Apple

How to Fix Bad iOS 14 Beta Battery Life

Published

4 years ago

08/17/2020

Apple’s iOS 14 beta is plagued with a number of issues including abnormal battery drain. If you start noticing weird drain, and you don’t want to downgrade, there are some solution that might help solve your issues.

Battery life issues are extremely common iOS beta issues so it’s not surprising to hear that battery drain issues are impacting those who have moved to Apple’s pre-release software.

In this guide we’ll take you through some potential fixes for bad iOS 14 beta battery life. The fixes we’ve listed here have worked for us, and many others, in the past and there’s a good chance one of them will work for you.

Restart Your Phone

If you start noticing abnormal drain, we recommend restarting your phone before doing anything else.

Power your iPhone down, wait a minute, and power your device back on. A quick reboot can have a tremendous impact on your device’s performance so give it a try before you try the rest of these fixes.

Check Your Apps

Apps, particularly third-party applications, are prone to act up on iOS beta software so there’s a good chance one, or more, of your apps is the source of your problems.

Checking app performance is extremely easy on iOS 14 beta and it should only take you a few minutes to find the culprit. Here’s how to do this:

Go to the Settings app.
Select Battery.
Head into the Battery Usage tool. This tool will show you the apps draining your battery and when they’re doing so.

If you use an application a lot, it’s obviously drain more battery than an app you never use. That said, if you see something that doesn’t look right, you’ll want to investigate further.

If you see an app eating up an abnormal amount of battery, try deleting the app from your device and see if that improves your device’s performance.

If the app is essential, we recommend downloading the latest updates. If that doesn’t help, and you really need to the app to get through your day, you might need to downgrade back to iOS 13.

Reset All Settings

If you determine that your apps aren’t the source of your problem, try resetting your iPhone’s settings.

Before you do this, note that it will cause your phone to forget known Wi-Fi networks (and Bluetooth connections) so make sure you write down your passwords before you tap reset. Here’s how to do this:

Go to Settings.
Go to General.
Scroll and tap Reset.
Tap Reset All Settings and enter your passcode if one is enabled.

Once the process is complete, you’ll need to reconnect to your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices.

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Downgrade Back to iOS 13

If you can’t find a manual fix and/or don’t want to wait for Apple’s next iOS 14 beta release, you can downgrade back to iOS 13. A downgrade option will always be available, but your downgrade options could change over time.

Right now, you can only downgrade back to iOS 13.6.1 or iOS 13.6. You can’t downgrade to anything older than iOS 13.6 because Apple’s no longer signing on older updates.

For more on the downgrade, take a look at our walkthrough.

Buy a Battery Case or Battery Bank

Buying a battery case or battery bank could help offset battery drain you encounter during the beta.

If you don’t know where to look, we’ve got lists of the best iPhone 11 cases, best iPhone XS cases, best iPhone X cases and best iPhone 8 cases to help.

We generally recommend going with a Mophie battery case, but Apple’s official battery cases are a great alternative if you prefer going with a first-party accessory.

If you don’t want to put a bulky case on your iPhone, you might want to snag a battery bank.

Battery banks are small, portable power sources. For instance, the RAVPower battery pack can provide six full iPhone charges before you need to charge it.

There are a ton of great options out there, but RAV’s device, Mophie’s powerstation and the Anker Powercore 20100 are a few of our favorites.

4 Reasons Not to Install iOS 14.8.1 & 11 Reasons You Should

Install iOS 14.8.1 for Better Security

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If security is important to you, think about installing iOS 14.8.1 right away.

The iOS 14.8.1 update brings 12 new security patches to the iPhone. You can read about all of them over on Apple's site.

If you want to better protect your iPhone and its data, you'll want to install the iOS 14.8.1 update in the near future.

If you missed iOS 14.8, you'll get its security patches with your upgrade. You can learn more about them right here.

If you missed iOS 14.7.1, you'll get its patch with your upgrade. If you want to learn more about iOS 14.7.1's security update, check out its support page.

If you missed iOS 14.7, you'll get its 31 security patches with your upgrade. You can learn more about those on Apple's website.

If you skipped iOS 14.6, you'll get the update's 38 security patches with your iOS 14.8.1 update. If you're curious about the particulars, you can read about them right here.

If you skipped iOS 14.5.1, you get the update's two security patches on board. You can read about them over on Apple's website. Both are related to WebKit.

If you missed iOS 14.5 you'll get its patches with your upgrade. You can read more about those changes over on Apple's website.

iOS 14.5 also brought Apple's new App Tracking Transparency which lets you control which apps are allowed to track your activity across other companies' apps and websites for ads or sharing with data brokers.

If you skipped iOS 14.4.2, you get its security patch with iOS 14.8.1. You can learn more about that patch over on Apple's website as well.

If you missed iOS 14.4.1, you get its patch with your upgrade to iOS 14.8.1. You can read about that patch right here.

If you skipped iOS 14.4, you get the update's patches with your upgrade. You can learn more about iOS 14.4's security patches right here.

If you skipped iOS 14.3 you'll get its nine security updates with your upgrade. You can read more about them on its security site.

iOS 14.3 also included a new privacy information section on App Store pages that includes a developer-reported summary of the app’s privacy practices.

If you skipped iOS 14.2, your iOS 14.8.1 update includes 24 additional security patches. You can learn more about the patches on Apple's security website.

If you're still running iOS 13, iOS 14.8.1 includes iOS 14.0's security updates.

iOS 14.0 brought 11 new security patches to the iPhone. If you're interested in the exact nature of these improvements, you can read about them over on Apple's website.

In addition to those patches, iOS 14 comes with some security and privacy upgrades including improvements to Home/HomeKit and Safari.

For instance in Safari, you can now tap the Privacy Report button to better understand how websites handle your privacy.

With iOS 14 on board you can now get information on the App Store that will help you understand the privacy practices of apps before you download them.

There is also a new recording indicator that will appear at the top of your screen whenever an app is using your microphone or camera. You can see if an app has used them recently in Control Center.

Researchers also discovered that Apple brought a new "BlastDoor" sandbox security system to iOS 14. The system is meant to prevent attacks from occurring via the Messages app.

You can read more about "BlastDoor" right here.