Battery Drain on iOS 26 and iOS 26.0.1.

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.

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.

PaddyG26 wrote:

Little bit WhatsApp, little bit google maps, little bit Facebook, little bit safari, some photos.

Post the screenshot you see at Settings > Battery that includes the green battery graph and the top apps consuming the battery. You may certainly be using WhatsApp, Facebook, and Google Maps a little bit, but they can be using your battery much more than you realize, even when you are not using the apps. That is what you will find out by viewing your battery settings.

Specifically for Meta apps, they do work overtime harvesting your data and building your Social Graph. That is how they are able to post billions of dollars in revenue every quarter while they continue to let you use their apps for free. Nobody should be surprised that they are using your battery to maintain this information and selling it to advertisers. Even Google called them out for their excessive battery usage on Android devices, so that has to tell you something.

michalw2 wrote:

Of course, I am not an Apple employee and do not have access to the company’s internal reports. My statement is based solely on the numerous reports from dissatisfied customers, including those in this thread.

And you can find threads on this same subject with EVERY iOS version and update going back for more than 15 years. This is nothing new. But it's rarely an update which causes battery drain. It could be the age of the battery. It could be normal indexing for up to a week after an update. It could be apps running in the background, which haven't been updated by their developer to be compatible with the update. But the update itself cannot cause battery drain. It's just the only conclusion people come to, because they did update and something is different.

What does Battery say has been using the battery, especially at about 8 AM?

It's absolutely normal to lose about 1.6% of battery health per month, so depending upon how long you've owned your phone, you may be doing better than usual.

mattneilscott wrote:

Me too. Ridiculous! I swear I turned off completely in the cinema, and turned it on again it was even flatter !?! Only lasts half a day. What on earth is going on???

We wouldn't know because you have not provided the requested information, such as your battery health percentage and the screenshot of the 2 battery graphs and the top 5 apps consuming your battery. The link for the latter is at Settings > Battery > View All Usage.

Also this post is about iOS 26.0.1, so hopefully that is not the version you are using on your phone, let us know what yours is.

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?

No surprise here.

It was very similar in IOS 18 which had similar battery life issues until they got fixed late in 18.6-18.7.

Apple has a lot to catchup to do in terms of new features (AI) which have higher priority over stability and optimization.

Mark my words - don’t expect this time will be different and that they will fix issues soon (like in 26.1).

No chance.

It’s probably going to be few weeks before iOS 27 release next year (just like it was for 18).

If you remember battery life in iOS 18 was starting to get better when Apple finally gave up on delivering promised features in iOS 18 and from that time next releases were more focused on bug fixes.

By this time around battery got better in iOS 18 but it was very late (following year of iOS 18 release, not the same year anyway).

For this reason I have not updated to 26 yet.

14 pro here, updated Tuesday or Wednesday last week. Battery feels like it’s draining about 30% faster than before the update. I’m used to a few days of increased drain after an update, but I’m getting slightly concerned now. Took the phone off charge this morning at 8:30, for example, and it’s now down to 27% twelve hours later. I’m going to update all the apps now and do a forced restart to see if that helps