14 DAY TRIAL // If your iPhone seems to get more sluggish as days go by, there are some things you can do to get it back in tip-top shape. Improving your iPhone's performance is a matter of tweaking its operating system's settings or, in the worst-case scenario, an iOS reinstall.
An intervention might prove to be necessary if you find that your iPhone's apps are very slow to launch or become unresponsive after a while.
Following the procedures described below is a simple task that does not take you very long even if you decide to reinstall the operating system.
To put it simply, once you get through some or all of the steps detailed in this article, you will notice a drastic performance improvement, even though you have not taken the iOS reinstall path.
Step 1 - Check your device's free disk space
A possible reason for a drop in performance might be the lack of free space needed by iOS to function properly.
Although Apple has not made any official statements regarding the amount of free disk space required by an iOS device running iOS 9, 1 GB should be more than enough.
Apple took its measures to make sure that iOS apps take as little space as possible by implementing a new iOS feature named app thinning, designed to allow users to install apps specifically tailored for their device to minimize the amount of space needed.
However, you can also take an active role in the quest for more free disk space on your iPhone, and to make sure that you do not go below that mark, you can open the Settings app on the iPhone, go to General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage.
From here, you can tap on the apps that occupy too much space and delete some of the associated files or completely erase the apps that you no longer need.
Step 2 - Reduce UI effects
If you do not own one of the iPhones released in the past year, the current iOS version might need too many resources to display all the nice-looking graphics effects designed to make the OS's user interface pleasing to the eye.
In this case, toning down some of the effects might bring quite a big boost in performance. To do this, you can first reduce the user interface motion (i.e. icon parallax effect) by going to Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion and tapping on the toggle button.
Another way to improve responsiveness is to reduce the user interface transparency by going to Settings > General > Accessibility > Increase Contrast and tapping the toggle button next to the "Reduce Transparency" option.
Step 3 – Force-restart the device
If you start noticing that some apps are slower than others and, from time to time, some of the apps you are running on your iPhone start crashing, it might just be time to force-restart your iPhone.
Doing this restarts all iOS services and reinitiates the entire operating system. Simply put, it represents a straightforward way of making sure that all apps have the opportunity to start over with a clean slate.
To force-restart your iPhone, you have to press on both the Home and the Sleep/Wake buttons for at least ten seconds and hold them down until you see the Apple logo.
Step 4 - Reset and restore the iPhone
If the first three steps did not help, you could also reset the iPhone and restore it from an iCloud or iTunes backup.
First, make sure that you back up your iPhone using iTunes or iCloud to have a backup at hand once the reset process ends.
Next, you have to go to Settings > General > Reset, tap on the "Reset All Settings" entry, and then follow the on-screen instructions.
After the reset procedure ends, you can choose to restore the iPhone from an iTunes or an iCloud backup.
Step 5 - Erase and set up as new iPhone
If resetting the settings did not help either, you still have a last-resort option: erasing all content and settings on your device.
Before going through with the device erase procedure, make sure that you use iTunes or iCloud to back up.
Afterwards, you have to go to Settings > General > Reset on your iPhone and tap on the "Erase All Content and Settings" option.
Once the device erase process ends, you can set it up as a new iPhone, getting rid of all problematic applications that made your iPhone crawl on a daily basis.
Leave us a comment in the comment section below if you have any other tips or tricks on how to speed up an iPhone, or if you have any questions regarding the procedures described above.
