Is Your iPhone Charging Slowly? Here’s How You Could Fix It

You would think that charging your iPhone is as simple as plugging it into a power source, and for the most part yeah that’s true — but not always. If you’re in a rush and need your phone to charge as quickly as possible, you need to take certain things into account, like where your phone is being plugged in, what settings are enabled (or disabled) and what kind of charger you’re using. 

A wireless charger is good, but this model is the best

The second-fastest way to charge your iPhone is with Apple’s MagSafe charger and a 20-watt power adapter, but for this to work you must own either an iPhone 12 or an iPhone 13 to get the faster 15-watt wireless charging. If your iPhone is dead, you should get to around 30% battery in about 30 minutes of wireless charging.

However, this doesn’t mean you can use any Qi wireless charger, which is the industry standard, for fast charging. While the MagSafe charger supports 15 watts, a Qi charger only gives you up to 7.5 watts — which is much slower than a MagSafe, and only slightly faster than the traditional 5-watt wall charger. Be aware that magnetic wireless chargers that aren’t MagSafe-certified will also charge at the slower 7.5-watt speed.

Also, keep your hands off your iPhone when it’s charging

If you want your iPhone to charge as quickly as possible, try to stay off of it as much as possible. If you’re streaming videos or playing mobile games while charging your iPhone, the battery will charge much slower, so just leave it untouched if you can.

One easy way to speed up your battery charge

Even if your screen is sleeping, your phone is still working in the background, constantly refreshing applications, sending out notifications and turning your screen on — all of which wastes battery. If you want your iPhone to charge quicker, the best thing to do is to turn it off.

You don’t need to turn your iPhone off to charge it faster

If you don’t want to turn off your iPhone, but still want to help it charge faster, you can turn on airplane mode, which disables all wireless transmission functions like cellular, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth — all of which consume power. If they’re off, your iPhone can charge quicker. And this way, you can also quickly turn airplane mode off to quickly check on any text message or phone calls you might be waiting on.

This iPhone feature might be slowing down your charging

Apple has a built-in tool that helps prevent your iPhone battery from degrading as fast, but this same feature also makes your device charge slower. While the feature typically only slows down your iPhone during long periods of charging, and usually overnight, it still might be worth disabling when you’re charging your phone. Go to Settings Battery Battery Health and toggle off Optimized Battery Charging to turn off this feature.

You might just need a new iPhone battery

In the same settings page where you can disable optimized battery charging, you can also check out your battery’s health. If you see a message, like “Your battery’s heath is significantly degraded,” you should look into making an appointment with Apple to replace your battery. A degraded battery doesn’t hold charge as well, so it’ll drain more quickly. A new battery will improve your overall battery life.

You can check out how much it will approximately cost to replace your battery on Apple’s iPhone Battery Service website. The price depends on your service coverage and the make and model: for the iPhone 15 series, the estimate is $99.