Getting to know the IMEI of your iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max is a useful trick – and quite possibly essential, if you’re unlocking your iPhone – but it became slightly more difficult a few years ago when Apple stopped printing the number on the back of its phones.

But there are still several different ways to find the IMEI of an iPhone, and in this article we show the simplest and most useful. You’ll only need one, of course, so pick the method that’s easiest for you.

What’s an IMEI, and what is it used for?

Every iPhone has a unique identifier code, known as an IMEI number. The letters stand for International Mobile Equipment Identity, and the number is used to identify each mobile phone.

The IMEI number is used by your mobile phone company to match the phone to the networks, so it can figure out who is making calls. It is also used to maintain a blacklist of stolen mobile phones.

Find your IMEI by dialling a code

You can retrieve the iPhone’s IMEI number by dialling the code *#06# into the Phone app. Follow these steps:

1. Open Phone app.

   

2. Tap Keypad.
3. Enter *#06# – you don’t need to hit the green call button; it’ll just register automatically.

The IMEI code will then appear on the screen.

Dialling a code is the most commonly described method of finding the IMEI number, but we don’t think it’s the best because you can’t copy the number. Instead of being able to copy and paste the code you have to write it down – and it’s long enough, at 15 digits, for this to be annoying.

On the bottom of the SIM tray

On supported models, the IMEI is also printed on the SIM card tray.

Insert a paper clip or SIM eject tool into the small hole of the SIM tray, then push in toward iPhone to eject the tray. Carefully take out the SIM card and turn the tray over. The IMEI will be written on the underside of the tray, rather small.

Note: iPhone 18 Pro Max models purchased in the United States can only be activated with an eSIM.

Once again, you’ll obviously need to write it down laboriously by hand, and again, it’s written very small. Let’s find a method that’s easier on the eyes.

Use iOS Settings

The IMEI number is also located in the iPhone’s Settings app. Using Settings is probably the best option because it enables you to copy and paste the number. Follow these steps:

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap General > About.
3. Scroll down to locate the IMEI number.
4. Tap and hold the IMEI number to bring up a Copy bubble.
5. Tap Copy.

Now you can paste the IMEI code into another app, such as Notes.

How to find the IMEI if your iPhone 18 Pro Max is lost or stolen

One of the principal situations in which an IMEI is needed is when you’re reporting the theft of the device.

Go to account.apple.com in a web browser. Sign in to the Apple Account that you use on your device. Choose the Devices section. To see the serial number, EID, and IMEI/MEID, select the device.

Predictive emoji is a valuable iPhone feature that uses machine learning to give you emoji suggestions above your keyboard. It can make your life so much easier that when the feature stops working, you will really feel the burden of needing to go looking for emojis manually again.

If your iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max has stopped predicting emojis for you to use, here are several fixes you can try to make predictive emoji work again.

What Is the Predictive Emoji Feature on an iPhone?

When it’s working, Apple’s Predictive Emoji feature will suggest different emoji to insert to text as you’re typing. It should work in any app, allowing you to tap the emoji suggestion above the keyboard to instantly replace your text with it.

Not only does this make it easy to spice up your conversation with colorful emojis, but it can also be one of the quickest ways to search for and insert your favorite emojis.

If Predictive Emoji isn’t working, you might just see a blank space on the right side of Apple’s predictions. Luckily, this is easy to fix with the quick steps below.

1. Make Sure Predictive Emojis Are Turned On

First, check if you have the Emoji keyboard enabled on your device. Head to Settings > General > Keyboard > Keyboards > Add New Keyboard, then find and select Emoji.

Now, make sure the Predictive Text function is enabled. Go back to Settings > General > Keyboard, then scroll down and enable the Predictive Text toggle.

2. Switch to Apple’s English Keyboard

There are tons of cool third-party iPhone keyboards you can use, but not all of them have a Predictive Emoji feature. If you’re using a third-party keyboard, try switching back to the official Apple one.

To do this, tap and hold the Emoji button or the Switch Keyboard key in the bottom-left corner of your keyboard, then select the English keyboard.

Make sure the keyboard language matches what you’re typing, otherwise it won’t know which emojis to predict.

3. Feed Your Device With Emojis

Your iPhone feeds on the information you give it and makes suggestions based on your typing style and past usage. If you don’t use emojis much in a certain app, that may be the reason you’re not getting any predictive emoji suggestions in it.

You need to let your iPhone 18 Pro Max know that you like using emojis for it to start predicting them. To do that, open the app that doesn’t show you predictive emojis and tap the Emoji button in the bottom-left corner to select the Emoji keyboard.

Now start typing random emojis. They don’t need to make sense, but you need to add enough of them to teach your device that you like using emojis in this app. It could take 20 or more emojis.

Now delete all the content you just typed and check if Predictive Emoji is working by typing a word like “puppy,” “candy,” or “haha.” You should see emoji suggestions above the keyboard.

You should repeat this process for every app where predictive emoji is not working.

4. Reset Your Keyboard Dictionary

If predictive emojis still aren’t working, you should try resetting your keyboard dictionary. This will make your iPhone 18 Pro Max forget any words you’ve taught it, so you may need to fix autocorrect errors on your Apple devices again. But it will also give you a clean slate to teach your device that you like using emojis again.

To do this, go to Settings > General, then scroll down and select Transfer or Reset iPhone. Now tap Reset > Reset Keyboard Dictionary. You’ll need to enter your passcode, then confirm you want to Reset Dictionary.

Now go back to the previous step and teach your iPhone that you like using emojis in all the relevant apps again.

5. Delete Your Emoji Keyboard

You can also reset your emoji keyboard by removing it and adding it again. To do this go to Settings > General > Keyboard. Tap Keyboards, then swipe left on the Emoji option and hit Delete.

Tap Add New Keyboard, then select Emoji to add it again.

6. Restart Your iPhone 18 Pro Max

If everything else seems to fail, you should try restarting your iPhone. Sometimes, a simple reboot can clear up issues and bugs, which may be enough to solve the problem. Simultaneously press and hold the side button and either volume button until the sliders appear, then drag the Power Off slider. Press and hold the side button until the Apple logo appears.

7. Update Your Software

Apple does its best to improve your iPhone software with every update. These updates include fixing common bugs that pester users, like when the Predictive Emoji feature stops working. To update your software to the latest version of iOS, head to Settings > General > Software Update.

If your software is out of date, you’ll see an Update Now button at the bottom of the screen. Tap it and follow the prompts to complete the update.

Emojis Are a Necessity for Modern Communication

In this digital age, emojis have become a regular part of our communication. Apple’s Predictive Emoji feature is a handy tool that intuitively suggests emojis that you can seamlessly insert into your conversations. So it’s a big loss to easy texting when that feature stops working. Hopefully these suggestions fixed that for you.

We try to avoid profanity, but there are times when gosh and crikey and what’s the meaning of this and lord love a duck don’t cut it, language-wise. Those are the moments when you simply have to call someone a gigantic fuckface.

Annoyingly, digital devices do not always understand the human need for four-letter venting. Type “fucking” on an iPhone 18 Pro Max and it may decide that you really meant “ducking” and change it accordingly. Did you want to use the word ducking? Not ducking likely.

In this article we explain how to stop your iPhone from censoring your swearing. Bear in mind, however, that turning the digital air blue may upset your friends and relations, so try to exercise a little restraint.

Note also that iOS’s behaviour is a little unpredictable in this regard, and whether or not it chooses to zap a naughty word depends on your past behaviour (which iOS learns from, and uses to modify its internal dictionary), as well as the version of iOS you’re running, whether your rude word contains a typo and even whether or not you’re using swipe typing. It is not an exact science, and for this reason we would suggest that you work through these solutions and see what works best for you in practice.

Use tap-typing instead of swiping

Testing (your mileage may vary on different versions, as outlined above), we found that the aforementioned words are not changed, provided we type them in the traditional way. They are only corrected if we use swipe typing – perhaps because there is a greater chance of physical errors in that format.

It’s worth trying this out for yourself. If it works, and if you can cope with tap-typing, then one solution would be to use that instead of swipe typing, at least when delivering F-bombs.

Update iOS

If you’re on an older version, updating your iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max may help. Go to the Settings app on your iPhone. Tap General, then tap Software Update.

As a side note, we generally recommend updating iOS on a regular basis unless you have a specific reason not to.

Create a text replacement shortcut

This is probably the most sensible and universally applicable solution. We’re going to use iOS’s text replacement feature, designed to look for a pre-arranged sequence of letters and change them into something else.

Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement. You’ll see any text replacements you’ve already set up (or just the pre-written “omw” for “On my way!” if you haven’t done any). Tap the + sign at the top right to add a new shortcut.

Enter the word in the Phrase field, but leave the Shortcut field blank. It isn’t telling iOS to change anything; it’s simply telling it that the word is legitimate. So: put “fuck” in the Phrase field, leave the Shortcut field blank, and hit Save.

The only downside of this method is that you have to repeat the process for each swear word you want to protect. You’ll probably want to create separate shortcuts for “fuck”, “fucking” and “fucked”, for instance, but there are probably some other rude words you can think of.

Turn off autocorrect

This is the nuclear option, but one we’d advise against. Autocorrect is in general a valuable feature that (in our experience at least) easily outweighs its occasional errors by catching and fixing dozens of typos.

If you can live without it, however, go to Settings > General > Keyboard and, in the section headed All Keyboards, tap the toggle next to Auto-Correction so it turns grey.

We trust this tutorial has helped you swear at your loved ones to your heart’s content.

Autocorrect is a pretty neat feature that automatically checks and polishes your spelling as you type on your iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max. However, it can be more than a little annoying when autocorrect begins to type the wrong words or replace what you wrote with words that don’t make sense at all.

Fortunately, it’s possible to reset your iPhone’s vocabulary and teach autocorrect to spell properly again. Here’s how.

How the iPhone’s Autocorrect Goes Wrong

When you’re typing on your iPhone default keyboard and you misspell a word, you’ll likely see a bubble above your error, showing the correct spelling.

The wonder of autocorrect means you only need to continue typing—either by hitting Space, tapping Return, or adding punctuation—to accept the change. But this becomes a problem when your iPhone 18 Pro Max starts correcting words you don’t want to be changed.

Your Apple devices correct the spelling of the words you type based on the built-in dictionary and your previously typed words. They can learn incorrectly spelled words if you typed them too many times, which can lead autocorrect to start “fixing” the actual spelling.

You might find that it starts changing words that you don’t want changed. One such example is with changing words like “were” to “we’re” and “bit” to “but.”

1. Repeatedly Type Words to Fix Autocorrect

Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t allow you to edit your dictionary directly. One way around this is to type the word that’s being erroneously corrected and dismiss the change before it takes place by tapping the dismiss (x) button beside the suggested spelling. You may need to repeat this numerous times before your iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max stops “correcting” the word in question.

If you automatically accept a change by mistake, hit Delete and your previously-typed word will appear in a bubble. Tap it, and your change will be reverted. This may also teach your iPhone that it is unnecessary to correct this word, encouraging it to add the word you just typed in its dictionary.

Some users suggest adding the words to your Contacts. However, this is a little unreliable and works best with proper nouns and company names.

2. Reset Your iPhone Dictionary

If your dictionary has become an unmanageable nightmare, you could always reset your iPhone dictionary. This sounds severe, but all you’re doing is removing the custom words and typing rules that your iPhone has picked up since you started using it. As your iPhone dictionary is often backed up to iCloud when you change devices, it could be many years old.

To reset your dictionary head to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset > Reset Keyboard Dictionary. You’ll also be asked to input your iPhone’s passcode to complete the erase.

Once you’ve done this, you’ll have to train your iPhone to spell your favorite words properly again. Remember all that you’ve learned about accepting erroneous corrections before you end up in the same position you were in before.

3. Teach Your iPhone 18 Pro Max New Words With Text Replacement

Aside from teaching your iPhone manually, you can also add new words using text replacement. This feature basically allows you to create shortcuts for commonly used words, like typing “omw” as a shortcut for “on my way.” Your iPhone will automatically substitute the shortcut with the expanded word or phrase.

Head to Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement to add as many text replacements as you like. Your new additions will adhere to capitalization when added in lowercase, but if you add capital letters (e.g., Apple), these will be reflected in the correction.

4. Turn Autocorrect Off

If autocorrect has become overly irritating on your iPhone 18 Pro Max, it might be time to turn it off. To do this:

1. Head to Settings > General.
2. Select Keyboard.
3. Toggle Auto-Correction off.

If you’re wary about missing spelling errors, you can always turn on the spellchecker, which highlights spelling errors in red. To do this, just go back to Keyboard and toggle on Check Spelling and Grammar.

5. Turn On Predictive Text Instead

Unlike autocorrect, which actively changes words as you type, Predictive Text works in a more passive manner. Instead of changing a word to its suggested correction, Predictive Text simply shows predictions above the keyboard and allows you to tap or ignore them. See Predictive Emoji Not Working on iPhone 18 Pro Max. To enable the feature, just head back to the Keyboard settings, then toggle Predictive Text on.

Now, when you’ve typed a word that you think your iPhone will mistakenly “correct”, just tap the correct spelling in the top left box above the keyboard.

6. Use a Third-Party Keyboard

With iOS 8, Apple allowed app developers to replace the built-in iPhone keyboard with third-party alternatives instead. These keyboards do not use Apple’s dictionary, and only Apple’s keyboard can make changes to the system-wide custom word list. As a result, many third-party keyboards come with their own dictionaries, which you can often sync with other devices (including Android).

These keyboards will require you to provide “full access” to your keystrokes. You should be wary of allowing any old keyboard full access to everything you type.

SwiftKey

SwiftKey is one of our most-recommended keyboards for the Android platform—and for good reason. The app learns based on your typing habits, includes a full custom dictionary, and even syncs with its Android version when you sign in.

Download: Microsoft SwiftKey Keyboard (Free, in-app purchases available)

Typewise

Typewise is another third-party keyboard option, especially if you prefer to add some customization to your keyboard. It has larger keys and allows you to type a lot faster than the default iOS keyboard. It also doesn’t ask for suspicious permissions.

Download: Typewise (Free, subscription available)

Carefree Typing on Your iPhone 18 Pro Max

The downside to well-polished messages is the tendency for our iPhones to misunderstand slang, informal phrases, and sometimes even uncommon names. This can be funny at best and frustrating at worst, and may even be a cause of embarrassment or upset.

What’s good is that there are several solutions to autocorrect problems, or alternative keyboards you can switch to. If teaching your iPhone to relearn the words seems like a hassle, you can always reset your dictionary or turn off the autocorrect feature for a more carefree typing experience.

Is your iPhone 18 Pro Max keyboard not showing up, typing the wrong letters, or malfunctioning in some other way? We’ll go through common problems and the corresponding solutions you can try when your iPhone’s on-screen keyboard isn’t working.

1. iPhone Keyboard Isn’t Showing Up

If the entire on-screen keyboard isn’t showing up when you need to type something, it’s probably because the cursor isn’t in a text field yet. Try tapping a text field or search box on your screen for the keyboard to appear.

If it’s a specific language that’s not showing up on your iPhone 18 Pro Max keyboard, it’s likely because you haven’t added the language yet.

To add a language to your keyboard, go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Keyboards > Add New Keyboard. From the list, select the language and your preferred input method if needed, then tap Done.

2. iPhone Keyboard Typing the Wrong Letters and Words

Almost everyone has had a text message needlessly autocorrected by their iPhone. But if this happens too frequently, and there are more mistakes than accurate corrections, here’s what you should do.

Test Your iPhone Screen

If the on-screen keyboard seems to type on its own and input the wrong letters and words, the issue may lie with your iPhone screen. Test to see if your iPhone works normally when you’re not using the keyboard.

If your iPhone is also opening apps randomly when you’re not touching the screen at all, this is a problem known as “ghost touch.” You can try solutions such as cleaning your iPhone screen and replacing the screen protector to fix ghost touch on your iPhone.

But if the cause of ghost touch is damaged hardware—for example, you dropped your iPhone recently, and there are visible screen cracks—you probably need to replace your iPhone’s display.

Check Your Text Replacement Setting

Let’s say you’re typing the phrase “I’m studying” in a message, but it autocorrects to “I’m napping” every time. This is probably caused by a text replacement setting.

The purpose of iPhone text replacement is to help people save time by completing phrases from preset abbreviations. However, it can also be used by a family or friend to set up a prank, hence the endless “correction.”

Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement. If there’s an unwanted phrase in the list, swipe left on it and tap Delete.

3. iPhone 18 Pro Max Keyboard Is Lagging

If you’re typing swiftly on your iPhone keyboard but the text takes a while to show up on the screen, the cause might be a temporary software glitch or an incorrect iPhone setting. Try the solutions below.

Reset the Keyboard Dictionary

Your iPhone’s keyboard dictionary doesn’t only autocorrect misspelled words. It also learns from what you type and provides predictive text accordingly.

You can try resetting the keyboard dictionary if your iPhone 18 Pro Max keyboard has been lagging frequently. Go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset > Reset Keyboard Dictionary to do so.

Review Your Touch Accommodations Settings in Accessibility

If you’re using a pre-owned iPhone, the previous owner might have changed some accessibility settings that affect how sensitive the screen (including the on-screen keyboard) is to touch. Therefore, these settings may cause a delay between typing on the keyboard and the text actually appearing on the screen.

To remove this, go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Touch Accommodations and tap Reset Touch Accommodations.

4. No Sound or Vibration When Typing on the Keyboard

By default, when you type on your iPhone keyboard, there should be a soft tapping sound. However, you can customize it to include haptic feedback for each key press in the Settings app. And if you don’t hear a sound while typing, you can check if it’s enabled here.

Go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Keyboard Feedback and toggle on Sound and Haptic, depending on what you’d like.

If you still don’t feel a vibration when you type, go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch and make sure Vibration is toggled on. Also, make sure you have Silent mode turned off on your iPhone.

5. General Fixes When Your iPhone Keyboard Doesn’t Work

If your iPhone 18 Pro Max keyboard is still not working after going through the above troubleshooting methods, you can try a few generic solutions. First, restart your iPhone by turning it off and on again. However, if the on-screen keyboard is frozen, you may need to force restart your iPhone instead. Press and quickly release the volume up button. Press and quickly release the volume down button. Press and hold the side button. When the Apple logo appears, release the side button.

Secondly, go to Settings > General > Software Update to check if a newer version of iOS is available for your device. Apple frequently rolls out updates that include bug fixes and performance improvements, which may help solve keyboard problems if it hasn’t been working right.

Similarly, if you’ve been using a third-party iPhone keyboard app, it’s best to update the iPhone app to get the latest bug fixes as well.

As a long-time user, I’ve noticed that several iPhone keyboard issues crop up from time to time. However, if the issue persists, it’s best to contact Apple Support for further assistance.

Welcome to our complete guide to iPhone 18 Pro Max security, where you’ll find essential tips to protect the sensitive data on your phone from the prying eyes of snoops and hackers.

While Apple’s iOS system is pretty secure, there are ways to make sure that your iPhone is as secure from hackers as it can be. If you have concerns about the safety of your private data, sensitive information including website logins, email addresses, text messages and even photos and videos, we have tips to help.

Keep iOS up to date

Make sure you’re always running the most recent iteration of iOS, including smaller ‘dot’ or point updates.

This is wise because hackers occasionally find flaws in Apple’s coding which they can exploit, potentially giving them access to your personal data. iOS updates are Apple’s way of combatting the exploits by patching holes and implementing better stability enhancements.

To update to the latest version of iOS, open the Settings app and tap General > Software Update. You’ll either be assured that you’re already running the latest version, or prompted to download and install something newer.

Expect further updates to be released regularly: it’s important to keep an eye out.

Activate Find My

Another step you can take in the war against hackers attacking your iPhone 18 Pro Max is to activate Find My iPhone.

Find My iPhone is handy because, if you lose your device, you can log on to Find My from another Apple device (or via the web on a Mac or PC) and locate your iPhone – or, more importantly, remotely wipe your personal data from the lost phone. This means that even if the hacker does manage to gain access to your lost/stolen device, they’ll find no valuable data.

To turn on Find My iPhone follow these steps:

1. Open Settings and tap your name/picture at the top of the screen.

   

2. Next tap Find My.
3. Tap Find My iPhone.
4. Now make sure the toggle by Find My iPhone is green.

If your device is offline (not connected to Wi-Fi or cellular), Find My can locate it using the Find My network.

Turn on Find My network if you want your iPhone to be discoverable in this way – it’s a good idea to as it will make it possible to locate – and crucially – wipe your iPhone if it falls into the wrong hands.

To remotely wipe an iPhone once located with Find My iPhone, follow these steps:

1. Log in to the Find My app (or iCloud website).
2. Tap on Devices.
3. Select your iPhone.
4. Tap the More button, tap Erase, then tap Continue.
5. The next time it has an internet connection (if it doesn’t already) it’ll automatically wipe itself.

Create a longer passcode

You may have heard of a hacking tool called GrayKey that was being used to crack iPhone passwords. It’s understood that the tool was being used by law-enforcement agencies, and could crack a four-digit passcode in a couple of hours. A six-digit code can be cracked in a few days.

The device, which needed to be plugged into an iPhone, could disable the usual delays and locks (one minute after six incorrect guesses, five minutes after seven and so on) that would normally stop anyone from brute-forcing their way past a passcode.

While you probably don’t have any reason to not want the police or government agencies to hack into your phone, the real concern here was that if it’s possible for the GrayKey device to hack into your phone this way, it’s highly likely that there will be similar devices and hacks available to criminals.

Luckily Apple blocked the GrayKey tech back in iOS 12, however, should such a thing become possible again – and it’s sure to – here’s what you should do to protect your phone:

• Choose a long passcode: one that’s longer than six digits. It could take a few months to hack an eight-digit pin, and a ten-digit pin could take a decade to crack!
• Use a passphrase containing words, rather than numbers. But use random words that wouldn’t normally appear together.

While passcodes only use numbers 0-9, a passphrase includes numbers, letters, symbols and case-sensitivity which should make your iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max a lot harder to break into – although it may take a little longer to unlock your iPhone when you want to use it.

You might be thinking that your phone is secured by Face ID, but remember your phone can still be unlocked with your passcode, so if that’s 0000 you have a reason to be worried!

How to set up a new passcode for iOS

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap Face ID & Passcode.
3. Enter your Passcode.
4. Tap on Change Passcode.
5. Enter your Passcode.
6. Tap Passcode Options.
7. From the options, choose either Custom Numeric Code or Custom Alphanumeric Code.
8. Enter your new code and verify it.

If you use Face ID to unlock your phone you won’t normally need to use your passcode to unlock it, but there are exceptions: the passcode will be required when you haven’t used your phone for more than six days, for instance, or when you restart your device.

(On the subject of passwords, you can significantly improve your security by using a password manager.)

Auto-wipe iPhone content

Our next suggestion may sound a little unnerving, but it’s a great option if you’re worried about people trying to guess your passcode. The idea is that after 10 incorrect guesses, the iPhone will automatically wipe all content and thus make the smartphone useless to the hacker.

It’s slightly worrying as we’ve known people to accidentally activate the feature (usually when under the influence of alcohol!) and delete all their personal information. These are usually the same people who tend not to back up regularly… so if you do enable the option we’d advise also turning on automatic iCloud backup so if your data is wiped (due to an accident or someone trying to hack you) you’ll have everything saved in the cloud.

To enable the nuclear option, simply head to Settings > Face ID & Passcode, enter your passcode, scroll to the bottom of the page and toggle on Erase Data.

Avoid opening unknown links

This one is fairly self-explanatory – if you receive an unknown link via text, email or randomly on the web, don’t click on it. This could potentially pose a threat to your device and even though it may not be able to hack your iPhone directly; some pose as popular email clients like Gmail to gain access to your email account.

The pages usually look pretty close to the real thing, so this type of scam is fairly common and it always pays to keep your wits about you.

The general rule is that if you don’t trust the look of the email/message then just don’t bother opening it. The same goes for email attachments too, although there aren’t many cases (if there are any) where hackers have been able to gain access to an iPhone via this method, and this is more of a general tip.

Revoke app permissions

The next step to take in the war against hackers is to revoke access to apps. When you use iOS apps you’ll often be prompted to allow the app to access things like the camera, microphone, contacts, etc to use the app to the fullest extent.

Even though allowing access means you can use every feature of the app, the app may also be able to access your private information.

Don’t get us wrong – this is against Apple’s privacy policy and any apps found collecting personally identifiable information will be removed, and as far as we know this hasn’t happened so far, but it is a possibility.

Either way, if you feel like you’ve installed a less-than-reputable app on your iPhone 18 Pro Max, you can either delete it or head to Settings > Privacy & Security, select the permission you’d like to revoke and toggle the application off.

Don’t share location data in images

Another way your data can be leaked is in a photo which includes metadata revealing the location in which it was taken.

Note: Sharing a photo or video includes sharing its associated metadata, such as date and time, location, device, and captions.

How to avoid iCloud photo leaks & hacks

Speaking of photos, you may recall there was a swathe of celebrity photo leaks. As usual on the web, famous women get the worst treatment – which in this case meant the widespread posting of nude photos. And in a lot of cases an iPhone, or an iCloud account, was involved.

That doesn’t mean that Apple hardware and software services are fundamentally insecure. In fact, we feel confident in saying that the iPhone is the most secure mainstream smartphone on the market right now. But it does show that nobody can be complacent about the security of their most personal data and photos.

There are various ways to ensure that your intimate photos aren’t stolen and posted online by hackers: two-factor authentication is a good idea.

Turn off Siri

Apple’s personal assistant, Siri, is a great feature of iOS and provides users with a way of using their smartphone hands-free.

However, no matter how helpful Siri may be to users, it can also provide hackers with personal data. Siri will often ask for some kind of verification before allowing access to contacts, photos and other types of sensitive information, but there have been multiple occasions where people have found workarounds completely bypassing the iPhone passcode and providing easy access to the device.

To disable access to Siri on the lock screen, simply head to Settings > Face ID & Passcode and toggle the “allow access when locked” option off.

Turn off auto-fill

The same can be said about Apple’s auto-fill feature in Safari. Apple’s Keychain stores website logins, prompting users to save the information after successfully logging into their account.

It’s a hugely handy feature as it means we don’t have to remember the login information for the myriad of websites we browse – and the same goes for credit/debit card information. Simply tap a button and Apple will fill out all your card information, apart from your security code.

However, if a hacker does manage to gain access to your iPhone 18 Pro Max, it provides them with access to all your online logins. To disable keychain and auto-fill, simply go to Settings > Apps > Safari > AutoFill and toggle off each option.

iCloud Photos is a nifty iPhone feature that saves every photo and video you take to the cloud, allowing you to access your library from any device at any time. Any changes you make to your collection on one device are replicated across all of your other devices.

But, sometimes, things go wrong in the pipeline, and your Apple devices stop syncing your photos. If for some reason, your iCloud Photos aren’t syncing properly, you could lose some precious photos and fond memories. So, to avoid that pain, let’s look at a few steps to take if your photos aren’t syncing to iCloud.

1. Check Your Settings

Let’s review if you have the correct iCloud Photos configuration on the device that’s currently not syncing to iCloud. First, open the Settings app to check that you’re signed in to the same Apple Account you used to set up iCloud Photos.

If you’re already signed in to the correct Apple Account, the second step is to ensure that iCloud Photos is enabled on your device. Tap your name at the top of the screen, go to iCloud > Photos, and check that Sync this iPhone is toggled on.

2. Check Your Internet Connection

Because iCloud is a web-based service, iCloud Photos may not sync when your internet connection is iffy. To ensure your connection is good, check to see if other apps can connect to the internet or try to launch a new web address in your browser.

If the problem is your internet connection, try resetting your router or troubleshooting your cellular data to see if that solves the problem. You can also try resetting your iPhone 18 Pro Max network settings.

If your connection is fine but you’re attempting to use cellular data for iCloud Photos, you need to enable this function first. Otherwise, your iCloud photo library will not show up on your iPhone.

To do so, turn on your iPhone’s cellular data first. Then, go to Settings > Apps > Photos > Cellular Data. Toggle on Cellular Data, and if your data plan allows, you can also opt to toggle on Unlimited Updates.

3. Check Your iCloud Storage

Another common culprit for photos not uploading to iCloud is a lack of storage. Every Apple user gets 5GB of free iCloud storage, but that’s hardly enough—especially if you take many photos regularly.

To be sure you haven’t run out of storage, you’ll have to check your current usage. Open the Settings app, tap on your name, then select iCloud. You’ll see a breakdown of your current storage at the top of the page.

If you have maxed out your free iCloud storage, you need to either free up some iCloud storage space or upgrade to one of Apple’s paid storage plans.

4. Optimize Your iPhone Storage

Depending on the quality of photos you’ve chosen to upload to iCloud, you could max out your iPhone storage quickly, which will also cause iCloud Photos to not update correctly.

Optimize iPhone Storage is turned on by default, but you can turn it off.

Optimize Storage allows iCloud Photos to manage the size of the library on your iPhone. When this option is turned on, your original, high-quality photos and videos are stored in iCloud, while compressed versions remain on your device. You can download the full-resolution versions from iCloud via Wi-Fi or cellular at any time.

To enable this option, head to Settings, then tap your name. Now, go to iCloud > Photos > iPhone Storage > Optimize iPhone Storage.

5. Restart Your iPhone

If the fixes above fail to solve your problem, try rebooting your iPhone. This will fix any software glitches that could be hindering your photos from syncing to iCloud. Simultaneously press and hold the side button and either volume button until the sliders appear, then drag the Power Off slider. Press and hold the side button until the Apple logo appears.

6. Update Your iPhone

An outdated version of iOS could be the reason for many performance issues, including the problem where iCloud Photos is not syncing on your iPhone 18 Pro Max. Check your phone for software updates and install them to fix any bugs that might be the culprit of the issue. Go to Settings > General > Software Update to get started.

7. Plug In Your iPhone to Charge

iCloud syncs photos when the device is plugged in and connected to Wi-Fi. So, if iCloud Photos isn’t syncing properly, find the nearest outlet and plug your iPhone in. Then, make sure your iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max can connect to Wi-Fi while you leave it alone to charge and sync.

Keep Your iCloud Photos Synced and Up to Date

iCloud Photos is an excellent feature for syncing media across your Apple devices. If you take advantage of it, make sure you have everything set up and running smoothly so that it serves its purpose.

We hope that the above fixes have resolved any hitches you ran into. However, if you still encounter issues where your iCloud Photos aren’t syncing, you may want to take your iPhone 18 Pro Max to a Genius Bar for more help.

People wouldn’t even know that their batteries had depleted if Apple didn’t give them this information–which is something it was forced to do after the ‘Batterygate’ scandal where the company was found to be throttling iPhones whose batteries were degrading. Apple maintained this was to stop iPhones suddenly shutting down.

In more recent times Apple has made changes to iOS to preserve the battery for longer, including Optimized Battery Charging, which prevents an iPhone from remaining plugged in for long periods while fully charged. You have probably noticed if you wake up in the night and look at the iPhone charging beside you that it will have stopped charging at 80% with a view to continuing the charge just before you wake up. This is designed to stop the battery from overheating and reduce the number of times your iPhone receives a full charge.

But why do iPhone batteries lose their ability to charge over time? When should your iPhone 18 Pro Max battery be replaced? You may also want to know how much it costs to replace an iPhone battery and how you can tell if a battery in a used iPhone has been replaced.

We’ll run through everything you need to know about iPhone batteries below.

Why do batteries deplete and degrade over time?

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that over time an iPhone battery will eventually start to lose its ability to hold a decent charge, just like the battery in any phone.

The science of this relates to chemical reactions that happen inside the lithium-Ion battery and degrade it. What it means is that if your iPhone battery isn’t lasting as long as it once did you aren’t alone: all batteries become less efficient over time and sadly the battery for your iPhone is no exception.

In a letter regarding Batterygate in December 2017, Apple explained that the “time and the number of times a battery has been charged are not the only factors in this chemical aging process. Device use also affects the performance of a battery over its lifespan. For example, leaving or charging a battery in a hot environment can cause a battery to age faster.”

As the battery gets older it may start to require charging more frequently, hold charge less well, or even start to shut down your phone unexpectedly. You may have started to notice this change, but if you want to see the evidence it is easy to check your battery health, as we will demonstrate below.

How to check iPhone 18 Pro Max battery health

In early 2018 Apple issued an iOS software update with new features that it said “give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery, so they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance”. It’s really easy to see this information:

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap on Battery.

   

3. Tap Battery Health.
4. Note the percentage beside Maximum Capacity.
5. Also note the message below Peak Performance Capability. It could include details of whether your iPhone has experienced any battery-related issues.

If you are wondering what iPhone capacity is bad that would generally be anything under 80%, but understandably people with iPhones under a year old would be expecting better than 90%.

How do you know when an iPhone battery should be replaced

Batteries of iPhone 15 models and later are designed to retain 80 percent of their original capacity at 1000 complete charge cycles under ideal conditions.

You can also see details like battery health, cycle count, manufacture date, and first use date.

However, once your Battery Health (which you can discover by following the steps above) falls to 80% it is time to get it replaced. In fact, Apple will display the message: “Your battery’s health is significantly degraded. An Apple Authorized Service Provider can replace the battery to restore full performance and capacity.”

If the battery in your iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max–or a used iPhone you are considering buying–has depleted to 80% or lower you should get it replaced.

There are some other indicators that your iPhone might require a new battery: dimmer backlight than normal; lower speaker volume; stuttering screen when scrolling; frame-rate reduction in some game apps; and longer app-launch times.

What could happen if you don’t replace the battery?

If you see a message that your battery health is degraded, you can continue to use your phone, but you may experience reduced charge capacity and some slight stability issues while your battery is on a lower charge.

If your battery isn’t running at good capacity then you may also find that Performance Management is being applied to stop unexpected shutdowns from taking place. You may see a note in the Peak Performance Capability section of Battery Health that states “This iPhone has experienced an unexpected shutdown because the battery was unable to deliver the necessary peak power.” To combat this, performance management is applied.

If you were to play a graphically intensive game, while the battery was below 20 percent, the setting could be triggered, for example. You can turn off this feature.

How much does it cost to replace an iPhone battery?

The cost of replacing an iPhone battery is not prohibitive.

Apple’s warranty doesn’t cover battery replacement if it is due to “normal use” but if you’re covered by AppleCare+ then you can have your battery replaced at no additional cost, assuming it only holds 80% or less of its original charge.

Where to get your iPhone battery replaced

You could choose to have your iPhone battery replaced by a third party, which might save some money, but you should be cautious because if non-Apple parts are used you could end up with problems in the future (in the past third-party parts have stopped working after software updates). However, Apple’s stance on third-party battery replacements has softened over the years and in August 2019 it stopped refusing to fix iPhones that had third-party batteries fitted.

There may be good reason for Apple to dissuade customers from third-party battery replacements though. Those batteries could be hazardous knock-offs, or the customers could be ripped off by third-parties who fit a replacement battery that is in fact a reconditioned older battery. With reports of mobile phones bursting into flames there may really be an issue here that Apple is trying to avoid.

Having your battery seen to by an official service technician is the best way to proceed, which may result in getting a new battery or having your current one fixed if there are any issues.

Can I replace the battery myself?

If you are wondering if you can replace the iPhone 18 Pro Max battery yourself, it is possible although we’d suggest that you don’t try. An iPhone battery should only be repaired by a trained technician to avoid battery damage, which could cause overheating, fire, or injury.

How to tell if an iPhone battery has been replaced

There are a few ways to tell if a used iPhone you are buying has had its battery replaced–and more importantly to check if it’s an Apple part and not a battery that could be hazardous.

To find details of the battery follow these steps:

1. Open Settings.
2. General.
3. About.
4. Scroll down and look for a section entitled: “Parts and service history”.

In that section, you may see details of the battery if it has been replaced.

You shouldn’t be concerned if there is a Genuine Apple Part, but the warning: Unknown Part could mean that there is a risk that something could happen to your iPhone.

How to maximise iPhone battery life

If you want to make sure your battery lasts as long as possible until you have a chance to get it replaced, then try the following suggestions:

• Turn off Location Services.
• Disable Background App Refresh.
• Make sure Auto-Brightness is enabled.
• Use Airplane Mode when you don’t need to be connected to the internet.

If you’re really desperate to get some more mileage out of your iPhone, then perhaps consider a battery case. These protect your phone like a regular case, but can also recharge your phone when you need it.

iPhones are remarkable devices, but they lose their lustre once the battery runs dry. That’s why it’s important to look after the cell inside and ensure that you always charge it properly.

In this article, we explain the steps you need to take if you want your iPhone 18 Pro Max to last till the late hours each day and keep doing so for as many years as possible.

How to charge an iPhone with a cable

The fastest way to charge an iPhone is using a cable. You need a USB-C to USB-C cable.

USB-C offers much faster charging than the older USB-A did. Any phone needs to be plugged into a USB C charger to take advantage of the fast charging.

To fast charge iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max up to 50 percent battery in around 15 minutes, use the USB-C cable that came in the box, and one of these adapters:

• Apple 40W Dynamic Power Adapter with 60W Max
• A comparable third-party 60W-capable (or greater) adapter that uses Adjustable Voltage Supply (AVS) and supports USB Power Delivery (USB-PD) 3.2

How to wirelessly charge an iPhone

You can use Qi chargers or faster MagSafe chargers that magnetically clamp to your iPhone using a ring of hidden magnets for a more efficient fit and therefore faster wireless charging.

To wirelessly charge iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max up to 50 percent in around 30 minutes, use a MagSafe Charger and a 35W or higher adapter. Because of the magnetic fit MagSafe chargers will be faster even if at the same wattage as Qi, so go for a MagSafe charger if you can.

How to charge an iPhone using a power bank

Portable power banks offer the ability to charge an iPhone on the go when you’re not near an outlet or don’t have time to sit for 15 minutes. They range from a few thousand milliamp hours to more than 20,000. Most power banks need a separate charging cable that connects to the iPhone, though some have built-in cables that are stored somewhere inside the device. Some higher-end power banks have magnetic pads for charging wirelessly as well.

Using a power bank is simple. Make sure you charge it before you head out and then when you want to fill up your iPhone, use it as you would use a regular charger—either with a cable or wirelessly. Most power banks have LED lights to let you know how much charge is remaining.

How to use the iPhone’s Charging settings

In Settings, tap Battery, then tap Charging to turn on features to preserve battery wear over time and conserve energy. They are:

• Optimized Battery Charging: Your iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max will learn from your daily charging and usage habits so it can limit charging to 80 percent until you need to use it.
• Charge Limit: When Charge Limit is on, iPhone stops charging when it reaches your selected percentage. Your iPhone will occasionally charge to 100%—even with a lower limit set—to keep the battery percentage display accurate.
• Clean Energy Charging: Your iPhone will attempt to charge when lower carbon-emission electricity is available in your area based on your daily usage habits.

You can turn on any of these options in Settings. You can change or remove the limit anytime.

How to choose the best iPhone charging accessories

There are two things to consider when shopping for new iPhone charging gear: the charger and the cable. The iPhone comes with an Apple USB-C cable that supports charging of up to 60 watts, more than enough to fast-charge any iPhone, but only USB 2 speeds (480Mbps) for data transfers. If you’re buying a second or replacement cable for charging, we recommend getting one that supports at least 5Gbps for data transfers.

You’ll also need a power adapter. If you don’t want to carry around multiple adapters, buy one that has two or more ports and can charge two devices at once (60W or higher will be best).

FAQ

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1. Can I leave my phone charging overnight?

Ever since smartphones arrived, the most common way of recharging them has been to plug them in when you go to bed, then disconnect them in the morning with a full charge to last the day.

This made a lot of sense when batteries took a long time to get up to full charge, as the eight hours in bed gave both the user and device time to recover from the previous day’s exertions.

But now, as the period it takes to charge a battery has dramatically reduced, it’s time to reconsider how you top up the tank.

iPhones use Lithium-ion batteries because, Apple states, they “charge faster, last longer, and have a higher power density for more battery life in a lighter package”. These are all fine features, but one thing that Li-ion is not really keen on is being reduced to 0 percent and then back up to 100 percent each day.

Partial charging throughout the day won’t harm the battery, and using features like Optimized Battery Charging or Charge Limit can help extend its life even further. There is an exception, as it’s considered good form to do a complete 0-100 percent charge about once a month, just to keep the battery in good shape.

For all other instances, though, the best practice is to top your battery up periodically during the day. Hopefully, this should keep the cell healthy for as long as possible. To make this easier to achieve we recommend keeping an extra charger at work or in your car so that you can pop the iPhone on to it when you see the battery beginning to fade.

2. Can I use any charger to charge my iPhone?

You can use third-party power adapters and Qi-certified chargers that are compliant with applicable country regulations and international and regional safety standards.

But there are faster, smaller and cheaper chargers that beat Apple’s own. There are various third-party charger offerings on the Apple store itself.

Charging an iPhone via a cable is the speediest way to get back up to full power but wireless charging is often more convenient. Apple has added a magnetic technology called MagSafe that makes wireless charging more efficient and therefore faster.

Avoid cheap knock-off products, as in some cases these have been known to damage devices.

3. Does fast charging damage an iPhone?

No. The battery and iOS work together to ensure that it won’t overheat or cause any harm.

If you have a thick protective case on your iPhone 18 Pro Max, it might be a good idea to remove it while using a fast-charger, just so the heat dissipates easily and doesn’t trigger the software warnings to slow down the power flow.

4. Is it safe to store a charged iPhone?

Should you find you are traveling without your device or need to leave it unused for multiple weeks or months, you’ll want to ensure that it’s charged to around 50 percent before turning it off.

This will protect the battery cell from dying while left idle. The battery will still lose charge at a slow but steady rate, so after six months it will need charging back up to 50% once more.

Once your iPhone’s battery runs out, it’s not much more than a paperweight. And occasionally it has been remarked that Apple’s devices don’t always last as long between charges as we would like. Well, help is at hand. In this giant tips roundup we gather the best power-saving tips and tricks to keep your battery running all day long. We start with the quick fixes: seven steps for those in battery distress. Below that, you’ll find far more in-depth discussion of the best ways to improve your iPhone’s battery life, from system-wide settings worth tweaking to third-party apps that you should stop – or start – using in order to save power.

The good news is that over the years Apple has done a lot to improve battery life, while eliminating some of the biggest battery drains, to the extent that you may only need to make a few changes to the way you use your iPhone 18 Pro Max to preserve battery life.

How to improve iPhone battery life

1. To save battery life, start by activating Low Power Mode
2. Use auto-brightness, Dark Mode and auto-lock to dim/reduce screen output
3. Identify – and reduce use of – high-drain apps. Go to Settings > Battery
4. Lower audio volume
5. Cull your notifications
6. If you can do without them, disable Hey Siri, Location Services and AirDrop
7. Update to the latest version of iOS

Is your battery faulty?

First things first: let’s check your hardware for faults.

Go to Settings > Battery > Battery Health and you will see a “measure of battery capacity relative to when it was new”. If all is well you will be told that your battery is “currently supporting normal peak performance”.

Turn on Optimized Battery Charging

Optimized Battery Charging is activated by default. It maximises the lifespan of your battery by minimising the amount of time it is plugged in while fully charged.

Apple explains that Optimized Battery Charging slows the rate of battery ageing by reducing the time that your iPhone spends fully charged.

If you plug in your iPhone before you go to bed at night, it will charge to 80%, and then wait until morning before charging the remainder. It does this by learning your habits, so if it knows you usually get up at 7, it will finish charging just before that. You’ll see a message indicating the time it will finish charging by.

This won’t fix a battery that won’t maintain its charge (and could leave you with an incompletely charged device on the occasions when you wake unusually early), but it should prolong the life of new batteries.

Check Battery Usage

A quick way to check whether there really is a problem with the battery in your iPhone is to head over to Settings > Battery and wait for your Battery Usage report to load up.

The Daily Usage section summarizes your battery usage today compared to previous days.

The App and System Activity section helps you understand what’s using your battery by listing the percentage of battery used by each app and system task.

Chances are that an app or your email settings are responsible for the drain rather than the battery or the iPhone being at fault.

Use Dark Mode

Dark Mode can make your screen more pleasant to view, and less of a strain on the eyes, if you’re looking at it in a darkened room or at night. But another benefit is that less power will be required to light up the display, making it a good option for the battery-poor.

Go to Settings > Display & Brightness and choose Dark. You can also set this mode to come on at night (turn on Automatic, then tap Options).

Turn down brightness

You can turn down the power requirements of the screen.

Lighting the pixels on your device’s Retina display requires a lot of energy. In fact, in testing, excessive screen brightness was the single biggest iPhone battery killer we found.

Luckily you can save some battery life by adjusting the iPhone’s brightness. A quick fix is to turn down brightness using the slider in Control Center, accessed by swiping down from the top-right edge of the display. Drag the brightness slider down as far possible, but with a setting that still leaves your device usable.

Apple suggests that the Auto-brightness feature is designed to conserve battery life, but it will do this in moderation. If you’re willing to go further in pursuit of better battery life, you’ll need to use manual settings, and turn off auto-brightness.

Don’t bother quitting apps

Next up, let’s dispel a battery-saving myth.

iPhone users tend to quit apps we aren’t using as it seems like a logical way to stop them sucking away at the battery. But apparently, this isn’t such a good idea after all.

Apple Store Genius Scotty Loveless explained back in 2014 that when you close an app you take it out of RAM, which means that when you open it again the iPhone has to load it back into memory. “All of that loading and unloading puts more stress on your device than just leaving it alone,” he wrote.

Indeed, Apple itself – in the person of software chief Craig Federighi – confirmed that closing apps doesn’t do anything for battery life.

And when Tim Cook was asked in an email, “Do you quit your multitasking apps frequently and is this necessary for battery life? Just wanting you to put this controversy to rest!”, Federighi stepped in to reply “I know you asked Tim, but I’ll at least offer my input: No and No.”

Loveless adds that, “unless you have enabled Background App Refresh, your apps are not allowed to run in the background unless they are playing music, using location services, recording audio, or the sneakiest of them all: checking for incoming VoIP calls, like Skype. All of these exceptions, besides the latter, will put an icon next to your battery icon to alert you it is running in the background.”

Turn on Low Power Mode

Low Power Mode reduces overall power requirements and makes your battery last longer.

Low Power Mode isn’t a default option that happens automatically in the background. It will be offered automatically when you hit 20% remaining power: you’ll see a warning flash up and the option to turn on Low Power Mode. When the icon is yellow, Low Power Mode is on. Low Power Mode automatically turns off when iPhone charges to 80% or higher.

Over on Birchtree they have run tests and found that “on average, my battery was at 17% at midnight in normal mode, but 49% in Low Power Mode.”

If you want, you can enable Low Power Mode without waiting for your iPhone 18 Pro Max to reach 20%. Go to Settings > Battery > Power Mode, then tap Low Power Mode.

When Low Power Mode is on it will reduce power consumption, stopping Mail fetch, Hey Siri, background app refresh, automatic downloads, and some visual effects. We actually have all those features turned off on our iPhone already, yet Low Power Mode still seems to have an effect.

Update iOS

Updating to the latest version of iOS is generally an all-purpose fix when you’re experiencing minor problems with an iPhone; Apple uses its regular (free) operating system updates to roll out fixes for vulnerabilities, bugs and glitches, and it’s entirely possible that an issue you’re experiencing can be fixed with a simple OS update. This includes battery problems. Go to Settings, tap General, then tap Software Update.

Switch off Facebook

Facebook has been accused of being a battery hog on the iPhone in iOS, and even Facebook itself has admitted that the iOS app uses a lot of resources in the background.

A Guardian report in February 2016 claimed that uninstalling the Facebook app can save you up to 15% of iPhone battery life. (Instead, you can access the Facebook website via the Safari app.)

A quick look in your Battery Usage log (Settings > Battery) will reveal how much battery life Facebook is guzzling. Ours has used 26% of our iPhone’s charge in the last 24 hours.

Facebook was also accused of allowing battery drain to occur even if iPhone owners have background app refresh disabled in Settings > General > Background App Refresh. Facebook admitted the fault and then fixed it, but battery drain issues are still plaguing users.

You could delete the Facebook app and just access Facebook through Safari on your iPhone.

While you’re there, take a look at how much battery life your other apps are draining too.

Use Auto-Lock

While the screen is on, you’re consuming power, so make sure that your iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max isn’t awake when you don’t need it to be. If you want to get the maximum battery life, it’s wise to set the Auto-Lock to an ultra-low 30 seconds.

Venture into Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto-Lock and set your device to sleep after 30 seconds of inactivity.

This will provide a substantial improvement to battery life over time. If you really want to max out your iPhone’s battery life, try to get into the habit of pressing the side button of your iPhone as soon as you’ve finished using it.

Disable Wi-Fi

If you still need a cellular connection but can live without Wi-Fi, you can disable Wi-Fi by swiping down from the top-right edge to reveal Control Center and tapping the Wi-Fi icon to turn it off (if it’s off, the Wi-Fi icon will be black). This will stop your phone from hunting around for Wi-Fi networks it could join.

There are a few situations where avoiding using Wi-Fi might stop battery drain. If the Wi-Fi signal is poor then your iPhone will require more power to transmit and receive data. Similarly, if you are rarely in a place where you could join a Wi-Fi hotspot then there is little point in the iPhone hunting for one.

However, we wouldn’t recommend using 3G/4G if there is a Wi-Fi network available. There is usually no financial cost associated with using a Wi-Fi network, while you may have to keep within a data allowance as part of your network contract.

Another reason is that your iPhone consumes less power accessing data over Wi-Fi than it does when doing the same task over 3G/4G. This is why Apple frequently quotes different battery life for 3G/4G compared to Wi-Fi, with the difference sometimes as much as a few hours.

Tap Settings > Wi-Fi and ensure Ask to Join Networks is set to Ask. This will help you spot open networks to join.

Disable Bluetooth

If you have Bluetooth on, the chances are you don’t need it. Swipe down from the top-right edge to open Control Center and check if Bluetooth is on: if it is you’ll see the icon that looks like a runic B highlighted in white.

Bluetooth is usually left on after an iOS update is installed, so you may not even be aware that it is on. If it is, tap the Bluetooth icon to turn it off. You can also tap Settings > Bluetooth and set Bluetooth to Off.

Bluetooth is considered to be a battery drainer. If you’re not using it to connect to a speaker, headphones, or other accessory, or to use the Continuity features in iOS, then switch it off.

Turn off AirDrop

One iPhone service that requires Bluetooth is AirDrop. AirDrop allows you to transfer photos and other files to and from nearby iPhones with the same feature switched on. Unfortunately, it could be a battery killer, because of the way AirDrop seeks out nearby iPhones to hook up with.

Disable 3G, 4G

If you can survive without data but still need to be contactable you could turn off 3G or 4G. Your data connection can be disabled in the Cellular section of Settings. Go to Settings > Cellular (or Mobile Data) and switch Cellular Data (or Mobile Data) to off.

If you aren’t using it then switching off cellular data will increase battery life. This has a benefit over just using Airplane Mode, as you will only disable the cellular data portion of your signal, e.g. EDGE, 3G, 4G, or LTE.

Normally your iPhone receives two signals at once: one for calls and SMS, and one for data. Now it only receives the signal for calls and SMS – which means you are still contactable, you just can’t browse Facebook (unless you can access a Wi-Fi network).

You should also note that, according to Apple Genius Scotty Loveless, the signal strength meter on the iPhone only shows the signal strength for the non-data connection, which means your iPhone could show 2-3 dots but actually have a very poor 3G or LTE connection, thus causing your iPhone to go into heavy search mode.

1. Tap Cellular, then tap Cellular Data Options.
2. Tap Voice & Data, then choose 5G Auto.

In this mode, your iPhone automatically switches to LTE when 5G speeds don’t provide noticeably better performance.

Turn down the volume

It might surprise you but the volume setting affects battery life too, so if you are playing music or other audio from your phone, turn it down using the volume buttons.

Of course you could save battery power by not playing music, or you could switch to headphones, which won’t require as much power as the iPhone’s internal speakers. Note that the music equaliser also takes up a surprising amount of power.

Tap Settings > Apps > Music and make sure EQ is turned to Off.

Stop vibrating

Head to Settings > Sounds & Haptics, tap Haptics and choose Never Play, because your device rattling around like crazy when a slew of messages arrives drains the battery like nobody’s business.

There are dozens of annoying jingles you can choose from to announce to the world that someone has just sent you a message without the accompanying vibration.

Tone down visual effects

Assuming you don’t suffer from some kind of motion sickness or balance disorder, the various 3D effects might excite you.

These pretty Parallax effects that make your icons and notifications appear to float over the wallpaper might look nice, but they constantly use your iPhone’s graphics processor and are therefore a drain on the battery that you could probably manage without if you were trying to get a last half hour of use out of your iPhone on a long journey home.

You can also go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion and switch on Reduce Motion to temporarily turn off all the parallax effects. Note that this will replace many system zoom effects with cross-fades which don’t look as nice, but might just give you those extra few minutes power that you need.

Avoid games and high-impact apps

It sounds obvious to say your iPhone’s battery is drained quicker the more you use your phone, but the speed with which it falls from 100 percent to nothing entirely depends on what apps you use.

Some apps burn through your battery much faster than others. Heavy use of the processor and GPU, for 3D games, or the GPS chip, for maps and location-based apps, uses up more energy than reading content in the Books app, for example.

If you play games with rich, detailed visuals, or 3D racing games like CSR Racing, your iPhone’s battery will be drained quickly. So if you’re away from a charger and waiting for an important call, playing these sort of games is not a good idea if your battery levels are already low.

If you’re on the way home and low on power, reading apps like Kindle or Instapaper won’t drain what’s left of your battery terribly quickly.

However, it probably wouldn’t be a smart move to start playing your favourite TV series, or, worse, the latest 3D gaming blockbuster. In fact, even quite simple games often utilise complex 3D trickery, and so when in the red battery-wise, avoid them entirely.

Minimise camera use

Isn’t it always the case that the battery on your iPhone runs out just as you take the perfect shot on a night out with your friends?

If you’re running low on battery you should keep your Camera app usage to a minimum, and definitely avoid using the flash.

Turn off Hey Siri

Even Siri can be a bit of a drain on battery life, and the Hey Siri feature in particular should be turned off if you want better battery life. Go to Settings > Siri, tap Requests, then tap “Siri” or “Hey Siri” and turn it off.

Not familiar with Hey Siri? If that feature is enabled, it listens out for the phrase “Hey Siri,” and when it hears it, Siri powers on and prepares for incoming commands. That might sound great (and it is!), but constantly listening out for the magic phrase will have an impact on battery life.

For exactly this reason, Hey Siri used to only work if your device was plugged into a charger, but – due in large part to popular demand – Apple relaxed that requirement in an iOS update. Good news, but something to look out for if battery life is a worry.

Notification Center

Similarly, Settings > Notifications might be worth a visit, although there’s sadly no global off switch. If you’re running out of power, editing notification settings for all your apps one by one might actually burn more power than it saves.

Each time a notification is received, the iPhone’s screen lights up and it plays a sound, which uses energy. Every message wakes your device for 5 to 10 seconds, and that can add up, if you get a lot of notifications every day, to a small percentage of your daily battery charge.

We can live without updates about Words With Friends, so it makes sense to turn off notifications for non-critical apps (incidentally, it was the persistent notifications in that app that lead us to delete it in the end).

To stop notifications, go to Settings > Notifications and scroll through the list of apps, looking to see which ones have Notifications turned on.

Tap on each one you’re not interested in, and deselect the Allow Notifications option.

Remove multiple email accounts

Multiple email accounts will consume use of your precious battery life. Try to fold all your different accounts into just the one email service then remove the additionals by tapping Settings > Apps > Mail > Mail Accounts and choosing an account and tapping Delete Account.

In the case of Gmail, for example, you could turn Mail off but keep your Gmail Calendar synced.

Turn off iCloud

Similarly, if you want to make that last bit of juice last longer, turn off anything you don’t need to be synced via iCloud.

iCloud uses a fair bit of data and power, so you can save battery life by turning off unused features. Tap Settings > [your name] > iCloud and turn off everything you don’t really use: for example, you may not need your Safari bookmarks to be available on the iPhone.

iCloud backup only works when the phone is plugged in so you can leave that on.

Turn off auto time zone

The iPhone can automatically update its time depending on where you are in the world. Because the iPhone determines the correct time via Location Services, this uses a small amount of power.

Tap Settings > General > Date & Time and turn off Set Time Automatically.

Turn off Location Services

Most of the time it’s not iOS itself that’s causing the iPhone’s battery to drain quickly, but all the apps that are running on it.

There are a number of apps that utilise location services on your iPhone and they can play their part in draining your battery too. It’s even more frustrating when it’s not obvious why some of them need to know where you are in the first place.

To stop apps from using Location Services, tap Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services and either turn off Location Services altogether (by tapping the slider beside it), or deselect any apps that you don’t need to access your GPS.

Disable background app refresh

Background apps have been allowed to periodically refresh their data. This means when you open the app again, you’ll see the latest updates immediately.

This can be useful in certain circumstances, but most of the time is just wasting processing power and battery juice updating apps that you don’t really care about.

If you want to get the most out of your battery, turning off Background App Refresh will help. Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh. Here you can turn off Background App Refresh altogether, or prune the list down on an app-by-app basis.

Disable app updating

Apple gave us the ability to have apps update without manually telling them to.

This is a useful feature that means apps will always be up to date, but it can be a drain on your battery. Also, some people prefer to update on a case-by-case basis, since occasionally a developer will update an app in a way that reduces user satisfaction.

Luckily, you can stop apps from auto-updating. Switch off automatic updates in Settings > Apps > App Store and turn off App Updates.

If you decide to leave any of these Automatic Downloads settings on, ensure that the switch for ‘Cellular Data’ isn’t turned on if you have limited data allowance.

Show the battery percentage

If you want to keep an eye on your battery level, you may find it easier to see a percentage representation, rather than a bar icon. If you want to see how much charge you have left as a percentage, go to Settings > Battery and activate Battery Percentage. Now you will have a more precise read-out of what life your device has left.

All devices will warn when your battery life hits 20 percent and then 10 percent; also, be mindful that even if your battery has a few percent left in it, your device might automatically shut down anyway, so don’t be doing anything too important when your iPhone is gasping for breath.

Apple Genius Loveless does warn that some people become so concerned about their battery percentage that they keep turning on their iPhone to check it, and every time they wake up their phone a little bit of power dies.

Calibrate

If despite trying all these tips to get more battery life out of your iPhone, you are still finding yourself running out of juice earlier than you think you should – perhaps your iPhone battery is going from 17 percent to 2 percent in a matter of minutes – your iPhone might need a battery calibration.

Periodically drain your iPhone’s battery totally and then charge it up until it’s completely full. That’s down to 0, and up to 100 percent. You should do this at least once a month.

This process, called calibration, helps your device estimate its battery life more accurately. Calibrating your battery will ensure that you know when you need to charge the battery, but the procedure itself doesn’t actually make the battery itself last longer.

Another reason why your phone might exhibit this kind of behaviour is if the battery needs servicing or replacing. You can find out if that’s the case by going to Settings > Battery > Battery Health.

How much battery life have you got left?

Frustratingly, there is no easy answer to this question.

This is probably because the amount of battery life remaining is entirely dependent on what you are planning to do with your iPhone. If Apple told you to expect two hours and then you ran a movie on full blast you would probably run out of battery before the movie ended. However, there are third-party apps that can give you some guidance about how much battery life is remaining.

If you search the App Store for Battery Saver or Battery Doctor you will see a number of tools that offer system tweaks, with a particular focus on saving battery life. Expect to see an estimate for how much battery life is left, based on what’s running in the background, and your current system settings. If you perform some of the tweaks suggested by the app, you’ll see this number creep up.

For example, when testing one such app we switched on Airplane Mode we gained about an hour of battery life – the battery life remaining changed from 8hrs, 17mins to 9hrs, 21mins. Tap on Optimize to see a breakdown of how much longer your iPhone could last if you shut down certain services, such as disabling Wi-Fi or GPS, or reducing brightness.

Tap on Remaining for details of how much time you have remaining to do certain tasks, web browsing on Wi-Fi, or web browsing on 3G, talk time, video playback, photo taking, and more.

Should you leave your iPhone 18 Pro Max plugged in?

When you get to work do you plug in your iPhone, so that it’s nicely charged up by the time it’s home time?

In principle this should mean your iPhone always has enough power to get you through the commute home. But could this practice of leaving your iPhone plugged in all the time cause damage to the life of the battery?

There is some debate about this. The iPhone is designed to stop charging its battery once the battery is fully charged, so this should mean that the battery can’t be ‘overcharged’ as such. Apple’s optimized battery charging seeks to minimise the amount of time the battery spends fully charged.

However, we know from our experience with laptops that have been left plugged in at all times that the ability of the battery to sustain a charge seems to deplete over time.

The best advice is to make sure that you drain your battery down to zero at least once a month if you want to ensure that you get a good life span out of your battery.

Turn your device off

This one’s a last resort, but if you need an iPhone 18 Pro Max to survive a weekend or a power outage, and its reason for being powered up is essential communications only, turn the device off when you’re not using it.

First, that’ll stop you being tempted in just having another quick go on Candy Crush; secondly, it’ll also ensure even background tasks aren’t slowly supping power. Simultaneously press and hold the side button and either volume button until the sliders appear, then drag the Power Off slider.

Note, however, that if you only have a few percent of battery left then your iPhone might not power on again if you turn it off. So switch to Airplane Mode in those circumstances.

Get a battery pack

If you still need more battery life after all these tips, you should consider an external battery pack, or a case with one built in. There are many on the market that are worth considering.