will return to normal expected battery performance after updating to iOS 26 and giving it a few days to complete background tasks. If after a few days you still have battery problems, try the tips above and start making some adjustments to your settings.

What has your experience with iOS 26 been so far? Have you felt like battery life was reduced or improved? Or no difference at all? Did you find any particular setting or adjustment that make a big difference for you iPhone? Let us know in the comments.