Your iPhone Quietly Got a New Feature to Extend Its Battery Life

When Apple rolled out iOS 18 earlier this fall, your current iPhone gained quite a few standout features — a vastly more customizable Home Screen and Control Center, a redesigned Flashlight app, new iMessaging features, Wi-Fi-sharing capabilities, and the ability to hide and lock apps.

(And that’s not even touching on the Apple Intelligence features that finally launched on newer iPhones this week.)

Additionally, iOS 18 added a lesser-known feature — called “Charge Limit” — that gives you greater control over how much your iPhone charges when connected to power. This aims to prevent your iPhone from fully charging and, thus, help extend its long-term lifespan.

The catch? The new feature only works on iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 models.

Photo by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol

Protect your iPhone’s battery health

You likely know that your iPhone’s lithium-ion battery degrades over time — that’s why it doesn’t last as long as it did when it was new. But you probably didn’t know that it’s also not good for the battery to be fully charged at 100 percent constantly. That causes its battery to degrade faster.

In an ideal world, according to Isidor Buchmann, CEO and founder of Cadex Electronics, it’s best to keep your iPhone should always stay above 20 percent or above 80 percent. And these new battery controls that iOS 18 delivers aim to help with that.

Previously, you only had the option to limit your iPhone’s charging to 80 percent. With the new control options, you can set your iPhone’s charging cap to 85-, 90- or 95 percent, as well.

According to Apple, these new charging options will most benefit people who keep their iPhones connected to power throughout the day — or don’t have consistent charging patterns — as it’ll charge their iPhone closer to 100 percent (instead of 80 percent when “Optimized Charging” is turned on).

Photo by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol

How to Use Charge Limit on Your iPhone

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Select Battery.
3. Select Charging.
4. Choose your charge limit: 80%, 85%, 90% or 95%.

Once selected, Apple says your iPhone will charge within a few percentage points of that chosen limit and then stop charging. It’ll then maintain a charge within 5 percent of that limit when connected to power.

Additionally, your iPhone will learn your habits and could recommend a different charging limit. According to Apple, you might see a message like: “Based on your iPhone habits, a charge limit of 95% is recommended to help preserve your battery.”

By default, no charging limit is selected … but “Optimized Battery Charging” is turned on. This setting charges your iPhone to 80 percent when connected to power and, after learning your habits, will only charge it to 100 percent right before you take the iPhone off the charger.

To learn more about the iOS 18’s new charging features, check out Apple’s support page.

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