Has your iPhone ever become so slow that you can’t open any apps, answer calls, or even log onto the internet? This may tempt you to throw your phone at the wall.
Believe me—I’ve been there.
But as frustrating as this situation is, chucking your device will only destroy it. There are better ways to fix your iPhone when it’s lagging. Here are some simple tips and tricks to do it.
1. Delete Any Apps You No Longer Use
A large portion of what was making my iPhone lag was the number of apps that I had downloaded onto the device.
Yeah, Trivia Crack is fun, but when your friends are no longer playing the game, what’s the point of keeping the app on your phone?
Also, do you really need five different photo-editing apps? If they all do the same thing, maybe it’s not the best idea to keep them all.
Scroll through the homepages on your iPhone and delete any apps you haven’t used in a few weeks. They’re pretty much useless and only take up storage space.
If you need these apps again, you can always re-download them in the future.
2. Restart Your iPhone
I know this sounds like the IT guy from work who asks, “Well, did you restart your computer?” whenever you’re having an issue but, seriously, restarting your phone does work!
Technology can’t run perfectly 24/7. So if your iPhone is lagging, reboot it at least once a week.
This helps stop any apps that are continuously running in the background and bogging down your device.
3. Turn Off the Background App Refresh Feature
Do you notice a running theme here? Clearly, the culprit to your phone’s demise is the apps you’re downloading.
Background app refresh occurs when your apps stay idle in the background of your operating system so that they can continue to send notifications and check for updates or new content.
Once I turned this feature off on my phone, my device ran faster and much smoother. And don’t worry—you’ll still receive notifications even if you turn this feature off.
4. Delete Unnecessary Storage
When the problem is not the apps on your phone, it could be that your storage is almost full.
If you need to fix your iPhone when it’s lagging as a result of the storage nearing its full capacity, you can easily thwart this problem by deleting unnecessary data.
Navigate to iPhone Storage in Settings and you’ll see which apps are taking up too much storage space. Then you can clear the cache and other data in these apps.
Check if the photos and videos on your phone are also taking up a lot of storage. Believe me, you don’t need all these files.
In addition, you can also create a backup in iCloud or Google Drive so you can keep a copy of all those photos and videos without them slowing down your phone.
Regardless of whether my phone is slow or not, I always go through my storage once a month to delete anything I no longer need.
You should also do this – delete any duplicate pictures, random screenshots, old text threads, and more to ensure your phone has enough storage to run properly.
Reset as a Last Resort to Fix Your iPhone When it’s Lagging
The above tips helped solve my problem, but your iPhone could still be slow after trying these troubleshooting methods.
Sometimes, the last resort is to completely reset your device to its default mode. If none of the options above are effective, then this one should be able to fix your iPhone when it’s lagging.
I had a friend who needed to use this setting, and she accidentally clicked “erase all settings and content” instead of the “reset” feature, which caused her to lose all her pictures, messages, and contacts!
Don’t be like my friend – make sure that you know everything about resetting your iPhone before using this feature to avoid accidentally deleting your important information.
See? You don’t need to throw your phone at the wall just yet! There are ways to fix your lagging issue. I understand this struggle all too well, but these tips and tricks helped a lot—good luck!
A passion for writing and ongoing research projects gives Catherine an incredibly broad knowledge of all things. She has authored an incredible number of articles and can be found in the wilderness when not attached to technology or listening to podcasts.