Battery Drain on iOS 26 and iOS 26.0.1.

Exactly! I have a 2 year old 13 with a strong battery that gets only nominal usage during the day (I typically see 3 days of battery life between charges) and is presenting the same symptoms you described. I was planning to upgrade to a 17 around Thanksgiving but, Im disinclined to invest further $$$ into the Apple rabbit hole. The promise that it will all be fine after a few days is false, and blaming non-Apple apps is a cop-out. My phone gets hot when making a phone call - is the phone app not an Apple app? Considering Samsung….Best of luck to you!

I have had the same issue. My iPhone 14 battery health was 86% before the update, after the update, in 3 days my battery health went down to 75%. Each day got worse my phone now dies at 98% turns on at 10% then dies again, I charge it and it take about 20 mins to go back to 100% then does the same process over again. I never had an issue before this update. My sound also goes up and down on its own.

i had a 7 plus years ago with battery health of 72% and never had this issue at all.

having the same issue on iPhone 14 Pro 512 with 86% capacity and iOS 26.0.1.

apps that show large percentage usage didnt use to behave that way, even though all of them are updated. moreover, apple native apps and HOME SCREEN also have unsatisfactory performance.

its crazy i have to charge my $1000 phone 3-4 times a day. apple, get busy.

Same issue is here. The idle drain is too much. I have purchased my new iphone 16 pro in August 2026 and I did the grave mistake to upgrade from ios 18 to 26 and now idle battery drain is just killing me even will reduce transparency on.

This needs to be addressed asap.

ps: i have upgraded my phone almost a week ago on 1st october 2026

I have the same crazy problem with my iPhone 13 Mini.. Battery draining after update to iOS 26 is crazy. And my battery was changed in November 2024, so health is 97 %.. This needs to be fixed ASAP, because i need to charge my phone twice a day and i am not using it at all..

I have the same issue on iPhone 13, at least 40 to 50% degraded battery life. Indexing and updating and such had finished as I noticed the stuttering is gone. It has been 6 days. I’ve just forced some app updates and It also seems to drained faster than what the wireless charger managed to put in and overall it went down. I have never had that happen before. And even in general wireless charging is much worse (possibly due to quicker drain).

It is pretty bad as as I always charge wireless only.

Hi! I also want to report major battery drainage on my iPhone 13 Pro Max, that was a very well functioning device till I upgrade it to ios 26 :( I would say it's 50% performance decrease.

From 100% in the morning it's around 20% at 4 p.m. Till the update I was able to use phone til 10/11 p.m. without charging.

I also see a frame rate drop, when i unlock the screen, apps show up with 60 fps or even less then that.

I updated all the apps, forced restart and waiting for 26.0.2. I would very much like to downgrade it to 18 but I'm aware its not possible with any authorized method.

Thats the thing. I wasn’t. All my apps were closed. And background refresh turned off. Also if you look closely. How can i get over 1 hour of usage in 29mins. Additionally, i have had the same YT and FB usage for years and i still only needed to charge once every day or two.

My iPhone 12 Pro Max, which had 80% battery health, was working perfectly until I installed iOS 26. Now the battery drains so quickly that it's incredibly frustrating—it feels like older phones are being deliberately pushed aside, even though they still perform just fine.

Like many families, parents upgrade their own phones while passing older devices down to their children. So please, don’t phase out older models so aggressively—they still serve their purpose well.

It’s now been three weeks since I installed iOS 26, and the battery drain issue remains severe. I updated to iOS 26.0.1 immediately upon release, but the situation has not improved. At this point, the system should have stabilised, yet the battery consumption remains unusually high.

I’ve followed all recommended steps, disabling background activity, location services, and other potential causes, with only minimal improvement. This appears to be a widespread and well-documented issue.

I sincerely hope Apple prioritises a fix for this as soon as possible, as the current performance severely impacts usability.

I have a 14 plus. I am a moderate user (no heavy usage of a particular feature like games, online etc)

I used to charge to 100% and by EOD, the battery used to be 12-15%

Now with the iOS 26 update (now iOS 26.0.1), my best new friend is the power bank! Wayyyyyy tool much of a drain!

You are correct that you would never know if the same thing would have happened by simply playing a processor intensive game. The battery was likely defective and the replacement should have been no charge to you through the standard AppleCare coverage. Heat is generated by just watching Youtube/TikTok videos and if that was the case, it would appear that action was the cause. In both cases heat is going to be increased through an update or normal use and battery swelling is the result of a defective battery.

I remember a long time ago when iphones were praised for their excellent idle time without loosing much battery comparibg to others.. but since a few years i noticed the opposite also . Nowadays ios is sipping battery life nearly as much no matter if it’s just idle and not used or used .. it’s quite weird .. i also boticed that with my set up my iphones eats more battery on wifi than on cellular from home … and yes i wish apple would give us more options in the battery section like on others , we have adaptive battery with ios 26 but no extreme power saving mode where you can opt in to delay all non urgent notifications when you unlock the phone or just wake it up .. i have a cheap 200 euros phone next to my 17 pro max and the cheap phone is barely usibg any battery idle .. i wish apple would put more effort in this area .

My wife has a 16 Pro Max and it performs better under iOS 26.0.1 than probably another of the iOS 189 versions. If you can’t figure out how to fix the issues you’re confronting, contact Apple Support. But there is nothing subtle about a great working iOS. the improvements are noticeable.

Snoopy72 wrote:

Despite a clean setup and no background apps, I’m losing around 50–55 % in about 12 hours of light use (mostly Messenger, web browsing and short calls). Overnight it also drops several percent while idle.

You should be charging your phone all night every night and I recommend using the Optimized Charge setting. If you are using a charge limit, you are already starting each day with a partially depleted battery. Your phone under any iOS version is going to drop several percent overnight while idle. What you described is having all day battery life. Don't get caught up comparing Screen on/off time as you can see adding the 2 together never equals 24 hours which are the only 2 states other than when your device is powered off.