Hi all,
Time for a former support rep to turn to Apple VIS for help. Lol
I spent most of two days this week at the Apple store deciding if I wanted to upgrade or just keep my iPhone 15 Pro. I spent a long time talking to a few specialists and the genius bar and it came out about 50/50, so in the end I decided to just have them put a new battery in my 15P.
But here’s the thing that no one can figure out. Safari uses a disproportionate amount of my battery compared to any other apps on my phone. Even just browsing this site, which I would think is mostly just text, makes my phone heat up like I’m playing a triple A, graphics intense game.
Under my battery usage in settings, Safari is by far the app that uses the most battery, even though it is on screen sometimes half as long as something like YouTube, which makes sense because it’s streaming video. Safari uses roughly double the battery power of YouTube, yet it’s on screen for less time. Hypothetical example: YouTube on screen for 2 hours and using 25% battery. Safari on screen for 1 hour, using 49% battery. That doesn’t seem right.
I didn’t notice this until iOS 26. I have most of the new liquid glass stuff as minimal as i can get it since it does nothing for me (I have it set to tinted in settings), and I use screen curtain all the time anyway. When the genius bar looked at my phone, the guy chalked it up to VoiceOver rendering and speaking everything. I told him I didn’t buy that because nothing else drains my battery like that, except maybe FaceTime. Reddit doesn’t do that. Messages doesn’t do that. Wikipedia doesn’t do that…
I do use an add blocker (adblock plus), but I wouldn’t think that would make a difference. If anything, it does get rid of a lot of those annoying ads you have to scroll forever to get past. I also have background refresh turned off.
Anyone else seeing this, particularly with a 15 Pro/16 Pro/Air, as those are the titanium phones? I know when the 15 Pro first came out they were having a lot of problems with them over heating and bricking, but that didn’t happen to me.
Any helpful ideas?
Comments
Recommendations
These are just recommendations. Take them as you will.
• Go to Settings, Apps, Safari. Get rid of any extensions you currently have running. Also clear out your cookies and history. Close out all tabs
• Replace add block with uBlock Origin Lite
• If none of the above work, switched to a different browser. I personally would recommend Firefox as it is one of the few browsers that are.. not.. Chromium-based
Clear your Safari cache
You need to open the Safari settings and find the option to clear your cookies and cash data from Safari
And it is also better to set your tabs to close every seven days automatically That’s what I did with my safari.
Safari settings
I've gone to Safari settings and cleared all data. I did that again this morning and also uninstalled my ad blocker. so far Safari isn't making my phone heat up anymore. Hopefully it stays that way. I also don't keep tabs open all the time, so that's not a contributing factor.
I haven't looked into uBlock Origin yet, though I've seen it mentioned in various places online.
Thanks all for the help!
uBlock Origin Lite
For what it's worth, I use this on Safari and Firefox for iOS, and Microsoft Edge and Firefox for PC.
HTH. 🙂