Battery Drain on iOS 26 and iOS 26.0.1.

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

Apps are updated for basically two reasons, a new feature and to fix bugs. In the last month there have been 13 updates to WhatsApp. Why the need for so many updates? Have 13 new features been introduced in the last month? No, not that I’ve seen.

Jim’s point is valid, delete the app, review the battery usage over several days and analyze the results. The results will tell you two things. If consumption doesn’t drop a lot, the app and the features you use just consume a lot of CPU and graphic performance. The developer needs to optimize those features to use less battery. It could show a large drop in battery consumption. In which case the developers need to locate the cause of the issue and write the code to resolve the issue. A bug fix is generally not a single line of code. It can involve hundreds, even thousands of line of code. In all those lines of code could be a dozen other bugs that affect users because of the hasty patch and release of an update that has not had time to be tested in a beta format. It impossible to properly beta test 13 updates in a month.

sk8gal wrote:

Removing Facebook from my phone has helped. However, battery life is still poor. Battery health is 85%. Apps are up to date. Apple needs to address the issue.

We can investigate further if we could see what is happening on your device by posting a screenshot of Settings > Battery, that shows your green battery graph with the last 24 hours option and the top apps consuming your Battery.

The Battery Health on your iPhone 13 is OK, but not great. I would expect that you have about another 6-8 months before it would drop below 80% and need replaced. It is literally telling you the capacity is 15% less than what it was when new. You are going to get less usage time, just like if you put 15% less gas in your car, you will not be able to travel as far and will have to fill it up more often.

Having your Apps up to date does not mean it is a problem that Apple has to fix. You have proven that by removing Facebook and seen improvements in your battery performance. Facebook may have been fully updated, but certainly causing your battery to drain more than it should. Yes, it is important to keep your apps updated, as that is how developers can address bugs in the apps that affect battery performance, and is also true for your iOS updates too.

What other Meta apps do you have and how much more battery usage time would you get without them? I only call out Meta because their apps in the past have been significant battery drainers across all device manufacturers, which is why Google also called them out for the poor performance on their devices and you see the same posts on the Samsung/Android support sites.

There is nothing in those apps that would require heavy CPU use like you would see in a 3D Graphics game, most are basically web portals into their service and WhatsApp is a messaging app that you do not see the same battery draining when using Apple Messages. They could do better and they should. What makes it difficult for them is their business model for revenue generation requires them to harvest information about your activities to sell the data to advertisers and they are using the battery on your device to do that.

Please share a screenshot of your battery capacity and usage during the time frame you’re referring to. What you’re experiencing is not normal and it could be hardware or software (or even both) related. The screenshots are crucial for understanding the issue.

Please start by doing a forced restart, (see Apple Support article below), and observing what daily battery capicity is doing and which of the apps you’ve installed are using excessive capacity, if any.

Force restart iPhone - Apple Support

0525Phaedra wrote:

Yes definitely. I have a iPhone 14 Pro. When I did an update a month or so ago. My battery started to drain ridiculously. I had no open spots and did everything. In fact, I kept the phone on low battery power. From when I get up at 7 until I leave before 8, my battery goes from 100 to 87 with little use. I’m disgusted because whenever I’ve I talked to Apple Care they look at everything and it say my phone’s battery is fine. However, I know differently.

If you are looking for assistance then there are 2 important pieces that are missing:

• What is your Battery Heath percentage at Settings > Battery > Battery Health > Maximum Capacity.
• Post the screenshot of Settings > Battery, that shows the green battery graph and the apps that are consuming your battery.

Also make sure you have updated to iOS 26.2.

Your logic is flawed — the battery drain was fine on IOS18 — signal strength hasn't suddenly changed — the ONLY thing that has changed is IOS26 — Find My does have a bug & its evident in xcode/instruments — cpu load is around 80% with it turned on for a bunch of devices

I have an iPhone 12 Pro with now 26.1 and it was always at around 75% in normal use after being smart charged to 100% overnight. Now it is in the mid to low 40% (same wake up time and same bedtime/plugin to charge time.

I only ever have 3 apps constantly open, the FitBit, music, and Tesla App and I only have the music app BT streaming in the morning and the evening for ~20 minutes each. and I have Life360 running in the background (still). The only change is the new OS. I've turned off and restarted the phone after a few days of this ridiculous power consumption issue. The phone reports that power consumption per app is the same (within a few percent) but I'm guessing it doesn't take into account how much the OS uses to do all that fancy display stuff.

One thing off this topic is that the timer app shows a large font for the time display but the contrast to the background makes it unusable.

Have you ever thought of contracting out your SW development? It couldn't be any worse.

etmax wrote:

I have an iPhone 12 Pro with now 26.1 and it was always at around 75% in normal use after being smart charged to 100% overnight. Now it is in the mid to low 40% (same wake up time and same bedtime/plugin to charge time.

There are 2 important things you forgot to provide that is the most important when it comes to battery usage.

• The Battery Health Percentage
• The Screenshot at Settings > Battery showing your green battery graph along with the top apps consuming your battery.

Why are you now on iOS 26.1, when the current version you should be using is iOS 26.2 released about a month and a half ago. There is no such thing as only have 3 apps open. A remote notification will launch an app to run its payload and uses more battery to do that than when it is just suspended in the background.

Please do a forced restart and let’s see what the next 12 hours look like.

Force restart iPhone - Apple Support

Why isn’t your iPhone plugged in at night charging? When did you update to iOS 26? What are your top 5 or 6 apps using the most battery capacity?

This worked for me.

Settings -> Search -> Turn off "Help Apple Improve Search"

[Edited by Moderator]

I, too, have noticed a significant difference with my 16 Pro purchased in January from the Apple Store, using Google Fi. I can see the increase post-update reflected in the Battery Usage app. I live in an area without much service (so I depend on WiFi) and before the update I might have drained about 8% overnight if I forgot to plug my phone in. Now just last night was about 34%. After digging into the stats, I’m not making it up, at least a 300% increase in usage just from “No Cell Coverage”

I beg to differ with you, TikTok has had 14 updates in the last 12 weeks. Does that sound like a bug free app?

Instagram has 23 updates in the last 3 months and 5 updates in the last 2 weeks since iPhone 17 was released.

These are not optimized apps. I’ve been on these forums for almost 25 years. Those apps weren’t optimized when iOS 18 came out, weren’t optimized when iOS 17 came out and weren’t optimized when iOS 16 came out. I’m not sure why you think the app is optimized for performance. Have you talked to their support teams and confirmed their optimization?

If you’re unhappy, I get it. I would be too. But I don’t rely on those apps. I understand you may have business dependent on those apps. Hence why I avoid them. I’ve learned over the years who I can trust and who I can’t. I don’t count TikTok or Instagram as apps i can trust.

Since you’re convinced it’s an Apple issue, you best path forward is to express your displeasure in a conversation with Apple Support. Have you talked to Apple Support about the issues?