15 iPhone Mistakes You Didn’t Know You Were Making!

8 Min Read

In this article, I will show you 15 mistakes that you’re probably doing daily on your iPhone and, of course you should stop making them. These are mistakes that will cost you battery life, performance and overall, a worst user experience on your iPhone.

Here are 15 iPhone mistakes you should stop doing right now.

Not setting up an alternate appearance

The first thing you’re probably doing wrong on your iPhone is not setting up an alternate appearance. This is a very, very cool feature to have on iOS, which allows you to set a second look on your Face ID, just in case your face ID doesn’t recognize your face. It will have that like a backup, and that might help a lot. IF you have another trusted person that can use your phone, you can set up an alternate appearance for that person.

Now Apple says if you do have a beard that you register it with and then you shave, it will still recognize you. But, you might have to enter a passcode to confirm that. But then as you grow the beard out, it will know that you are growing the beard out and adapt to that. If you just changed your look – say you grow and maintain a big beard then you just shave it off and your Face ID does not recognize you. So Of course, you want to have a backup with an alternate appearance on Face ID. Simply go to Settings > Face ID & Passcode and Set up an alternate appearance.

Allowing access when locked

Other iOS common mistakes you might be doing are found within Face ID and passcode settings. Under Allow Access When Locked, all the switches on this screen indicate that these settings can be controlled. Some settings can be accessed even though the device is locked. So from the Today’s view, Notification center, Control center, Siri, Reply with message, Return missed calls, that’s really important. All these can be done, even though the device is locked. So what I suggest you do is go ahead and turn these settings off, because, like Return missed calls and Return messages, someone can do that, even if your device is locked so make sure you don’t leave these on.

You are charging it wrong

Now, a lot of us make a lot of mistakes when it comes to battery life on the iPhone and charging the iOS device. Always charging your iPhone to 100% is not a good idea. As you probably know, with iOS 13 apple added a new feature called Optimized battery charging. Now what this does is that it will only charge your iPhone up to 80% and then just a few like minutes before you need it, for example, in the morning it charges to 100%. So the mistake, a lot of people make, is always charging their iPhone to 100%. That will, of course, be bad for the battery life on the long run, so the battery lifespan will be shortened if you always charge at 100%. So if you don’t have iOS 13 or you don’t use the new Optimized battery charging feature, make sure you don’t charge your iPhone to 100%. The sweet spot is at about 80. That’s how much you should charge your iPhone.

Keeping the battery dead for a long time

Also, another big mistake: when charging your iPhone, let’s say you get a new phone and you want to keep the old one, but you don’t use it very frequently and you just leave it somewhere without ever charging it. That’s a huge mistake: you will damage the battery of your iPhone and it might never turn up again. So what you need to do is even though you have an iPhone that you don’t use, but you plan to use it maybe in the future, you should go ahead and charge it every few days. Make sure that the iPhone is charged, don’t leave it there uncharged the battery dead for a long time.

Using uncertified charger

When charging your iPhone, it’s always a bad idea to use a fake,. Cheap charger like the one you get at your local gas station, should not enter on your iPhone . Ever don’t ever charge your iPhone with a fake charger. You don’t have to always charge it with the original one that comes in the box of your
iPhone.
You can get certified cables, but don’t use uncertified cables on your iPhone.

You are constantly connected

With iOS 13 and iOS 12, Apple added a feature which prevents the wi-fi and the Bluetooth from turning completely off. That’s really bad. So if you keep the bluetooth on for a long time or always, it will constantly be searching for devices nearby, and that, of course, will decrease performance and battery life as well. Also, if you just disable it from the control center, it won’t be completely turned off, so always make sure when you don’t use, wi-fi or bluetooth or even location services, make sure to turn them off. You can go ahead and turn off Bluetooth or wi-fi completely directly from the settings. You will need to go to the settings app not on the control center or you can even use siri. So just launch siri and say “Turn off Bluetooth” and siri will turn off bluetooth completely, not just disabling it.

You don’t delete unused apps

Another mistake that you might be doing on your iPhone is not deleting apps that you don’t use. Of course, we have a ton of apps on our devices, sometimes maybe we’ll just see an ad of an app or something we want to try it out or a game or something like that and then never use it again. Don’t leave it on your iPhone. It will, of course, just take up space, maybe even send you notifications and just decrease the battery life. Just go ahead and delete all the apps that you don’t use on your iPhone. You can also use feature called offload unused apps, which of course, can be enabled. Simply go to Settings > iTunes and app store and right down below here, you will find Offload unused apps. What that does is that, apps that you don’t use for a long time, iOS will just remove them from the device. It will still have the data of the app. So whenever you need it back, you just reinstall it and you will have all your data.

You are force quitting the apps

Something really interesting that this has been also confirmed by apple. Is that closing apps from the background is not a good idea. I know some people have this as a habit. I sometimes close all the apps from the background, even though I know, that’s not a good thing to do, but it’s just a habit that someone will do but always keep your apps open in the background.

iOS is smart enough to manage these, so if you have abs there that are not opened for a long time, there will be just pause and will be in the background. They won’t interfere with your use of the iPhone, but if you’re closing these apps is that you’re making iOS to reload the apps from the beginning every time you open them, but if you leave them like this, they will be in the background and ready to go. So the iPhone doesn’t have to reload the apps every time you want to use them.

You are not tracking your battery

Another mistake you might be doing is not tracking how much battery the apps on your iPhone are using. So go to Settings > Battery and right here you’ll find a list of all the apps that you have on your iPhone, and it will show you how much battery that app has used. Now, of course, the app that you use a lot will be on the top right. That will consume more battery. You might see some apps that are poorly coded. That might be right here on the list. That means that those apps are not coded properly and they consume a ton of battery more than they should. So what you need to do is just track them here and if you see any app that is using enormous amount of battery go ahead and delete them, you will probably find an alternative on the app store for that app anyway.

You are not paying attention to app permissions

The next thing you might be doing wrong on your iPhone is not paying attention to app permissions. Sometimes you installed an app and it will ask your permission for the camera, Bluetooth, location services and all that stuff. So what you need to do is go to Settings > Privacy and right here, you’ll find all the apps that have permission to various features. So if you go to the Camera section for example, you’ll see a list of the apps that have permission to use the camera on your iPhone, and if you’ve just by accident, have enabled camera or microphone for an app that you didn’t want to, then you can go ahead and disable it directly from here.

You are not backing up your iPhone

Another huge mistake is never backing up your iPhone. It is really important that you do that regularly. You can do that using iTunes, or you can do it using iCloud, but always make sure that your iPhone is backed up. Nowadays we have all of our stuff on our iPhones, like videos, photos, all the data like notes or contacts, everything that we need. So, not backing up your iPhone is not a good idea. You never know when you might lose your device or just something bad happen with your device. Make sure you always have a backup of your data.

You avoid updating your iPhone

Another huge mistake is not updating your iPhone. That’s why apple releases updates to fix bugs and other stuff that needs to be improved. If they release a new software update, and you don’t see any new features, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have to install it. There are always bug fixes and improvements in the background, and sometimes there are a lot of security bugs that are very, very important, so make sure you always have your iPhone on the latest iOS software.

You aren’t checking for app updates

You always want to have your apps updated. I usually see a lot of people having a ton of updates on the app store, and they just never bother to update them. Mmake sure you always update your apps at the latest versions. There’s a reason why those updates are out and there’s always fixes and improvements on the apps. So make sure all your apps are up-to-date.

You never clear Cache regularly

Another iPhone mistake a lot of people do is never clearing safari data. This usually takes up space on your device. It might even slow down safari. So the browsing data, the website data, all that takes a lot of space on your device. So what you need to do is go to the settings > Safari and here you will find the Clear history and website data. Go ahead and just clear the history from there. you can do that after every week or two, but always make sure that you
clear the app cache:
the safari browsing history and the website data.

You never close Browser tabs

Last but not least, are tabs on safari. With iOS 13, Apple added an amazing feature which allows you to easily
close Safari tabs automatically.
So you simply go to settings > Safari > Close tabs, and here you can choose Manually, After one day, One week or a month and they will be closed automatically. That’s because a lot of people keep a ton of different tabs open in the background. They just browse the website, open a new tab, not close that. With time, your safari will be crumbled with a ton of tabs open in the background that will of course, make safari run slower. So what you need to do is always make sure to close your tabs, and you can do that simply by choosing here one of the options to automatically close all the tabs.

So that’s it for this article folks, I hope you enjoyed the guide. These are some of the common mistakes that the average iPhone user does daily. So make sure you don’t do this on your iPhone.

Thank you for reading.

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GeeksModo Staff is a team of iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch experts led by Moses Johnson. We're passionate about all things Apple!
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