Steps to save battery and increase performance on iOS iPhone and iPad

With each iteration of iOS, iPads and iPhones get slower and slower because of new features that add questionable value and utility.

All the extra work being done by new features, require extra CPU cycles, which in turn require more energy, which results in poor performance and shorter battery life.

Follow this guide to help you choose which features to turn off thus making your battery last longer and iPad/ iPhone more responsive.

All the below paths are in the Settings app.

General > Siri > Hey Siri

Hey Siri has to constantly monitor background sound, just in case you speak those two words, this is an active drain on battery. It sort of works, and thus can be quite nice or quite annoying, but if you don't use it or have stopped because it's not accurate enough, turn it off.

General > Siri > Siri

Siri probably has some background threads running periodically or all the time, if you don't use it or can live without, this option allows you to turn it off completely.

Spotlight Search > Siri Suggestions

Siri Suggestions slow searching in general, use network bandwidth and data and are generally not that useful. You can turn off and probably won't notice any changes.

Spotlight Search > Search Results

Search results will index data from the selected apps, it may also index data from these apps when they are not running! Which creates a noticeable reduction in responsiveness.

Turning all (or a select majority) of app search results off, will mean your phone or tablet will not query data for these apps and will not update the database in the background when you want it to focus on the task at hand.

Note: In general, spotlight seems to be the single biggest contributor to keyboard lag and poor performance in general.

Handoff & Suggested Apps > Handoff

Handoff uses extra bandwidth and CPU cycles, if you don't use it, it's a no brainer to turn off.

Handoff & Suggested Apps > Installed Apps

Some people might like the idea of this, or appreciate how cute the meh suggestions it makes are.

Once you realise it's using bandwidth, CPU and slowing down typing on your phone, the utility of this may become less obvious.

Accessibility > Reduce Motion

This makes navigating iOS faster and more responsive, it reduces animation time and thus CPU cycles.

Background App Refresh

This starts up apps periodically so they are pre-loaded, useful for things like newsreaders that can have the latest news articles ready when you open the app.

I've never noticed any benefit, I expect that most apps do not benefit much from this, I've had it disabled for years without any ill affects.

Software Update

Apple support suggested to me that I should run any updates, merely having an update waiting, causes the iOS device to use extra battery power "checking the update". Didn't make any sense to me, but I updated and it did seem to make a difference.

Safari > Search Engine Suggestions

If the search engine is Google, I find these suggestions to be quite good. You can turn off to save bandwidth and CPU.

Safari > Safari Suggestions

These are suggestions for you to consume more Apple related stuff, easier to turn this one off than Search Engine Suggestions, because these suggestions are less likely to be of great benefit to your search.

Safari > Preload Top Hit

Extra work and bandwidth required to do this, so turn off to save on both.