4 Easy Ways to Speed up Your IPhone

4 Easy Ways to Speed up Your IPhone

We’ve all been there. You’re in the middle of a text message or email, and your iPhone slows down like a sloth and digitally vomits all over itself like a toddler on a tilt a whirl. (Yes, that’s a Blonde girl’s technical analogy.) Have no fear! Here are four easy tips for you to try and recoup a little speed.

1). De-clutter the phone.

Ladies, we all know what happens when we don’t clean out our purses. They have the potential to become a bottomless black hole of clutter. And, if you’re like me, your phone has transitioned into gateway device leading to digital hoarding addiction. Photos, Apps, Video Clips and Music are the new Chapstick, breath mints, a few lose ibuprofen tablets and an old, dried up tube Maybeline mascara you forgot about. If the purse gets to heavy to carry, you clean it out. Believe it or not the same rules applies with your phone. The more clutter weighing it down, the slower it becomes. Spend some time clearing out photos and video you don’t need to hold on to, any apps you may have downloaded but never use, and maybe consider signing up for a music service, like Spotify or Apple Music, instead of keeping your music files on your phone. You’ll be amazed how much better your phone will perform without all the excess clutter.

2). Quit the Background Refreshing.

The ability of an App to be able to keep connected to the Internet is a handy feature. It makes the Apps respond quicker because they’ve already pulled in all the new data. Facebook and Mail are two examples of apps I use on my iPhone that I want to be able to refresh themselves, allowing me to get any new updates right as they come in. Some Apps I don’t want talking to the Internet all the time, like Goldstar or 1Password. By default, your phone has the Background App Refresh setting turned on for every App on the phone. This is a great feature in theory but, not so much in execution. If you have a ton of Apps installed, it can slow your phone down to a crawl. To take control of this, go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh and customize which Apps you want to use this feature and which ones you don’t. FYI: don’t confuse this with closing Apps from the multitasking screen.

3). Turn Off the Fancy Animations and Visual Effects.

Sometimes, older iPhones struggle to run the newest version of iOS. As good as the software may be, it can’t make up for hardware that simply wasn’t there to begin with. Those flashy new features can cause your phone to run like molasses in January, which is no fun. An easy way to solve this problem, is to tell your iPhone to ignore all those new bells and whistles. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility. Tap on Increase Contrast and then move the Reduce Transparency slider to the On position. Go back to the previous screen, tap Reduce Motion and then move the slider to the On position too. When you leave Settings you won’t see the animations and transparency effects any more, but you’ll find your phone feels a little faster. Of course, newer iPhones probably won’t be impacted by these changes.

4). When All Else Fails – Try The Factory Reset.

If you’ve tried everything you can think of, including the options I mentioned earlier, then the last resort you can try resetting the phone back to the factory settings. This consists of wiping the phone completely clean and starting over as if it were brand new. Before you panic, yes, I mean deleting everything off of it. If all your data is backed up and / or in the cloud, you have nothing to worry about. Everything will come back. If you haven’t backed up your phone, then, of course, you’ll want to do that first. For those of you who need to review backing up, you’ll to click here. When you’re ready, go to Settings > General > Reset. From here, you’ll select Erase all Content and Settings. When it finishes, the iPhone will walk you through the set up process, just like it did the day you got it. When it prompts you, select Restore from Back up, either from iTunes or iCloud, and all you data will be returned. However, you can also choose to set it up as a new phone, in which case, you’ll sign in to your Apple ID and re-download the apps one by one.