How to Make Your iPhone Less Laggy

Has your iPhone started to feel slow and unresponsive? Annoying lag when opening apps, typing, or browsing can make your iPhone frustrating to use. Before resorting to upgrading your hardware, there are several troubleshooting steps you can take to speed up your current iPhone and make it less laggy.

Close Unused Apps

Having too many apps open in the background taxes your iPhone’s memory and can cause lag. Make sure to frequently close apps you aren’t using:

• Double press the Home button to view open apps.
• Swipe up on any apps you want to close, removing them from the app switcher.
• This frees up RAM and resources for improved performance.

Get in the habit of closing unused apps regularly to prevent them from dragging down your iPhone over time.

Update to the Latest iOS Version

Keeping your iPhone’s operating system up to date is key for performance. New iOS versions fix bugs, vulnerabilities, and lag issues from previous versions.

• Go to Settings > General > Software Update to download the latest iOS release.
• Back up your device and install major iOS updates as soon as possible for the speed enhancements.

Updating provides under-the-hood improvements that often help speed up older iPhones. Don’t ignore new iOS releases.

Turn Off Unnecessary Features

Many iPhone features are useful but inessential and end up draining resources. Consider turning off:

• Background App Refresh for apps you rarely use.
• Location Services for apps that don’t need your location.
• Visual effects like parallax and live wallpapers.

Disabling unneeded features frees up system resources and storage for better speed. Only keep essentials active.

Stop Automatic Downloads

The automatic downloading of apps, music, programs and iOS updates can bog down your iPhone with bandwidth-heavy background processes. Halt auto downloads:

• Disable automatic app updates in App Store settings. Update manually.
• Turn off automatic Downloads for music, books and Audible content you added.
• Disable automatic iOS updates and install major updates manually.

This prevents your iPhone from constantly installing new data in the background, which can reduce lag.

Offload Unused Apps

The iOS Offload Unused Apps feature removes dormant apps but keeps their documents and data. Offloading large unused apps frees up storage which improves speed.

• Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
• Tap Offload Unused Apps and confirm. This removes apps you haven’t used recently.
• You can easily reinstall offloaded apps later from the App Store.

Offloading gives you storage headroom while keeping your app data intact. A great way to declutter your iPhone.

Clear Browser Cache and Cookies

Web browser caches and cookies build up over time and can slow down browsing. Flushing this data gives a fresh start:

• In Safari, go to Settings > Safari and select Clear History and Website Data.
• Delete browsing data for the past day, hour, or all history. This also clears cookies and cache.
• You can also clear this data directly within the Safari app under Settings > Clear History and Data.

After clearing this data, web pages should load faster and feel more responsive.

Disable Widgets

Live updating widgets like news feeds and weather widgets constantly refresh in the background which can create lag. Limit widgets:

• Long press on any home screen, tap Edit.
• Remove any widgets that have real-time refreshing capabilities or that you don’t need.

The fewer live widgets running, the less multitasking your iPhone has to handle. Stick to static, simple widgets.

Turn On Reduce Motion

The parallax effect and other iOS visual motions look slick but drain resources. The Reduce Motion setting under Accessibility turns these off:

• Go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Turn on Reduce Motion.
• This disables zoom animations, parallax wallpapers and other unnecessary visual effects.

Reduce Motion limits lag-inducing graphical flourishes. You may not even notice the visual changes.

Restart Your iPhone

If your iPhone is very laggy, try restarting it. This clears out any memory leaks or glitched background processes bogging down performance.

• On devices with a Home button, hold down the Power and Home buttons together until powered off.
• On newer iPhones, hold the Side button and either Volume button until you see the power off slider.

Restarting provides a clean slate and often resolves inexplicable iPhone lag and glitches.

By tuning settings, updating software, removing unused apps and restarting regularly, you can make your iPhone run faster for smoother usage and interaction. Don’t tolerate lag – use these tips to speed up your iPhone.