When your iPhone is slow, there are a lot of things you can do to speed it up from home.
First, open Settings, scroll down, tap General, then tap Background App Refresh.
Background App Refresh allows your apps to download new content in the background,
even when you're not using them.
And that process of downloading new content can really slow down your iPhone.
Not to mention that some apps kind of abuse this feature by taking it to the extreme,
not to call anybody out, but Facebook.
In Background App Refresh, ask yourself,
does this app need to be able to download new content in the background of my iPhone?
Most of the time, the answer is going to be no, so I'll start turning off Switches.
The exception primarily is Messaging Apps.
The idea for this video is we're going to decrease the load on your iPhone's processor,
which is going to speed it up.
Next, let's talk about Push Mail.
I'll tap back upper left-hand corner of the screen,
going back to the main page of Settings, scroll down, and tap Mail,
then tap Accounts, and then tap Fetch New Data.
When Push Mail is on, your iPhone maintains a connection to your email server
so that it can constantly check to see if there's new mail that is going to use processing power.
First, turn off the switch next to Push at the top of the screen,
and then select your fetch interval. I like every 30 minutes.
Any time you open the Mail app, it will fetch new emails for you.
Our next tip kind of blew my mind.
I didn't believe it at first, but David looked it up on Apple's website.
They say it's the truth, and that's turning off Low Power Mode.
We aren't shy about the fact that we don't like Low Power Mode.
It turns off a bunch of great features on your iPhone.
But what I didn't realize was that Low Power Mode actually slows down your iPhone
by limiting the amount of power its processor can use.
I'll head back to the main page of Settings, scroll up, and tap Battery,
and look at the switch next to Low Power Mode.
Never turn that on. You don't need to.
But if you're still not satisfied with the speed of your iPhone,
it's time for our next tip, which is removing unnecessary widgets.
When Apple released iOS 14, they added the ability to add widgets directly to your home screen.
And even before that, you could add them all the way on the left-hand side,
the left-most page of your home screen.
Widgets are essentially mini apps,
and they could be constantly running on your iPhone, slowing it down.
How else are they going to show you information?
It's not magic.
It works like magic.
About a week ago, when I was preparing for this video,
I went and added this really gigantic Facebook widget to a home screen on my iPhone,
just to see if it would slow things down or drain battery life.
And the results were kind of shocking.
So if I go back into the Settings app, and we're here in Battery,
if I just tap on Last 10 Days, scroll down, Facebook.
Three hours, 30 minutes of background activity.
That's a lot.
To be fair, I also have Background App Refresh on for Facebook,
but hopefully that gives you some idea of just how much these apps
can be running in the background, slowing down your iPhone.
To delete a widget on your iPhone, I'm going to close out of Settings,
go back to this Facebook widget.
I'm going to press and hold on it, and then tap Remove Widget,
then tap Remove.
Let's talk about apps, starting with a controversial topic
that probably shouldn't be controversial.
But everybody loves a controversy, so...
The controversial topic of closing your apps.
An app that has crashed in the background of your iPhone
can rev its CPU up to 100%, slowing everything else down.
If your iPhone is being slow and you can't figure out why,
try closing out your apps.
If your iPhone has Face ID, swipe up from the bottom of the screen
to the center of the screen to open the App Switcher.
If your iPhone has a Home button, just double-press that Home button,
then swipe your apps up and off the top of the screen.
And before you go, leaving negative comments
about why you should never close apps on your iPhone...
You're out to get us.
Consider this.
Closing your apps is the number two step in Apple's article
about what to do when your iPhone is slow or unresponsive.
We're talking about how to speed up your iPhone,
but a lot of the comments we get say to slow down our delivery.
When you become a Pay It Forward channel member,
you get a PDF of some of our most popular videos
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So come and join Debra Bennett, Dorothy Rountree, Jim Lott,
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And there are other ways that apps can slow down your iPhone,
particularly if they're out of date.
Out of date apps can cause software problems
and bugs that slow down your iPhone.
On your iPhone, first we'll open up the App Store.
I got it kind of buried in this Apple folder.
Then tap on your account icon, upper right hand corner of the screen.
Scroll down to the Available Updates section.
You could tap Update All to update all of your apps at once,
or you could tap on an individual app, just tap the Update button to its right.
Are you telling me that I have to go in here every day and check for app updates?
I have a life.
No, I'm not saying that because you can go into the Settings app on your iPhone
and have your apps automatically update.
I'll close out of the App Store,
open Settings, tap back to the main page of Settings,
and scroll down to App Store,
and then here underneath App Updates, turn on that switch.
And just like updating your apps,
it's important to keep your iPhone up to date too with one important caveat.
In the Settings app on your iPhone, tap back to the main page of Settings,
scroll up and tap General, then tap Software Update,
and tap Download and Install if a new update is available.
And here's the caveat.
If you have an older iPhone that is the last model supported by the new operating system,
I've seen instances where that slows down an iPhone
because the processor can't keep up with all the demands of the newest operating system.
This is a real problem on my iPad.
It's running iPad OS 16, but it's super old and it's so slow.
I know, it kills iPads.
It's borderline unusable.
That's what happened to my last iPad too.
And while your phone is updating,
if you could hit that subscribe button below this video, it helps us out so much.
Let's talk about the importance of maintaining some storage space that's free on your iPhone.
When the operating system is running, it needs kind of a little shelf
where it can put its unused apps on, called virtual memory,
and then take it off that shelf.
It needs some space to work.
If there's no space for it to work, it slows down your phone.
Let's tap back to General, upper left-hand corner of the screen,
then tap on iPhone storage.
So I have a lot of storage space available.
This isn't going to be an issue for me.
But on your iPhone, if you are really low on storage space,
take a look at your apps and see how you might be able to clear some up.
So for example, Podbean.
I listened to a local podcast that originally was just on Podbean.
It's a terrible platform.
They've since moved to Apple podcasts much better.
I no longer need Podbean.
I hate Podbean.
Let's say it's really not good.
Let's tap delete app and then tap delete.
Apple says leave at least one gigabyte of storage space available.
I don't believe it.
I think you need more.
More than that.
Yeah, I'd go with 10.
But Apple isn't going to come out and say don't use your phone.
The fact they say anything about this is surprising to me.
If you're having issues with storage space on your iPhone,
check out our video in the card above and section below the subscribe button
about all the things you can do to clear up storage space on your iPhone.
The last way to speed up your iPhone can be to clear history and website data in Safari.
As you use Safari, it saves tons of data and that data is known as a cache.
And the purpose of that cache is to speed up your iPhone.
But over time, that cache can become gigantic and start to slow down your iPhone,
particularly when you're using Safari.
In the settings app, we'll tap back to the main page of settings.
Scroll down and tap Safari, then scroll down to clear history and website data.
Or you could scroll all the way down to advanced, then tap on website data.
And at the bottom of this menu, you could just tap remove all website data,
preserving your history.
But this isn't the only setting in Safari you need to change to speed up your iPhone.
Check out this next video to learn about all the iPhone Safari settings
you need to change right now.