Battery Drain on iOS 26 and iOS 26.0.1.

Had the same issue on my iphone 16 after upgrading to 26.0.1.

i did these things and battery life seems to be normal. Following are the things i did.

1. update all the apps manually and do a hard reset by pressing volume up, release, volume down, release & finally hold power button until you see the apple logo. This will force your iphone to restart.
2. turn on reduce motion from setting. This will disable lockscreen 3d image feature. But maybe this helped to reduce my battery draining. (accessibility—> motion)
3. turn on the prefer cross-fade transitions(accessibility—> motion). This will disable modern transitions and new glass effect.

somehow these things prevented my rapid battery draining issue.

also please note that for first 2-3 days there are some background processes running to indexing after the update. So maybe that will also take a huge battery power for that process better to give 2-3 days and then try these methods. All or one will help you.

• You emphasized NEW, so not sure if that means you just purchased it from Apple. It was discontinued on September 9th, another source could have been refurbished and new to you and not disclosed. The battery values can be "boosted" on those phones as that phone was released over 2 years ago.
• When did you update? The background process will continue for 3-5 days indexing files and cause battery drain, lag, and increased heat.

About Apple software updates - Apple Support

• Post the screenshot of Settings > Battery that includes the green battery graph for the previous 24 hours and also the top apps using the battery. Below that you will see System usage, and Home & Lock Screen is an indication of those background processes still being performed.
• As for the next update currently being tested in beta, we cannot comment on the issues that have been resolved in that version. We can be a tester, but disclosing the information is a violation of the terms here and also the user agreement being a tester of the beta. You may see improvement when it is officially released.
• From what I read on X, the earth is flat, and you will find many that agree.

hi there friends,for me about battery drain,i have an iphone 16 pro max and happened the same to me....but the best solution for me was to update and restore iphone with Mac or PC with the full iphone firmware downloaded.....but remember to backup your stuff....from 5:00am to 1:30pm i was at work and started to use my iphone after work have 91 % and started to use on youtube,web search and whatever well at least not gaming and at 7:57 i still have a good 55% i hope it works for you 👍🏽

phillip9 wrote:

I close apps religiously

I charge to 95-100% before bed

and I wake up and the battery is already down to

92%

battery health says 94%

• Phone should be charged all night, every night using Optimized Charging.
• Do not close your apps, it uses more power.

Do not close iPhone and iPad 'background'… - Apple Community

• On average your Battery Health will lose 1% for every 50 Charge Cycles. I suspect you are around 300 charge cycles, so a 94% reading would fit into that average. The iOS update does not change your Charge Cycles. The drops you see in Battery Health are never linear and some months it will not drop at all and other months it will drop more. Also the calibration of the battery only occurs when it is allowed to charge to 100%. Even when using a charge limit the phone will automatically charge to 100% for calibration at times if not manually removed from a charger. You will also see a larger than expected drop when it has previously been prevented to calibrate and a condition occurred where it was allowed to charge to 100%, since the previous calibration had been postponed.
• Use your phone normally and post a screenshot of the green battery graph along with the tops apps consuming the battery.
• There are 2 ways to troubleshoot if it is app related. Either Factory Reset and NOT restore from a backup, you would need to use a computer for this method to create an archived backup to be able to restore later. Or remove the top consumers one at a time to compare results. Don't ignore an app as a contributing factor. Some have been identified by users where battery performance dramatically improved when removed and others by the developer where they acknowledged the drain with an update. It is simple to test, so you can make an informed decision on what is more important, the app or the battery usage seen by the app.

iOS 26.1 is a relatively major update and, as with every iOS update, battery usage will be higher than usual for a day or two until the phone rebuilds all its internal indices.

After turning off Find My, I went from 120% usage to 40% usage in 1 day.

Please update to iOS 26.1.X released today 11/03/25.

Do you have someone in your family you’re sharing your location with using Find My or are you checking on someone’s or something’s location frequently? That could be the reason for the battery usage.

Why aren’t you charging the battery at night? Are you also turning your iPhone off at night? A best practice is to charge your iPhone overnight and to leave it on. A lot of background processes run at night and when the iphone is not plugged in or turned off it does them during the day. This is why your battery drained so quickly in the morning.

What are the apps running on your iPhone? Here’s mine,

I’ve got 5 ½ hours of usage and I’m at 50% battery capacity remaining. But I’m not using Meta apps, TikTok or Google apps. I understand your usage is different but until those companies update their apps, your battery usage will not change substantially (unless your usage changes). Sorry.

This is expected after each major iOS version, let alone a once-in-a-while UI language update like iOS 26. The last time this happened was iOS 7 in 2013, and the exact same thing occurred to battery life. Over time and over the next updates (note the plural "s", not just the very next update), Apple will be obligated to improve battery life

Because the Facebook and YouTube apps update every few days and there may be bugs in an update that seriously burn power.

For example, there was a Facebook app update not long ago that had a bug that continuously checked with Location Services, something that takes a fair amount of power to check GPS even if you haven't moved. It was burning through power at a rate that was almost visible.

I see a lot of messages blaming this on third party apps, and doubtless there's truth to that. I don't think its the whole story though. Two things:

1. I've seen drain with no or minimal third party app use - frequently I'd see always on display as using 20% of the battery usage in a day (ie, 100% to 20% or less battery status), or Apple Music (playing via air play to HomePod)
2. Looking at the battery graph, it would show a more or less straight line decline throughout the day. If it was due to using third party apps I'd expect to see a less uniform graph. It's more like something in the system is applying a constant drain

My phone is a 14 pro. On the positive side though, I think it's getting better. It's been three or four weeks since I did the update. Today its been off charge for three hours and the battery is only down 9%. I've not used it for very much this morning, but then the same was true for days when it did discharge quickly. Hopefully whatever it was doing has now settled down. Oh, and I've not updated any apps in the last few weeks, so this is not due to third party apps being updated

Apple has never and will not support downgrading.

Just because you've updated apps doesn't mean the apps are properly using iOS 26, causing excessive battery drain.

What does the battery settings pane say is using most of your power?

I am another user with dismal battery life…it started for me with iOS 18 and got worse with 26. iPhone 13 mini. Looking at daily battery usage I see Facebook is significantly more of a hog than other apps. I use WhatsApp but it is not using much battery. I’m going to try deleting Facebook from my phone. Good experiment. Will report back with results