For example, if you always check Facebook during breakfast, your iPod learns that and, in the background, updates Facebook with the latest posts before breakfast, so you see fresh content. Cool, yes, but it takes up battery. You can always update app content yourself. To turn off the background app refresh setting on an iPod Touch, open Settings, and go to General > Background App Refresh. Then, disable the feature completely or turn it off for some apps. That’s nice, but those downloads and installs can use up battery life. To save the battery, wait to update all apps at once when the battery is charged or the iPod is plugged in. To disable this from Settings, go to iTunes & App Store and turn off Updates next to Automatic Downloads. These look cool, but when you’re trying to conserve energy, these effects aren’t essential. Later versions of iOS cut down on these animations, but you can still save battery without them. To reduce this motion on your iPod to prevent it from draining the battery, go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion. Move the Reduce Motion toggle switch to green/on. It’s best to turn on Bluetooth only when you’re going to connect to a device. Otherwise, turn it off from Control Center by tapping the Bluetooth icon (to make it grey). Keep Wi-Fi turned off until you’re using it. Like Bluetooth, you can disable Wi-Fi on an iPod Touch from Control Center. Tap the Wi-Fi icon to make it grey. The brighter the screen, the more battery life it needs. Keep the screen brightness low, and you’ll quickly find that your iPod Touch battery lasts longer. You can adjust the screen brightness of your iPod from Settings, under the Display & Brightness options. iCloud is a useful service that provides many benefits, but if you take tons of photos, it can also be a problem for your battery. This is because of a feature included in the iPod settings that automatically uploads photos to iCloud after you take them. You can disable auto-uploads for iCloud in Settings. Go to Photos and move the iCloud Photos and My Photo Stream toggle switches to the off/white position. Push makes it easy to be on top of the latest communications, but since it’s grabbing email more often, it’s another reason your iPod Touch might have a short battery life. Unless you need to be super up to date at all times, turn off push on your iPod Touch. Go to Settings > Passwords & Accounts > Fetch New Data, and move the Push toggle switch to the white/off position. Here’s how: go to Settings > Passwords & Accounts > Fetch New Data, and select an option from the list. Try a longer time between checking for the best results. One aspect of the Music app is that it uses software to make sure everything sounds great. It does this by applying equalization to songs. This can boost bass in hip hop or echo in chamber music, for example. It’s not a requirement, though, so unless you’re an audiophile, you can turn it off to reduce battery drain on your iPod. Go to Settings > Music > EQ, and tap Off. Again, these wallpapers are nice to look at but don’t do much. When you change the wallpaper, stick to a regular, static image (for example, don’t choose something from the Dynamic area of the iPod settings). To disable AirDrop to keep the battery from dying so fast, go to Settings > General > AirDrop, and tap Receiving Off. Like most things, having location services running all the time affects how often an iPod uses Wi-Fi, and thus impacts battery life. Turning off location services on an iPod might be one of the best ways to get more battery. Here’s how to disable all location services: go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services, and move the Location Services toggle switch to the off/white position. Here’s how to get there: Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services. Move the toggle switches for Diagnostics & Usage, Location-Based Apple Ads, Location-Based Suggestions, and Popular Near Me to off/white. You can also control how quickly your iPod locks the screen after going idle. The quicker it locks, the faster you can start saving battery life. Manage the Auto-Lock option in Settings > Display & Brightness to take advantage of this battery life saver. Since Low Power Mode disables some features, it’s best to use it only when the battery is draining fast, but you need to keep it on until the next recharge. Go to Settings > Battery, and enable Lower Power Mode to turn it on. Go to Settings > Battery to view the apps based on battery usage over the last day or week. Delete the biggest offenders if you don’t need those apps. You’ll need to install a content blocking app from the App Store before you block ads in Safari. Once you do, open Settings > Safari > Content Blockers, and move the toggle switch to the green/on position next to the content blocker. The great thing about battery packs for iPods is that all you have to do is charge these like you do your iPod, and they fit on your device like a sleeve. You don’t need to bother with any settings; just attach and go. In reality, forcing those apps to close can cause a faster battery drain. You can read more about that.
