iOS 11 has been released and it adds a lot of great new features to your iPhone.  Many of the controls are much easier to operate and, at least on my iPhone 6, several operations seem faster.  There is only one thing that has given me buyer’s remorse over upgrading to iOS 11, and that is that my battery (which I just replaced a few months ago) doesn’t last through the day.  Fortunately iOS 11 gives you a lot of control over the various settings so you can tweak it to do exactly what you want.  I’ll show you how I discovered what was leeching my battery and how you can adjust the settings to protect your privacy and keep your phone usable for more than just a couple hours.

What is Using My Battery?

iOS 11 has some very good tools for tracing battery leeches.  To find out what is using your battery, simply click on the battery icon in settings and then wait a few seconds for the battery usage to load.  If you don’t tap anything, then it won’t give you the breakdown of time usage, but if you tap either the clock icon or anywhere on the listed usage items, then you can see what was using your battery.  In my case, I was surprised by how much battery youtube had used in the background while I wasn’t using it.  This is a very useful way to look and see if anything looks out of the ordinary.

As a result I changed some of the youtube settings to keep it from being active in the background, i.e. I turned off the youtube notifications.  I checked my updates to see if there was an update available for youtube, which there was.  Apple cannot, after all, take all the blame for problems you have with  your phone after a major release, since most of your apps likely have to publish updates for their app.  This is especially the case of apps that want to take advantage of new features in the iOS 11 release.

Location Services in iOS 11

One of the first things that surprised me after installing iOS 11 was that it appeared to be using my location more.  When I drove to work the first morning and was checking my emails after parking my car, I noticed that there was a message on my screen that the phone would remember where I was parked.  My iPhone also offered to repress notifications while I was driving.  One one hand, this is a nice feature for safety, but on the other, I am an IT professional, and sometimes I get notifications while I’m driving and I may have to pull over, so I opted to leave my notifications off.

I was curious in finding out how often it was tracking my position.  There is an easy way to tell when iOS 11 is tracking your location, because it doesn’t normally show the status bar icon to let you know that your iPhone is checking your location.  If you go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services (this is all the way at the bottom, below all of the other apps that might use your location), then scroll down to the bottom of that screen to find the switch for the Status Bar Icon.  Turning this option on will let you see on your screen, when iOS 11 or any other app is checking your location.

Should I Be Paranoid iOS 11 Knows My Location?

You will also notice on this screen that you have a lot of control over when iOS 11 can know where you are.  This is a nice feature for those of us that are more on the paranoid side.  Each row gives you a report of whether or not that service has tracked you recently.  I suggest you turn on the Status Bar Icon in the spirit of investigation.  While you are using your phone, you can see if iOS 11 is checking your location.  If it seems like a lot, then you can turn off a few services.  Ultimately, the more you turn off, the less your phone is going to be able to surprise you.  The iPhone is a smart phone, and a personal assistant.  If you want your phone to help you based on where you are, these services must be running.

iOS 11 Verdict

A lot of people have gotten into the habit of writing negatively about the latest iOS release.  I think that this is because change is always stressful.  When you have to do things differently, there is a learning curve.  The change from iOS 10 to iOS 11 has been very smooth for me.  The new features seem easy to tune to my liking.  Performance seems to be good, and after tweaking some apps, my battery life is back to normal.  It is easy to be afraid of change for change’s sake.  Looking back, though, at all the ways that our lives are better, I think we can embrace some of the changes.  Please share this article with anyone you know that is having trouble with battery life on their favorite iOS device.