Tips to help fix sluggish performance on iOS 8


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Though iOS 8 has tons of great new features and so many improvements, the release has not been entirely trouble-free for some users, and certain iPhone and iPad devices may feel as if their performance has degraded after the update.

The extent of the speed issue seems to vary, ranging from random and generally sluggish iOS 8 behavior, to just stuttering animations, or, sometimes the worst scenario, where the entire iOS experience feels suddenly outright slow when compared to how it performed under the prior version.

Having experienced and then resolved some of the performance issues with iOS 8 and iOS 8.0.2 on an iPhone 5, we’re going to share a few tips that helped. The first two are quite simple and don’t require much effort, and so if you’re experiencing minor issues, try those first. The third trick involves a complete reset and restore of the device, and is intended only for situations suffering consistent performance problems that otherwise seem unresolvable.

iOS 8 Feels Slower with random sluggishness & slowdowns

If the performance degradation is occasional or sporadic, or things just feel like they’re slower when doing something as simple as opening an app, you may be able to easily correct it by simply hard restarting the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. This is often the case for a device that was upgraded to iOS 8 but hasn’t been rebooted since, and a hard restart (sometimes called a reset by Apple, which, somewhat confusingly but critical to differentiate, is not the same as resetting the iPhone, which actually clears everything off of it completely).

Hard restarting an iPhone or iPad is just a matter of holding down the Power button and Home button concurrently together until the Apple logo appears, signifying the forced restart. This takes 10-15 seconds or so to initiate. Once you see the Apple logo, you can let go of both buttons.

Tips to help fix sluggish performance on iOS 8

iOS will take a little longer than usual to boot, and when it does things may be snappier and back to speed.

iOS 8 Animations Seem Choppy and Laggy

If the only speed complaint with iOS 8 you’ve experienced has to do with motion, animations, and related frame-rate drops or choppiness, you can get around that by disabling the animation effects. It’s not quite a resolution, but it does work simply by enabling the alternate fading effect, which not only ditches the choppy animations, but also makes the iOS device feel faster.

Turning off the motion animations is easy, just go into Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion > and turn the switch ON.

Tips to help fix sluggish performance on iOS 8

The effect is instantaneous, no more motion and zipping animation effects in iOS, you’ll have the fading effect and transitions instead. This may be more of a perceptual change than much else, but it really does make every device feel faster, even the already blazing fast iPhone 6 line.

Reset iOS 8 Networking Settings

Resetting network settings is often the be-all-end-all advice for resolving many network performance issues and wi-fi related problems that pop up with iOS. The reason is quite simple; it dumps all settings, caches, DHCP info, and any other settings or custom data that has been set on the iPhone or iPad.

To reset your iOS 8 Network Settings, visit the Settings app, head to “General”, then to “Reset” and choose “Reset Network Settings”.

Tips to help fix sluggish performance on iOS 8

This will force the device to reboot, and it also dumps any wi-fi passwords you have stored, so be ready to enter those again. This should always be this first thing you do any time you experience networking related issues with an iOS device – it works fairly reliably.

Bluetooth issues

A lot of people have had trouble getting their iPhones to connect to accessories or in-car Bluetooth systems. Sometimes the connection won’t establish or it drops frequently. For some people the Bluetooth works perfectly for music streaming and incoming calls, but it won’t work properly for outgoing calls. Whatever your problem is there are a few fixes worth trying.

Potential solutions:

  • Double check your pairing process. Make sure you are entering the system or accessory into pairing mode, you may need to press a button.
  • Try turning Bluetooth off on your iPhone or iPad, restart the device, and turn it back on again.
  • There could be a problem with the connection settings, or perhaps you’ve reached a profile limit. Try deleting devices from the Bluetooth system or accessory you are pairing with. Also go to Settings > Bluetooth and choose the device or system in question and tell your iPhone or iPad to Forget Device. Restart and set the connection up again as new.
  • Make sure that your Bluetooth system or accessory firmware is up to date. Check on the manufacturer’s website.
  • Go to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings, but bear in mind you’ll need to set up your Wi-Fi connections again after doing this.
  • If none of the above works then you could try restoring your device. Here’s how to factory reset an iPhone.

Reduce Motion

Parallax is the iOS 8 feature that gives your device a 3D look, and appears to let you look around app icons onto the wallpaper.

It performs its magic by using the gyroscope and accelerometer. That can reduce performance, though. To turn it off, go to Settings--> General--> Accessibility--> Reduce Motion and then tap to turn Reduce Motion --> On.

Tips to help fix sluggish performance on iOS 8

Turn off Transparency

There's no doubt that iOS 8 is pretty, particularly the transparency feature. But that prettiness comes at a cost - a performance and battery hit. So turn it off if you want better performance and more battery efficiency. You'll see a gray in places where you used to see transparency, though.

To do it, go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Increase Contrast > Reduce Transparency and then set the switch to On.

Tips to help fix sluggish performance on iOS 8

Turn off Location Services

Some people have reported that turning off Location Services can speed up a laggy device, particularly iPads (even because GPS functionality can slow down CPU over time). To turn the services off go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services, and turn them off.

Tips to help fix sluggish performance on iOS 8

Wi-Fi slow and dropping signal

A lot of people have experienced a Wi-Fi problem after updating devices to iOS 8. The Wi-Fi signal will appear to be strong, but websites are slow to load and video slow to buffer. In some cases the connection seems to drop altogether, and in other cases it just slows to a crawl. You may get a message that “the server has stopped responding” if you’re trying to use Safari. Other devices are still able to connect to the router and enjoy the usual speeds.

Workarounds:

  • Toggle Wi-Fi/Airplane mode: You might find that it comes back temporarily if you toggle Wi-Fi off and then on again. Alternatively you could switch on Airplane mode and then turn it off again. Swipe up from the bottom to open the Control Center and toggle these settings.
  • Reboot: Some people report temporary success by switching the device off on and again. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button for ten seconds or so, until you see the Apple logo. Your Wi-Fi may work again for a while.
  • Turn Bluetooth off: Sometimes Bluetooth can interfere with Wi-Fi speeds so you could try turning Bluetooth off. It won’t fix the issue, but it might reduce it.

Potential solutions:

  • Reset Network Settings: Try going to Settings > General > Reset and tap Reset Network Settings. This has worked for a few people, but the problem might return.
  • Turn off Wi-Fi Networking: Try going to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and under System Services you need to toggle off Wi-Fi Networking.
  • Toggle 2.4/5GHz: If you have a two channel router then try changing from 5GHz to 2.4GHz. Generally speaking 5GHz is faster, but with a shorter range. Some people report a better connection on 2.4GHz and a few find an improvement by switching the other way.
  • Change router channel: You could also try changing the channel on your router. You’ll need to put your router’s IP into your browser and log in to change settings. Refer to your ISP for instructions.
  • Switch DNS to Google or OpenDNS: Some people report success after switching DNS to use Google servers. You can do this via Settings > Wi-Fi then tap the ”i” icon next to your router, scroll down to DNS and tap the numbers, then enter “8.8.8.8”. You might have to restart your device for this to take effect.
  • Tips to help fix sluggish performance on iOS 8

  • Factory Reset: It’s a drastic step with no guarantee of success, but you could try a factory reset. Here’s how to factory reset an iPhone.

Battery Drain

A lot of people seem to suffering with a fast draining battery after the iOS 8 update. Some are reporting extreme cases where their iPhone is going from 100 percent to dead within four hours.

There’s a good chance that a specific app is causing the problem. Go to Settings > General > Usage > Battery Usage and take a look at what is guzzling down that battery juice.

If you find a specific app that’s draining a suspiciously high amount of battery then check to see if there’s an update available and if not, think about uninstalling it.

If you need it then try disabling Background App Refresh via Settings > General and Location Services via Settings > Privacy.

Turn off Background App Refresh

You can start your journey of iPhone battery discovery by going to Settings > General > Usage. As a quick test, try making a note of the remaining Standby and Usage times, then tap the Sleep/Wake button and wait for 10 minutes. Go back to Settings > General > Usage and you should find Standby has increased 10 minutes. If it hasn’t, then something is keeping your iPhone from resting and it’s probably an app.

Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh and take a look down the list. Do you really need all those apps updating themselves in the background and draining your battery life? Be ruthless and turn off all the apps you don’t need to update automatically.

Tips to help fix sluggish performance on iOS 8

Remember, they’ll still update and work as normal when you fire them up, they just won’t keep running when you’re not using them. If you find that you don’t like the change, you can always head back into this section and toggle the apps back on again.

Switch Push Email to Fetch

Do you really need to get every email as soon as it comes in? Maybe you’ve got a secondary email account that isn’t so important. Go into Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data and switch from Push to either Fetch or Manual.

Tips to help fix sluggish performance on iOS 8

With Fetch, you can set an interval, such as every 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and so on, for your iPhone to check for new email. The longer you make the interval, the less battery you’ll be using. With Manual, it will only check for new email when you open the app.

Reduce Storage Usage

Some people have reported that when their iOS 8 device is too full, it leads to crashes and other problems. So go through your device and delete unnecessary apps, and photos and videos you no longer need.

To find which apps use the most storage, and see overall how much storage space you've got left, go to Settings > General > Usage > look at Available Storage.

Tips to help fix sluggish performance on iOS 8

Adjust Screen Brightness

A tried-and-true battery saving tip, you can adjust the brightness of your device by pulling up the Control Center, or going to Settings -> Display and Brightness and adjusting from there. The lower you have it, the less drain of your battery.

Tips to help fix sluggish performance on iOS 8

You might have seen people telling you to toggle on Auto-Brightness to save battery, but since your device will constantly be adjusting to the lighting around you, this feature could potentially be draining more battery.

Personal Hotspot has disappeared

After updating to iOS 8 a few people have been surprised to find that the Personal Hotspot option has just completely disappeared from the Settings menu. Luckily there’s an easy fix that seems to be working for the majority.

Potential solutions:

Go to Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data and type something in the user name field then go back and the Personal Hotspot option should appear in Settings.

If that doesn’t work then go to Settings > Mobile Data > APN Settings and take a look, then make sure your carrier settings are the same under Personal Hotspot.

Tips to help fix sluggish performance on iOS 8

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