iPhone battery draining after iOS 18 Update

It’s not about getting one to up-grade. Just upgraded to iPhone 16 running iOS 18. My old phone was an iPhone 11 running iOS 17.6. Never realized how good I had it battery wise. Maybe I got lucky, cause the old phone would hold its charge for 2 days before needing a recharge. Though after 5 years i was having to recharge it every night.

So, I decided to up grade. I needed 5G anyway. This new phone sucks power, about 6% per every hour of active use. Either I have a defective battery or Apple needs an update to iOS 18.

My ipad9 was holding 10 days without charging (I use it mainly to read and watch tv in bed) .. after update to iPads18 I had to charge it every 2 days. It was loosing 40% of charge during the night, with cover (!)

I have the solution: I reverted back to iPadOS 17.7 and now everything is back to normal.

I wish that apple would spend more time on quality of products and software instead of delivering something every year without all functions being implemented and core operations of the OS totally faulty. This is not ok apple. This is not the first time too.

Same here. My iPhone 15 Pro battery drains about -20% more than before the update. My usage levels are the same. I am using the custom icon colors, but in all black with dark mode. Thought that might improve battery life, but apparently not in any significant amount.

One bug, or not a good new feature, I noticed is that when I my wifi hotspot is not in use, when I shut my connected device off, it remains connected unless I manually turn off hotspot. Before, it did that automatically. But I turn it off manually right away every time, so I'm not sure if that's causing extra battery drain, just annoyance.

It could be the bloat. The iPhone has so many features that I don't need or want that could free up space. For instance, I was really surprised about all the "accessibility" features there are, like eye tracking, etc. Cool stuff, but I don't need or want that on my phone. iPhone is extremely bloated. We need the option to delete unessential features like those.

Ever since I did the update 18 I get on my phone in the morning and my phone is just draining so fast like it’s dead in like two or three hours after I use it before I got the update. It wasn’t like that I don’t know what to do with this. I have the iPhone 14 if you have similar problems like this and you know how to fix it please let me know

My iPhone battery went from 100 to 66% after installing IOS 18 update. As apple boss about a better battery life it seems that they just drained the battery or is programmed to drain the batteries. Apple should fix this big or replace everyone’s battery

Unfortunately crazy battery drain happening for me as well on iPhone 16 pro. Still not solution. 

I tried everything. I’m quite not new on iOS and I didn’t find any solution. Avoid common comments please. There is no app working in the background acting wired. It’s just some sort of process working in the background and draining battery even when not using iPhone.

Background activity off. Most of the commons draining tasks off.

I’m comparing my activity to my previous iPhone 14 I have to my girlfriend. She is at 78% while I’m at 45%. Something not going right here.

Restored one time and solved nothing. I would like to avoid restoring everything and not using iCloud backup to be honest.

Same here . I have a 14 pro max and have been able to listen to Iheart radio app all day at work. I updated 3 days ago and 2 of those 3 days- my battery is at 2-4% at the end of the day from listening to the app. Today…. I had no battery and just shut off

I have had bad battery life on my 15 pro max since ios 18. Then 18.0.1 comes along and I'm still having bad battery life. I do hope they fix it soon because I want to go back to charging every two days and not every day. I have Apple Care+ so I think I'm going to go ask for a replacement because so far 18 hasn't impressed me at all.

iOS 18.0.1 did not make a difference. The root reason of the drain (in my case) is that the Cellular Data section in Cellular Settings is refreshed every second, draining the battery and heating up the phone. The temporary workaround that worked for me was to run "Reset Network Settings". This will stop the update of the cellular data area, as well as the battery drain and heating issues. This only lasts a day, so I am doing it virtually every day when I notice the phone heating up. It is a difficult workaround until Apple issues a remedy.

Currently on 18.0.1 with the 15 pro max. I have the Apple magnet charging device for wireless. Noticed it was getting hot on charging and would only get to 85%. I switched to the USB-C cable and no change. If I power the device off, it will go to 100% (not get hot) then turning back on, quickly drains to 85%. I got it October 2023. In my experience, the latest update made it worse.

Yeah I’m waiting for the IOS18.1 to drop Oct 28 & hopefully battery life is back to normal. That’s what people are saying about IOS18.1. I recommend staying on iPhone until Oct 28 & see if battery life is still have issue then I’ll recommend upgrading to Samsung but I’m an apple person to I won’t be switching to any other phone.

The only true fix we had for my wife's Iphone (pixel user here) was to toggle off anything related to learning, suggestions and Siri, entirely, along all apps. Seems logical since the update is mostly related to Apple's preparation of the AI rollout.

Try it and hopefully it works for yours, too.

Found fix! Had the same issue. Brand new iPhone 16 Pro with iOS 18. Battery was draining super fast while it was overheating at the same time. Charged all night and the phone had only 70% in the morning because it stopped charging due to overheating. Turned out, my calendar app was using more power than the entire phone and all the other apps combined. After I deleted the calendar app, my phone started working without overheating and lasted for almost 2 days with one full charge.

Already did that, no change.

Example: fully charged yesterday 10:30pm, unplugged, left over night, this morning at 06:00am 18% battery left.

A full reset is also not an option, sorry. You can't expect people to do full resets after every update and spend hours if not days to get everything working again.

Yes, I know we have backups, but there are plenty of apps that won't backup completely for security reasons, banking and so on.

Found fix! Had the same issue. Brand new iPhone 16 Pro with iOS 18. Battery was draining super fast while it was overheating at the same time. Charged all night and the phone had only 40% in the morning because it stopped charging due to overheating. Turned out, my calendar app was using more power than the entire phone and all the other apps combined. After I deleted the calendar app, my phone started working without overheating and lasted for almost 2 days with one full charge. Also, I noticed, there is no need to deleting the calendar app. Alternatively, you can just turn off iCloud sync for Calendar and that will also stop it from draining your battery. I hope they will fix that with the next update.