There are times when you don’t need your iPhone to be running at full power, such as at night when you are asleep, or at work if you aren’t allowed phones. Schedule iPhone low power mode.
Sometimes you need the iPhone to be running at maximum power, such as when gaming, taking videos and other activities. At other times it may not be so important and switching to low power mode reduces the iPhone’s workload a little, which leads to longer battery life. It has little effect on anything important like calls, messages, emails and notifications.
Low power mode can enable the iPhone to last 24 hours or more without needing to be charged. This is good for battery health because the less often the battery is charged, the longer it will last.
You can easily pull down from the top right side of the screen to show the Control Center and then tap a button to enable or disable low power mode. However, you might forget. Create a shortcut in the iOS Shortcuts app to enable and disable low power mode at specific times of day or night. You can simply set it and forget it, and reap the benefits of longer battery life.
If you are not familiar with the Shortcuts app and want to learn how it works, this is about as simple as it gets. Use it to learn how to create shortcuts on the iPhone.
1: Use the Shortcuts app
Open the Shortcuts app on the iphone. Select the Automation tab in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen and then press the Create Personal Automation button. This enables the iPhone to react to certain conditions automatically.
2: Select a Shortcut condition
A list of the conditions that can trigger the shortcut to run is listed. The one we want is Time of Day, but notice that there are several other useful triggers. Our automation will automatically run at specific times of the day. Press it.
3: Specify a time
When do you want this automation to run? You could enable low power mode from sunset to sunrise, but I will select Time of Day. Tap the time and then use the control to set the hour and minute this automation shortcut is to run. Select Daily below. We obviously want this shortcut to run every day, but other shortcuts may be needed only occasionally.
4: Add an action to the shortcut
We have set when the shortcut to run, but what should it do when it runs? Press Add action and then enter ‘Battery’ into the search box. (Search is at the bottom of the screen, but moves to the top when displaying results.)
We want to save battery power, so select Set Low Power Mode for the action.
5: Customize the action
The action appears at the top of the screen: Turn Low Power Mode On. Notice that Turn and On are in blue text. This indicates that there alternative options are available. For example, press On and it becomes Off. After creating this shortcut to automatically turn on low power mode, return here and create another shortcut that turns it off at a specific time.
6: Add more actions
It is possible to add more actions to the shortcut and one you might want to use is Vibrate Device. If you want this, use the search box to find it and then tap it to add it. It is not essential, but you may find vibration useful.
Here you can see that this shortcut has two actions: Turn Low Power Mode On and Vibrate Device. Press Next in the top right corner of the screen.
7: Finishing up
The shortcut is nearly finished. Turn off the switch Ask Before Running. We want this shortcut to run automatically, not stop and ask what to do. We might not even be using it at the time.
Two iPhone low power mode shortcuts
We created an automation shortcut to enable low power mode on the iPhone at 21:00. Repeat the process and create another shortcut to automatically turn off low power mode at 07:30 or whatever time works best for you.
Those shortcuts look at little odd because both seem to set low power mode. You should read them as Set low power mode to… and either On or Off.
The same technique can be used to create other automations that do other things. It is worth exploring the actions you can perform and see if any are worth automating.
