You may be familiar with Optimized Battery Charging, a feature that automatically slows down your iPhone’s charging speed beyond 80 percent. With iOS 18, Apple lets you manually set a charge limit to improve your iPhone’s battery longevity. I’ll show you how to use it.
How to Set a Charge Limit for Your iPhone’s Battery
Before you proceed, it’s worth noting that this feature is only available on the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 models running iOS 18 or later. If you have one, you can follow these steps to set a charge limit:
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone and navigate to Battery > Charging.
- Now, simply adjust the Charge Limit slider according to your preference. The lowest you can set is 80 percent, though.
Changing the charge limit to anything less than 100 percent will automatically disable Optimized Battery Charging on your iPhone. Since you’re manually limiting the battery charge to less than 100 percent, this feature becomes irrelevant.
For battery calibration, your iPhone will charge to 100 percent every once in a while. Otherwise, it will stick to the charge limit you set. Charge limit is a great way to maintain your iPhone’s battery health.
Why You Should Limit Your iPhone’s Battery Charging Capacity
Charging your iPhone to 100 percent and then draining it to 0 puts a lot of strain on the battery. Lithium-ion batteries inside smartphones and other devices wear out faster when regularly charged to 100 percent. This is also why iPhones and other devices slow their charging speed after 80% and switch to trickle charging.
The lower charging speed reduces the amount of heat generated and slowly tops the cell to its maximum capacity, reducing wear and tear. Trickle charging can be one of the reasons why your phone charges slowly.
With a charge limit, you can permanently set your iPhone not to charge its cell to 100 percent. Instead, you can limit it to anywhere between 80 and 95 percent to extend the battery’s lifespan. This feature is only useful if you don’t use your iPhone heavily and are always near a power socket.
Heavy users might find themselves with a dead iPhone by the end of their workday without access to a charger. For them, replacing the Phone’s battery after a couple of years is a better option.
