This Is Why Your iPhone Is Charging Slow (And How You Can Fix It)

Load your iPhone isn’t always as simple as plugging it into a power source, especially when you’re in a hurry and need your phone to charge as quickly as possible.

You need to consider where your phone is plugged in, what settings are enabled (or disabled) on your phone, and what type of charger you are using. Otherwise, you could end up with an iPhone that’s barely charged and will probably die when you need it most.

Read more: Best iPhone in 2022: Which Apple phone is right for you?

In the guide below, we’ll show you nine tips and tricks that can help you charge your iPhone as quickly as possible when you’re in a rush. Here’s what you need to know.

If you’re on the go and need to charge your iPhone, check out Apple MagSafe Portable Battery for iPhone and this list of the best power banks in 2022.

Stop using your old charger

The fastest way to charge your iPhone is to use a fast charger: a 20 watt power adapter with a USB-C to Lightning cable. As long as you own a iPhone 8 or later, you can fast charge your phone to about 50% battery in about 30 minutes. If you have an hour to spare, you can fully charge it. Even 10 minutes of fast charging can boost your battery to double digits, so if you’re short on time, always go for the fast charger option.

Read more: The best iPhone 13 fast chargers at the lowest prices we can find

Apple no longer provides power adapters when you buy a new phone, only the cable, but you can buy Apple’s 20 watt power adapter from Apple and Amazon. According to Apple, you can also use other compatible fast-charging power bricks, but you’ll need at least a 20-watt brick to fast-charge an iPhone 12 and later.

A wireless charger can work — this model is best

The second fastest way to charge your iPhone is with Apple’s MagSafe charger and a 20-watt power adapter, but for this to work you need to own an iPhone 12 or iPhone 13 to get the faster 15-watt wireless charging. If your iPhone is dead, you should reach about 30% battery in about 30 minutes of wireless charging.

However, that doesn’t mean you can use any Qi wireless charger, which is the industry standard, for fast charging. While the MagSafe charger supports 15 watts, a Qi charger only gives you up to 7.5 watts, which is much slower than a MagSafe and barely faster than the traditional charger. 5 watt wall charger. Be aware that magnetic wireless chargers that are not MagSafe certified will also charge at the slower 7.5 watt speed.

Stop using your computer to charge your phone. Please?

Your laptop might seem like a handy way to charge your iPhone, especially if you spend most of your day at a computer and want to keep a close eye on incoming text messages and notifications. Unfortunately, your computer will still charge your phone slower than any wall charger or wireless charger.

Your computer’s USB port, whether it’s a larger and older USB-A or the newer and smaller USB-C, can’t supply the same amount of power as any wall outlet, even a 5 watt AC adapter. And that’s especially true if you have an older computer with a faulty USB port or an incompatible charging cable, both of which can slow down the charging process even further.

Don’t Touch Your iPhone While It’s Charging

If you want your iPhone to charge as fast as possible, try to stay away from it as much as possible. If you’re streaming videos or playing mobile games while charging your iPhone, the battery will charge much slower, so leave it untouched if you can.

An easy way to speed up your battery charge

Even if your screen is asleep, your phone is still running in the background, constantly refreshing apps, sending notifications, and turning your screen on, which wastes battery power. If you want your iPhone to charge faster, the best thing to do is turn it off.

If you don’t want to turn it off, do this instead

If you don’t want to turn off your iPhone, but still want to help it charge faster, you can enable airplane mode, which disables all wireless transmission features such as cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, all of which consume energy. If they are off, your iPhone may charge faster. And this way, you can also quickly turn off airplane mode to quickly check any text message or phone call you might be waiting for.

Change iPhone Settings to Charge Batteries Faster

You know all those tips that help you preserve the battery in the first place? You can use these same features and settings to help your iPhone charge faster if you don’t plan to turn it off.

• Low power mode. Enable it to reduce or affect battery draining features like 5G, screen brightness, auto lock, background app refresh, auto downloads, etc.
• dark modeThe jury is out on just how much battery saving Dark Mode does, but turning it on while you’re charging your iPhone doesn’t hurt, especially if every percentage counts.
• Reduce the brightness of your screen: The brighter your screen, the faster your battery drains, so turn it off completely while it charges.

This iPhone feature could be slowing down your charging

Apple has a built-in tool that helps prevent your iPhone battery from degrading so quickly, but this same feature also slows down the charging of your device. While the feature typically only slows down your iPhone during long periods of charging, and usually overnight, it can be helpful to turn it off when charging your phone. Go to Settings > Battery > Battery Health and disable Optimized battery charging to disable this feature.

You might need a new iPhone battery

In the same settings page where you can turn off optimized battery charging, you can also check your battery status. If you see a message, such as “Your battery health is significantly degraded,” you should consider scheduling an appointment with Apple to replace your battery. A degraded battery does not hold a charge as well, so it will discharge faster. A new battery will improve your overall battery life.

You can check the approximate cost of replacing your battery on the Apple iPhone Battery Service website. Pricing depends on your service coverage as well as make and model: for the iPhone 13 series, the estimate is $69.