Why iOS 26 Is Draining Your iPhone's Battery (And What You Can Do About It)

For years, we've seen incremental updates to the iPhone's software, but with iOS 26 getting a design overhaul, quite a few heads have turned. From updates to iMessage, to call screening in the Phone app, there are several new iOS 26 features you ought to check out. Beyond just shiny new elements, reasons you should keep your iPhone updated include access to the latest security updates and bug fixes. Moments after updating to the new version, you might experience a few stutters and sluggish performance until things in the background settle. However, you may have also noticed your iPhone's battery taking a hit after updating to iOS 26. 

Fortunately, it's quite common for your device's battery to drain a bit faster after a major software update, and this isn't an abnormality limited to just iOS 26. Apple itself claims in their documentation that increased battery consumption is normal after installing big updates since your iPhone or iPad works extra hard to index all your files and data, install new features, and update existing apps.

The time your device takes to fully finish installing the update and its dependencies will vary depending on your iPhone model, current battery level, and whether it's overheating — which can further slow down operations and sip more battery life. Typically, you should see your iPhone's battery performance crawl back up in a few hours or one to two days post-update.

Apple's iOS 26 has brought about meaningful updates to apps like the dialer, Apple Music, and Wallet — but the single most exciting change lies within the user experience itself. Liquid Glass adds a ton of transparent elements, bouncier physics, and even exaggerated animations at times. While all of this looks slick, these visual effects need to be rendered in real-time, since the appearance of most Liquid Glass toggles and buttons is directly impacted by the elements behind them. This is how you get the impressively responsive Liquid Glass UI when interacting with sliders or tabs.

However, this added layer of design could theoretically demand more CPU and GPU performance, directly driving up the battery consumption. Although newer iPhones are well-equipped to handle the new UI without breaking a sweat, if you're experiencing sudden battery drain on an older iPhone model, perhaps Liquid Glass could be to blame. A tip that may come in handy is to turn off the transparency effects. Though designed as an accessibility feature, this could alleviate the impact iOS 26's new design may be having on your battery. On your iPhone, navigate to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size, and turn the "Reduce Transparency" toggle on. You will now notice that most of the transparent or translucent Liquid Glass elements have turned opaque — this could also be a plus one for better readability.

Beyond nerfing the Liquid Glass aesthetic, you can perform an additional few tweaks to squeeze more life out of your iPhone's battery. iOS 26 lets you use a bigger clock and 3D spatial scenes that react to your phone's movement — the latter might consume additional juice, so be sure to turn it off. The new update brought about quite a few changes to the battery management panel in the Settings app as well. Adaptive Power on iOS 26 is an option you can turn on — it then intelligently adjusts your phone's performance to maximize battery life. You can also always turn on the handy Low Power Mode in dire circumstances.

It's also worth playing around with other options to maximize your iPhone's battery life. This includes managing background app refresh settings to ensure only the important apps have access to the internet at all times. The same goes for location access — your favorite eBook reader likely doesn't need your phone's location in the background. 

You can toggle off services like AirDrop, Personal Hotspot, and Bluetooth if you don't actively use them on a regular basis. If you own an iPhone 15 Pro or newer, navigate to Settings > Apple Intelligence to see if the toggle is turned on. Though the suite of AI features has some useful tidbits in it, it's best to turn this power-hungry service off if you rarely use any AI utilities on your iPhone.