Mar 22, 2023

Geeky Gadgets 10:30 am If you have had your iPhone for a few years then it could start to feel slow, this guide is designed to show you some handy tips that could help you speed up your iPhone. This can also happen on all models of the iPhone and iPad, even the latest models. Quick Links Apple’s latest iPhone is the iPhone 13 and the current software version on the device is iOS 15.5 at the time of writing this guide. If like me you own an older device, I have the iPhone 11 Pro Max which was released back in 2019, then you may want to try and speed up your device, these handy tips should help you get the most out of your device and may help speed it up. Many of these tips have worked on my older iPhone 11. Close down background apps If you use a lot of apps on your iPhone or iPad you will find that they are open in the background, Apple says this does not make a difference to performance , but if you close these apps down every now and then it may help with the speed of your device. This is very easy to do, to close down background apps on your iPhone, Push Up from the bottom of your iPhone or iPad. You will then see all of the open apps on your device. Push these apps up to the top of the display and they will shut down, it is as simple as that. Restart your iPhone or iPad A simple thing like restarting your iPhone or iPad can speed up your device, this is something that I make sure I do on a regular basis, at least once a month. This can also be useful if you notice your device is particularly slow, this may be caused by a specific app. Closing the apps mentioned above and restarting your device could help speed it up. It is easy to restart your device, on the newer models of the iPhone, and hold the power button and the volume up button at the same time. You will then see a menu where you can ‘slide to power offer’ and you can restart your device. Turn off Location Services and Background App Refresh Another handy way to speed up your device is to turn off Location Services and also Background App Refresh. These two items alone can help you improve the speed of your iPhone. To turn off Location Services on your device you need to go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services, you can then switch off the Location Services on your device. Please note that some apps may need this to function properly so it is worth checking out if you need this feature for any specific apps. Since the release of Apple’s iOS 15 you can now choose which apps use your Location Services, in the settings above you will see a list of apps that may have previously used it. You can then choose which ones to allow to use the feature and which ones you do not want to use location services. To turn off Background App Refresh go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh you can then choose to turn this feature off completely or to turn the feature off by individual app. What I prefer to do is leave this feature turned on and then switch it off for any individual apps that I don’t need it for. Speed up your web browsing and Safari If like me you use your iPhone for browsing the web and visiting lots of different websites then this can slow your Safari browser down after a while. One way to speed things up in Safari is to clear your website history and data. This is a simple task to perform on the iPhone, this can be done by going to Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data. You will then be asked if you want to delete your History and Website data. This will delete the data from websites you have visited, but it will not delete any passwords stored on your device. Free up some storage space on your iPhone or iPad This is another easy thing to do on your device as if you have a lot of apps and data installed and not much free space on your device it could slow things down. There are a number of ways you can do this, you can delete any unwanted and unused apps you may have installed. You can also offload apps, this is something I just did on my iPhone and it managed to free up 3.48GB in space. To do this go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Offload Unused Apps, you will then see a list of apps that can be offloaded individually or all at once. Install the latest version of iOS on your device One way to speed things up on your iPhone or iPad is to make sure that you have the latest version of Apple’s iOS installed. To check which version you have installed go to Settings > General > Software update. You will then see which version of iOS is installed on your device and whether there is a software update available. If one is available it is a good idea to install it, as the previous version may have some bugs that could be slowing the device down. At the time of writing this, the current version of iOS is iOS 15.2.1. Apple regularly updates its iOS software on the iPhone and iPad, making it faster and improving it so it is always a good idea to install the latest version. Turn off Reduce Motion and transparency Another way that you may be able to speed up your iPhone is by reducing transparency and reducing motion on your device. You can do this by going to Settings > Accessibility > Motion and selecting Reduce Motion. To reduce transparency you need to go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size and then select Reduce Transparency. Reset your iPhones factory settings Another way you may be able to speed up your iPhone is by resettings its factory settings, before you do this make sure you take a backup of your iPhone. This will allow you to easily restore your device after it has been reset. To do this on your device go to Settings > General and then select Reset > Erase All Content and Settings. You will then be able to reset your device to its factory settings. Once this has been done you can either set the iPhone up as a new device or restore it from a backup. We hope that you will find this guide useful and that it will help you speed up your iPhone or iPad, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please leave a comment below and let us know. This guide was written using the latest version of Apple’s iOS software which is iOS 16.3.1.