How to Make iOS faster on iPhone and iPad

If you have upgraded to iOS and your older iPhone or iPad feels like it’s running slower than before, try disabling the new parallax effect and animations by turning on the Reduce Motion option. The result may not look as aesthetically pleasing, but it should make your device faster (or at least feel faster). You should also turn off the Background App Refresh feature.

Turn off Motion effects on iOS

The motion effects in iOS look great, but reportedly make some people feel a little sick. They can also affect system performance.

• To turn the feature off, go to Settings, General and tap Accessibility.


• Select Reduce Motion and then tap the toggle to disable the motion effects.

Increase Contrast

Go to the main Accessibility menu and select Increase Contrast (it is just above the Reduce Motion setting). Tap the toggle to turn the feature on. This improves contrast on some backgrounds to make text more legible and improves performance by removing some of the graphical effects.

Turn off Background App Refresh features

Go back to the General page and select Background App Refresh. You will be shown a list of apps that regularly fetch new content or make use of location services, even when you are not actively using them. To stop this happening, and to free up resources and prolong battery life, disable the feature.

Turn off Spotlight search feature

Additionally, if you don’t use the Spotlight search feature, turn it off.

Go to Settings, General, Spotlight Search and disable some (or better yet, all) of the options.

Uninstall Apps that you don't use

You can also make iOS faster by uninstalling as many apps as you can, because the fewer you have, the faster the device will run. If you don’t need something anymore, remove it by pressing down on the app until your screen wobbles, then tap the 'X’ in the top-left corner (apps that don’t have an ‘X’ can’t be removed). Press Delete when prompted to get rid of the app and all its cached data. You can easily re-install it at a later date, without being charged again.

To prevent removed apps from re-installing when you sync your iPad with your computer, go into your iTunes Library, select Apps and delete them from there.

For a more drastic clean-up, you could clear everything you have installed from your iPad by going to Settings, General, Reset, ‘Erase All Content and Settings.