Low Power Mode

Read Cult of Mac’s latest posts on Low Power Mode:

Extend battery life by using Low Power Mode in Control Center [Pro tip]

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Activate Low Power Mode in Control Center
Enable Low Power Mode to get you through a long day.
Image: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

Control Center Pro Tips WeekWe want to help you master Control Center, one of the most powerful and underutilized features on Apple devices. Cult of Mac’s Control Center Pro Tips series will show you how to make the most of this useful toolbox on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac.

Worried your iPhone or iPad battery isn’t going to last you all day? Activate Low Power Mode inside Control Center to minimize how much energy your device is consuming when it’s not being used. It’s super-simple to use, won’t get in your way, and it makes a big difference.

We’ll show you how and explain a similar feature — Power Reserve — that you can activate on Apple Watch.

How to use Low Data Mode on iPhone and iPad

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Low Data Mode
A lazy metaphor for data.
Photo: Tobias Fischer on Unsplash

You surely know about the iPhone’s Low Power Mode already, but did you know there’s also a Low Data Mode? Just like the battery-saving setting, Low Data Mode cuts back on data usage, only connecting to the internet for essential data or when you explicitly request a connection. In practice, your active usage won’t be affected much. It’s all the background stuff that gets cut off.

Here’s how to set up Low Data Mode on your iPhone or iPad.

Apple seeds new public betas for iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra

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The best gesture in iOS 11 isn't just for iPad.
The best gesture in iOS 11 isn't just for iPad.
Photo: Apple

Members of Apple’s public beta software program can now test the latest builds of iOS 11, tvOS 11, and macOS High Sierra just one day after Apple dropped the last big batch of beta updates on developers.

The third public beta of iOS 11 contains all of the changes Apple seeded to developers yesterday with iOS 11 beta 4. Along with a number of new bug fixes, the new iOS 11 update brings some new UI improvements like new icons for some stock apps and some changes to the notification center.

How to use Night Shift while saving power

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iPhone 6s Night Shift Low Power Mode
Oh, yeah. It's possible.
Photo: Evan Killham/Cult of Mac

We’ve been using Night Shift on our iPhones and iPads since it launched with iOS 9.3. We aren’t sure if it actually promotes good sleep, but we figure that lowering the amount of blue light that hits us after the sun goes down can’t be a bad idea. The only problem we’ve had with it is pretty simple, though: You can’t use it while Low Power Mode is on.

Low Power Mode is another cool feature; it turns off high-consumption stuff like Siri’s hands-free mode, mail fetch, and automatic downloads to stretch your battery life out until you can get your ailing iPhone to a charger. We assume that the reason you can’t run both simultaneously is that Night Shift is a juice-chugger, but we still miss it when our battery hits a critical low at night. But it is possible to have them both on at once. You just have to trick Siri a little.

Here’s how to do it.

Keep iOS 9 Low Power Mode on indefinitely with this jailbreak tweak

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ios-9-beta-2-battery-low-power-mode
iOS 9's Low Power Mode significantly reduces iPhone battery drain.
Photo: George Tinari/Cult of Mac

Low Battery Mode might be my favorite thing about iOS 9. It radically improves battery life on an iPhone when your device dips down to 20%.

The only problem? Once your iPhone charges a sufficient amount, Low Battery Mode automatically switches off. Which is a shame, because if you kept Low Battery Mode on all the time, you could eke out hours more battery life from iOS.

Sadly, iOS 9 doesn’t let you keep Low Battery Mode on all the time. But if you’ve got a jailbroken device? That functionality is just an install away.

iOS 9 review: It’s all about speed

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Here's what time iOS 9 is landing in your area.
iOS 9 is going to shift your mobile life into the fast lane.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

iOS 9 won’t shock you with a bunch of whiz-bang new features or a drastic new look, but in many ways, Apple’s latest mobile operating system is more important than its two immediate predecessors. While iOS 7 and iOS 8 laid a foundation that embraced the future of mobile design, iOS 9 is making all those changes worth a damn.

Apple drops iOS 9 today, bringing a more intelligent UI, better built-in apps, a smarter Siri and much more. Our iOS 9 review shows how the new software makes everything you do on your iPhone or iPad easier — and far faster — than ever before.

Save your battery with iOS 9’s Low Power Mode

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Keep your iPhone humming for up to three hours until your next charge.
Keep your iPhone humming for up to three hours until your next charge.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

iOS 9 brings a bunch of battery-boosting features, most of which work right out of the box. But there’s one battery-saving feature you’ll have to enable yourself.

Called Low Power Mode, this new feature should prove super-useful when you need to eke out just a bit more time with your device — provided you’re not doing anything intense.

Even in Low Power Mode, your iPhone 6 is still faster than the iPhone 5c

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The successor to the iPhone 5c is nearly here.
Low Power Mode will still make your iPhone 6 more powerful than the 5c.
Photo: Apple

It’s no surprise that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 5s are significantly faster than the iPhone 5c. Yet, even with iOS 9’s Low Power Mode turned on, the newer phones still manage to make long strides over that plastic (yet colorful) contraption.

Geekbench released an update to its app today, adding support for iOS 9. Even though iOS 9 is still in beta, the new tools have already revealed some surprising facts about the iPhone 6. Upon running benchmarks on an iPhone 5c and iPhone 6 in low power mode, the tools show that the iPhone 6 is still more powerful that the 5c.