iPhone Battery Life Tip That Actually Works, Immediately

If you have "Facebook Messenger," delete it. You're welcome. Go back to what you were doing.

I did this, and my battery life immediately and dramatically improved.

As it turns out, Facebook Apps are battery eating monsters, even when you think you are not using them.

Honestly, you could go in to your iPhone Settings > General > Background App Refresh and turn off Messenger, but why bother? Once you turn off Background Refresh, you have nothing but a big hunk of disconnected bloatware sitting on your phone, taking up space.

And, guess what? If you are like most people, you'll never miss it. Go ahead and open the Facebook App. Look in the "Messages" section. Yep, it's all there and you can continue to receive, reply and create messages right there. As it should be. In one app.

Facebook wakes up &
runs every 10 seconds!

Speaking of the Facebook App, it's gnawing away at battery life too. Unless FB updates are mission critical, consider turning off Background App refresh for it as well. And turn off Location Services for Facebook while you're at it: Settings > Privacy > Location Services and toggle Facebook to "off." Chances are you won't miss a thing.

If you're really curious, here are a couple articles that explain why Facebook Apps are killing your battery:

The Guardian, April 8, 2014

Sebastien Düvel, iOS Programmer Blog

Annoyed By Facebook's Automatically Playing Videos?

Turn them off!

Just go to "Settings" (a little triangle in the upper right part of your window will open a drop down menu that takes you there) and look for "Videos" in the left column. (Mac users will need to use Chrome or Firefox to make the change. For unknown reasons, the "Videos" setting doesn't show up in Safari, although once you change the setting, it will work on all of your browsers.)

Make the change by clicking on "Videos" and choosing "Off"

Unfortunately, you'll need to make separate changes to your phone in order to stop the pesky buggers from running by themselves there, at least on Wi-Fi. Cousin Markie doesn't let us turn them off entirely, but at least they won't chew up your data.

Android Users: Open Facebook, open the left sidebar, and tap "App Settings."Check the "Auto-Play Videos on Wi-FI Only" box.

iOS Peeps: Open the "Settings" app, find "Facebook" (down below "Game Center") and then click on "Settings." Click the toggle next to "Auto-play on Wi-Fi Only" so that the toggle shows green.