Battery Drain on iOS 26 and iOS 26.0.1.

My iPhone 14 Pro Max battery drains by approximately 10 percent to 20 percent or more per hour on iOS 26.1, even with only moderate usage or when the screen is locked.

In addition, the maximum battery capacity has decreased by about 3 percent since updating to this iOS version. The battery was replaced less than one year ago and was previously at 99 percent.

It now feels like I get only about half the usage time per charge compared to when I was using iOS 18, and I now need to charge the phone several times per day.

There appear to be ongoing issues with iOS 26 that are significantly affecting battery performance on the iPhone 14 Pro Max and have not been addressed since the initial release.

oldmaninflorida wrote:=

Why are there three different places to disable this battery eating, poorly written program?????

• Disabling Apple account-> find my is the setting for finding YOUR device and turns on Activation Lock.
• Background App Refresh is only for updating the UI of Find My when the app is not open. That is an optional setting that has little impact on battery performance.
• Settings->Privacy and security-> Location services ->System services-> find my Iphone, allows your device to participate in the Find My network where it broadcasts the location of OTHER Apple devices. That is how another user can find their lost device when your iPhone passes within range. You don't need to be using Find My yourself to assist others in finding their devices, but if you turn this off it also means you will not be using Find My to locate your device. I suppose if you are in a household with many Apple devices with users constantly using Find My to locate them, it may have a greater impact, but have seen no data on battery consumption from the service for that purpose.

Just because you don't understand what the settings are for does not mean it is a poorly written program. As IdrisSeabright suggested, it is most likely something else that was going on that you correlated with this setting. Maybe you have Automatic App Updates set in the App Store where you would not even know it occurred other than a little blue dot next to the app.

Harry_chirag wrote:

I am too facing a **** out of this update the battery drain a lot faster . I wish apple fixes it fast

Are you referring to iOS 26.1 that was released today, or still talking about iOS 26.0.1 that was being used by the person you replied to?

I can suggest to use the Sort By option above the first reply and you can choose Newest where you will see the newest reply on top. There you would have seen the iOS 26.1 is available and you should update your software.

TTPDElmer wrote:

I did the update last night. I have not had any prior battery issues. I barely used my phone today due to being at work, but the battery percentage dropped like a ROCK. Not good.

For the first 24-48 hours after any iOS update, battery usage will be higher than usual as the phone rebuilds all its internal databases.

What does the Battery pane say is using your power?

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

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.

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.

…did you READ what I wrote?

going from 47% to 10% is not normal. And it gets worse: this morning it went from 100% to 10% instantly. That has nothing to do with battery health and EVERYTHING to do with the software.

but for those curious it was in the upper 80s for battery health before the update, and now it’s down to 66% battery health…AGAIN, because of the SOFTWARE!

The problem is 100% a software bug.

[Edited by Moderator]

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.

Its unacceptable behaviour even after a week it still drains like crazy. I have reported this issue to Apple, they seem to be aware of it and will fix eventually. I have no timelines. There are other users too, please use the feedback app and let Apple know.

crhymes wrote:

My battery health was 100% before updating to ios26. I even checked before installing ios26, while installing i slept and checked it in the morning and It dropped to 90%. Its an iphone 13 with a brand new battery replaced by the apple store.

Take it back to Apple, they warranty their service for 90 days. Since you said the Battery Health was 100% before updating, you are clearly within the 90 days. Problem solved.

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