iPhone Slow After iOS 11 Update? Here's How To Fix It

Last month Apple rolled out its latest iOS update and since then users have been getting used to the new features like screen recording , new emojis and some unexpected consequences like poor battery life and a lagging phone as well. While it’s not clear whether the battery life and the slow load times are directly connected to the new update, users seem to think it is.

Many of them took to Twitter to complain about the slowness they’ve been experiencing and said it seemed to have cropped up around the time they updated their devices.

One user even said the update was the worst one they had ever had for their device.

Apple Support wasn’t offering these users many solutions, just asking them to direct message the support account on Twitter. If you’re experiencing slowness after the update there are a few things you can try to bring your iPhone up to speed again. There’s no way to undownload the update or to revert back to the old iOS you were using for your phone, so you’ll have to rely on a few other tricks.

The first thing you should try is checking for any subsequent updates that have become available since you installed iOS 11. To check for these, go to “Settings” and then “General” then “Software Update,” your phone will then check to see if there are any, if one appears, download it so you’re running on the most up-to-date version of iOS. Apple sometimes fixes initial bugs in the new software in the days following its release, so one of these updates might improve the performance of the software. You should also update any apps that seem to be running slow on the new iOS, there might be a version available that is more iOS 11 compatible.

If you recently updated, within the last day or so, some slowness is expected. Your phone is re-indexing your apps for the new iOS, so this background activity can slow down the other tasks you ask your phone to perform. This can last up to a few days, so you might want to wait at least that long before trying anything else. If none of these approaches seem to be working, try simply powering down your device and giving it a few minutes rest before turning it back on.

You might also want to free up space on your phone. If it’s running at almost full storage all the time, that could slow it down a bit. If you don’t want to risk losing anything or deleting anything for good, you can back up your phone or send some items to the cloud. If you aren’t particularly attached to your messages, you can also set these to clear out after 30 days or one year. This could help you clear some space up on your phone. This can be set under “Settings” then “Messages” and “Message History.” Photos can also be a good place to cut and clearing the cache in some of your apps like Snapchat can also help free up smaller amounts of space.

Your others options are to turn off some of the features Apple offers on the iPhone like background app refresh, Siri suggestions and look up, motion settings including turning off auto-play message effects, and transparency effects. Turning these off can all help speed your device up.

Other than these fairly simple settings changes there are a few more drastic approaches you can try, but you should definitely do a full backup of your device beforehand. You can try resetting your system settings, which will turn all of your custom settings back to whatever the factory ones are. So if you did go through and turn certain features on or off they might not stay that way. You can also restore your device to factory settings and then download your backup.

International Business Times reached out to Apple about whether or not the new iOS could be causing devices to slow, but Apple had not responded by the time this article was published.