This update wrecked my phone. The battery is draining even when it’s just sitting in my pocket. Before, I could get through a whole day easily, now I’m charging twice. Does anyone know if Apple has acknowledged this or if another update is on the way?
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Verified Solution Summary
Community-analyzed fixes that actually worked for Users
💬 In Progress
📝 Current progress and working solutions so far from this thread
We’ve seen quite a few reports of battery drain after updating to iOS 18.6.2, especially on the iPhone 14 Pro (but also some other models). The main pattern is phones losing charge much faster than before, even while idle or overnight.
Here are some of the adjustments users in the community have said helped reduce the drainage:
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Turning off Background App Refresh completely, or keeping it on for only the most important apps.
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Going into Location Services > System Services and disabling options like Significant Locations and iPhone Analytics.
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Lowering brightness and disabling the Always-On Display wallpaper.
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Checking Mail and Safari — some of us found Mail stuck fetching in the background or Safari tabs constantly refreshing. Switching Mail to manual fetch or clearing Safari history/data made a difference.
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Cutting back on notifications so the phone isn’t constantly waking up.
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Doing a hard reset or resetting all settings (without erasing data) has worked for a few.
It’s also worth remembering that after a major update, iOS runs a lot of background tasks (like Photos indexing and Spotlight). That can drain the battery more for the first couple of days, though it hasn’t settled down for everyone yet.
There isn’t an official fix from Apple so far, but these are the steps other community members have reported working. If you’re still having issues, we’d recommend browsing the community for more tips and shared experiences.
The thing that helped me most was shutting down Background App Refresh. I didn’t realize how many apps were quietly refreshing until I checked. Once I turned it off for everything except the ones I actually need, the battery life improved a lot.
Also lowered brightness and turned off Always-On Display wallpaper. I still keep the time showing, but removing the wallpaper stopped the crazy drain.
On my iPhone 16 Pro Max, what made the biggest difference was turning off a few of the system location services. I went into Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services and disabled “Significant Locations” and “iPhone Analytics.” The idle drain dropped a lot after that.
I also went through Siri settings and disabled it for apps I never use. Seems small but it really cut down background activity. Phone is finally lasting through the day again.
After installing iOS 18.6.2 on my phone, the battery started draining really fast.
After updating to iOS 18.6.2, my phone battery won’t even last half a day.
Same here. My iPhone 15 Pro has been running down crazy fast even while it’s just in standby overnight. I woke up to find it had lost 25% while I was asleep.
Battery drain right after an update is usually the system doing background processes. Spotlight indexing, photo analysis, app data migration… all of that kicks in once the new iOS is installed. It can take anywhere from a couple of days to a week depending on how much data you’ve got. Once it’s finished, the battery behavior stabilizes.
Yep, my 15 Pro battery life is terrible since the update 18.6.2. Even just browsing Safari and texting a bit in the morning, I’m already down to 50% before lunch.
I thought I was imagining it, but on 18.6.2 my 15 Pro drops 20–25% overnight while idle. Before the update it barely lost 2–3%. I’ve got Always-On off, no background apps, location limited. Clearly something wrong with this update.
Mine turned out to be location services. Even with most apps set to “while using,” the system services were chewing power. I disabled “Significant Locations” and “Location-Based Suggestions” and that slowed the idle drain a lot.
I noticed Mail was constantly waking up the phone even with Low Power Mode on. It was stuck fetching in the background. I switched email accounts over to manual fetch and the drain slowed down a bit, but honestly removing the app worked best.
I figured out Safari was eating a ton of battery in the background. Even with Low Power Mode, it kept refreshing tabs. Had to clear history and website data before it stopped draining like crazy.
I didn’t notice it right away, but around day 3 on iOS 18.6.2 the issue began.
I’m in the same boat. Battery keeps getting worse and I doubt Apple will actually do anything about it. Really frustrating, a brand new phone shouldn’t behave like this.
Try a hard reset. Press vol up once, vol down once, then keep holding the power/side button. The screen might flash weird stuff but just keep holding until the Apple logo comes back. Mine took around 12–15 seconds. Make sure you’re on 18.6.2.
In my case it was Mail + notifications. Push was keeping my iPhone connected 24/7, even on standby. I changed it to Fetch every 30 mins and the difference was night and day. Also reviewed notifications app by app —disabled everything non-essential. Battery graph in settings looks way healthier now.