How to Speed Up Your iPhone If It Starts Slowing Down

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Is your iPhone starting to bog down? Is it running slower and slower. Is this an Apple conspiracy to get you to buy their next phone?

A Stethascope on an iPhone - Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/MacXever, Image #19604763

Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/MacXever

Probably not.

This morning, my wife Gail complained to me that her iPhone seemed to be getting slow. She asked if I was experiencing the same thing.

“Now that you mention it,” I said, “yes!”

Both of us then did what we do when we want to solve a problem—we crowd-sourced it. We asked our Twitter followers for their advice.

We combined a few answers and then tried it on our own phones. We noticed an immediate improvement. We also asked our followers to validate our solution. Most reported similar results. Your mileage may vary.

Here’s what you can do to speed up your iPhone when it gets bogged down:

  1. Delete all your text messages. Go to the Messages application. Display the screen that lists all of the people with whom you have exchanged messages. Press the “Edit” button and then delete every conversation. Or, alternatively, you can swipe your finger to the left on each name and then press the “Delete” button.
  2. Shut down all open applications. Double-click your Home button to display your open applications. Now press on one—it doesn’t matter which—until it begins to shake and a red minus button appears in the upper left-hand corner. Press that button to close the app. Repeat this with every open app. (One person told me this step was unnecessary, but two Apple Geniuses advised it.)
  3. Reset your iPhone. Now hold the Home button down with your left thumb while simultaneously pressing the Power button with your right index finger. Keep pressing for 12–15 seconds, until the Apple logo appears.

That’s it!

Questions: Did this speed up your iPhone? Have you found anything else that was helpful? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
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Category: Productivity
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  • Stephen Distasi

    Does having a lot of saved pictures and videos slow things down as well? Seems like those would take more space then text messages

  • OlykinsT

    Since installing iOS 6 my iphone 4 has become sluggish with apps taking ages etc and really getting on my nerves. I’ve been trawling the forums to see if anyone else had the same problem and trying to get an instant ‘fix’ to get back to the way it was. No luck – then I found this one. I did as suggested – except for the text messages bit as I don’t keep any old text messages at all and, so far so good. It does all seem to be working properly again. Maybe it just needs a little ‘kick’ now and then to keep it running happily. Thank you.

  • Uranidiot

    U r an idiot…

  • Sarge62436

    Thanks for the tip! I would never have guessed that all my saved iMessages would slow the works down!

  • JoJo

    I completed all three of your suggestions to speed up my partner’s old iphone – now it is much faster.  Thanks for these simple tips – saved us from visiting Apple shop!

  • Iqracut

    if this works ur amazing 
    #

  • Jasba

    ur a miracle worker thnx a lot lve u man my fones better now ####

  • Baller8737

    does reseting it delete content?

    • http://michaelhyatt.com/ Michael Hyatt

      Nope.

  • Vibhu Pandey

    Go To general settings and reset your settings (not data ;)) from time to time.
    This will surely speed it up.

  • Vibhu Pandey

    Going to general and resetting all settings (not data!!) will make a hell of a difference.
    Also, if you have a jailbroken iphone, just go to cydia and download the ‘speed intensifier’ application. Really works if your iphone has turned into a one with slow animations.

  • Daniel

    Instead of always closing all those little icons, I use this wonderful yet obscure little app called ‘system for your device’. If the phone seems slow you open the app and you can stop all apps running, I.e. a ram refresh and your on your merry way.

  • Ronaldh720

    Found this resource by Goggling  the fact that my iPhone would “lock up”  when someone was leaving a message as I talked to a client.  It would freeze for 1-3 minutes.  Just did  1&3 and much improved!
    My kids have loaded my iPhone 4 with many game apps and I am going to ask them to  selectively delete…So many are programmed with the annoying popups. Found that if I took the time to go to notifications for each; turn off alert style to none, turn off other options as you choose…the phone resources usage would decidedly drop.
    I hope my two cents helps some other frustrated user.

  • Tpeery

    I am an iPhone4 user and have too many photos on my phone. I need to take them off because I am about exceeding my storage limit. I have deleted most of my kids games and apps because of it. Do I have to delete each photo individually? After I sync my phone is there another option for saving my photos?
    Thanks
    T. Peery

  • Patrick Doherty

    Hi,
    This worked a treat. Took ages to delete the messages though (5 years worth). Thanks.

    Patrick

  • Elcee22

    Excellent list of the fixes to speed up your phone.  I followed the list exactly and now have the I 4 running as fast as the day it came out of the box.  Thanks. 

  • B Freckles

    Nope dd all of this and didn’t help at all.
    I also noted that even though I closed all aps as you mentioned, they were still active according to my SYS-activityapp.

  • Y.Yamamoto

    Great it worked, Amazing! Thanks a lot.

    Moto

  • Jesus

    Didn’t work for me mate

  • Frederloosxoxo

    Fabulous! Worked wonders on my phone! Thanks so much!

  • Sundaro

    Thank you for helping me speed up my iphone.

  • Alankrummy

    This so far seems to have helped a lot…thank you so much!!! I was surprised to see how many open apps there were!

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  • Cheryl

    Thanks for the advice – absolutely helped !  My iPhone 4 had definately slowed down to the point of almost freezing – which makes sense since every single app was running in the background & I hadn’t deleted a text message in 2 years.  I guess I treated them like baking soda in the fridge (your supposed to change it ?) And here I sort of considered myself tech savy – embarrassing.  :o)

    So my phone is better &  I learned a couple of things I didn’t know – always a good day when that happens.

    Thanks again !

    Cheryl

  • M0rd3ca1

    As a response to all of the stuff stated on this post, I can say that while I worked as an Apple Genius we would often debate as to whether manually force-quitting apps was necessary or not. The Apple article referenced above doesn’t make sense as it shows how to force quit a single app, yet I can tell you that the “Apple Internal” information shown in that article says to never advise a customer to delete them all, which is counter-intuitive. You don’t always know which app is causing the problem.
    Pretty much everything that has been stated here is true, however the problem is solely relying on iOS to clear up memory as needed. Yes, iOS is designed to quit suspended apps in order to free up memory for newly opened apps as needed, and thus should be able to “juggle” memory without any input from the user. However, iOS isn’t perfect. Actually far from it. I am jailbroken on my iPhone and am constantly monitoring available memory in the status bar. Yes, clearing out the multitasking bar and restarting the phone BOTH clear up memory exactly the same way, so it’s your preference as to which one you’d rather do. But when iOS clears memory, it is usually in the form of a crash. Go check your logs at Settings>General>About>Diagnostics and Usage>Diagnostics and Usage Data and see if you have any “Low Memory” logs. If you see reoccurring low memory logs, then an app is crashing because there is not enough free memory (because iOS was not able to make enough in time). I see it happen with facebook all of the time. My available memory will read something small like 25 MB. I will open Facebook, see my memory go down to 3-4 MB, then my screen will flash and return to the homescreen, and all of the sudden, I have 150 MB of free memory. From there Facebook will open normally because it has enough memory. Facebook crashed during launch, and suspended processes were cleared as needed.The way to combat against this: clear your multitasking bar or shut off your phone regularly (once a day). I would usually tell customers to shut off their phones once a day or so if they were randomly crashing/running slow. Most people don’t want to have to clear out apps but are fine with shutting the phone off once at night. I am jailbroken so I set my phone to respring with a triple-click of the homebutton, which refreshes my available memory.

  • Jack

    You can also go to settings then general then spotlight search and uncheckmark all of them

  • Julz999

    MY IPHONE WORKS LIKE NEW NOW

  • Donna

    Thank you so much! I had tons of apps open and a lot of messages. So far it seems to be running better!

  • Audtree

    I totally believed in that Apple conspiracy. These tricks totally worked though and now I’m not forced into buying up. Thanks!

  • Rripslin

    This completely worked! My phone is so much faster than it was before. I also deleted over 700 photos as texts before I did the reset.

  • Anonymou

    Wow thanks for the tips! My phone is working so much faster. Simple and yet very effective.

  • Kayla Williams

    I have an iPhone 4S and my power button on the top is broken. how else can I reset it without deleting all my info, etc?

    • http://michaelhyatt.com/ Michael Hyatt

      I am not sure. I recommend checking with Apple. If you live near one of their stores, go in and speak with a Genius.

  • Xavier

    Dunno about some of you but it sped up my iPhone 4. Thank you!!

  • Stacey

    Thank you Michael! I followed your steps and my iPhone 4 is much faster now!

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