Your iPhone Is About to Get a Useful Feature to Extend Its Battery Life

You’ve probably experienced this with your iPhone: one second it’s fully charged and then, after a few hours of normal use, its battery has been drastically depleted. And you’re like, what the heck happened?

This type of battery drainage is a pretty common iPhone problem — especially for those with iPhones that are several generations old.

But there’s good news on the horizon. When Apple rolls out iOS 26 this fall, it will introduce a new way to manage battery drainage on your current iPhone.

Photo by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol

Battery drainage

With iOS 26, Apple is overhauling the Battery section of your iPhone’s Settings app. To date, this has been the place where you’ve been able to view things like your iPhone’s battery health, set charging limits, and see the battery usage of certain apps.

And while that’s not changing, iOS 26 introduces a big redesign of this Battery section, which moves things around and gives it a new look, but it also introduces a new feature.

As spotted by 9to5Mac, the Battery section will now explicitly indicate if you’re using more of your iPhone’s battery than usual during a specific time of day; if so, the Daily Usage graphic will appear highlighted in orange.

Additionally, an orange exclamation mark will appear next to the app (or apps) responsible for depleting your iPhone’s battery faster than usual. You’re then able to click on that app and see detailed usage info, both on-screen and off-screen (when it’s running in the background).

If deemed excessive, you can force quit that specific app: swipe up from the bottom of your iPhone to open the Preview view, then swipe up on the app to force quit it.

Ultimately, this is a simple yet usual upgrade to the Battery section. And it’ll be available to all iPhones capable of running iOS 26 (which is any iPhone 6 or later).

Photo by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol

Adaptive Power

iOS 26 will also introduce another neat feature for saving battery life, called Adaptive Power, but it will only be supported on newer iPhones.

Adaptive Power is a new power mode that aims to extend your iPhone’s battery life during those days when you’re using it more than usual. Below, you can see how Apple describes it in the iOS 26 public beta:

“When your battery usage is higher than usual, iPhone can make small performance adjustments to extend your battery life, including slightly lowering the display brightness or allowing some activities to take a little longer. Low Power Mode may turn on at 20%.“

Photo by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol

When Adaptive Power is turned on, it harnesses Apple Intelligence to find creative ways to extend your iPhone’s battery life beyond its normal capacity. This means that you’ll need an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence — which includes any iPhone 16 model, the iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max, or any upcoming iPhone 17 model — to access it.

iOS 26 is expected to roll out to the masses this fall, coinciding with the launch of Apple’s iPhone 17 line.

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