Smartphones are incredible devices, but even the most powerful smartphones will eventually become outdated and succumb to slowdown. You might notice apps taking longer to load or scrolling feeling sluggish until even attempting to perform simple tasks becomes frustrating. Thankfully, if you have noticed your phone starting to slow down, it's not too late. Here are some easy tips that might help get your phone running much smoother again.
Have You Tried Turning It Off and On Again?
This tip might seem like a no-brainer, but many people don't bother to restart their phones regularly. Restarting your phone clears temporary files, closes lingering apps, and frees up memory for a quick and easy way to give your phone a refresh.
Clean Out the Digital Clutter
Our phones can easily and unintentionally become digital hoarder houses full of photos, videos, downloads, and apps we no longer use. Take some time to declutter your digital life, delete apps and old downloads you don't use, and either clear out some of your photo/video albums or move their contents onto an external hard drive or cloud storage service. Getting rid of old apps, in particular, goes a long way towards freeing up storage space, extending battery life, and speeding up your phone as processing power spent on their background activities is freed up.
Limit or Disable Background App Refresh
Background app refresh allows apps to continue some operations and fetch new content even when you're not actively using them. While background app refresh can be helpful for keeping your apps up-to-date, it also drains your battery and can slow down your phone. Consider what apps you use frequently that would actually benefit from background app refresh, and then go to your phone's settings and turn it off for the rest of your apps that don't need constant refreshing in the background.
Disable Location Tracking on Unnecessary Apps
Many apps use location services to constantly track your location, even when you're not using them, which drains your battery and negatively impacts performance. Restrict location services access for apps that don't need constant location awareness, especially if they don't benefit you from knowing your location.
Reduce Motion Effects
Many phones have fancy motion effects like app parallax, zoom animations, and dynamic backgrounds. Even if these effects are aesthetically pleasing, they can also be resource-intensive and slow down your phone. Turning off motion effects frees up processing power that can then be used to make your phone faster.
Update Your Apps and Operating System
App and operating system updates often include performance improvements and bug fixes. Make sure you're running the latest versions of your apps and operating system to ensure optimal performance and security.
Check Your Battery Health
A degraded battery can also contribute to slowdowns. You can check the battery health of most phones from the settings. If your phone's battery health is bad, it might be throttling performance to conserve battery life. You should consider replacing dying batteries for optimal performance.
Nuclear Option: Reset Your iPhone
If all of the above tricks fail and your phone is still running slow, a factory reset might be necessary. Performing a factory reset wipes your phone clean and restores it to its original settings, which is the most effective way to clear out bugs and any excessive data that might be causing slowdowns. But be careful with this nuclear option, as if you don't back up your data before doing a factory reset, you will lose all of it. Additionally, it is a good idea to sign out of any cloud storage solutions you have connected to your phone to ensure you avoid losing important data stored on them.