I changed these 6 settings on my iPad to significantly improve its battery life

As an avid iPad user, I’m all too familiar with the internal struggles that course through me when the battery is about to die. I love using either the iPad 11 or iPad Air to write and work, but I also use it to stream content, play games, and browse the internet after work. 

This makes me appreciate the iPad’s long battery life, yet my anxiety grows when I start getting ‘low battery’ alerts without a charger nearby.

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There are many things you can do to increase your iPad’s battery life that go beyond the usual advice. You can start with the usual: lowering your screen brightness and setting the auto-lock to a shorter time, which I’ll cover here. I’ll also cover other ways to extend your battery life that have, altogether, given me a few more hours of use from my iPad.

1. Lower screen brightness

This is one of the first recommendations you’ll hear from anyone offering tips on conserving your iPad’s battery life — and it truly works. Depending on your usage, lowering your screen’s brightness settings could offer you over an hour of extra use on each charge. 

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Doing so also makes it easier on your eyes, reducing the eye strain involved with staring at bright screens for too long. That’s the main reason I prefer keeping my brightness low, but the perk of a longer battery life makes it even more worthwhile. Your iPad’s screen brightness can be adjusted from the Control Center by swiping down on the top right side of your screen.

2. Turn off location services

Location services can keep your iPad working extra, especially if you have them enabled for multiple apps. It’s a good idea to turn off location services for any apps that you don’t use often, especially those that you know you won’t be using in the next day or two. While turning off your iPad’s location services won’t double your battery life, it can add a good half hour or more of use. 

To check and turn off your location services, follow these steps

1. Go to your iPad Settings
2. Select Privacy & Security
3. Go to Location Services

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You can check which applications have access to your iPad’s location and decide which ones to revoke. Alternatively, you can turn off all Location Services altogether, especially if you’ll be using your tablet for work, streaming, or playing.

3. Turn off wireless when idle

Turning off your iPad’s Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and AirDrop is a great way to extend the use of your battery, especially when your iPad is idle. If you don’t rely on your iPad for notifications, you can turn off all the wireless settings before you lock it and put it away, so it conserves more battery than otherwise. This practice takes seconds, but could extend your battery life by up to an hour. 

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Even if you don’t want to turn off the Wi-Fi, turning off Bluetooth and AirDrop helps. To switch these off easily, swipe down from the top right of your iPad’s display, find your wireless options, and toggle off whichever ones you don’t need.

4. Limit your notifications

Many iPad users, myself included, don’t really need iPad notifications. Any notifications I get on my iPad also arrive on my iPhone.I decided to limit my notifications in the tablet’s Settings to avoid unnecessary distractions and benefit from a few more minutes of extra battery use. 

Limiting notifications may not sound like it would make a big difference in extending your battery life, but each time an alert arrives, it lights up your iPad screen and pings your battery. I also silence my iPad notifications, which are easily accessible in your iPad’s Control Center by swiping down from the top right of your screen and tapping on the bell icon.

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To turn off or limit your notifications, you can go to your iPad Settings and select Notifications. From there, you can turn off notifications for the apps you don’t use or ones for which you simply don’t need real-time alerts.

5. Disable background app refresh

Many apps update in the background when they’re not in active use. While some of them are useful, like messaging apps, others don’t need to update in the background to be useful, as is the case with streaming apps or games.

Many apps don’t need to refresh constantly and just drain your battery, so you can go through the list and turn them off by following these steps:

1. Go to your iPad Settings
2. Select General
3. Tap on Background App Refresh
4. You can either keep it on for Wi-Fi only or manually turn it on or off for each app, depending on how time-sensitive their content is to you. 

6. Auto-lock your screen sooner

Depending on the auto-lock time you use, an iPad can save a lot of battery. The iPad display is one of the tablet’s largest battery draws, so it’s best to keep the auto-lock timer to the shortest possible time. Depending on your use case, you can probably get away with a minimum two-minute auto-lock. 

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Simply dropping the screen auto-lock time from five to two minutes can increase your battery life by over half an hour per charge. Here’s how to set your auto-lock timer:

1. Access your iPad Settings
2. Go to Display & Brightness
3. Select Auto-Lock
4. Choose the shortest time that suits your needs

I used to have an old iPad on which I read knitting patterns and recipes, so I purposely set its screen to never auto-lock. This obviously drained the battery pretty quickly, but it is a common use case for an iPad. I only recommend that you change the auto-lock from Never to one of the lowest numbers when you’re done.