Widgets are handy tools available on pretty much every modern day smartphone.
They make it extremely simple and convenient to access your favorite apps directly from your home screen.
However, do widgets drain battery life?
If you’ve ever wondered if you are sacrificing your battery life for accessibility, then you’ve come to the right place!
Widgets do have a slight impact on your smartphone’s battery life.
They are extensions of the source apps, and as such consume a certain amount of your smartphone’s live power levels.
This occurs because they perform certain background activities on your device.
Read on to find out more about how widgets drain a device’s battery life- as well as what you can do to stop it!
Widgets On iOS And Android- Is There A Difference?
Widgets are designed to improve and optimize your smartphone experience.
These valuable tools have long been a part of mobile phone operating systems- whether Android or iOS- and they’ve only gotten better over time.
There are a huge variety of widgets you can have on your devices, such as location, device maintenance, clocks, weather reports, and more.
Most third-party apps also have widgets for Android devices. Thankfully, most Android phones are now clever enough to suspend background widget activity when the device is locked.
As a result, you won’t really experience any noticeable battery drain if the device has a healthy battery!
Do iOS Widgets Drain Battery?
Most iOS 14 and 15 widgets do not use up a significant amount of your battery power.
However, if you intend to add more and more widgets, be prepared for at least a small reduction in available battery life day-to-day.
The best way to figure this out for sure is to try out a little experiment.
If you’ve recently installed a new iOS, try using your iPhone for some time without any widgets.
Next, try adding a few extra widgets to the device. Observe any differences.
With this experiment, you may find that these widgets use up a small amount of your battery, speeding up the rate at which your overall power levels decrease.
As a result, you may also notice that you have to charge the device more frequently when you have more widgets installed!
How Do Widgets Drain Your Battery?
As already stated above, widgets take a bit of a bite out of your phone’s battery life.
These shortcut tools are app extensions, which means they aren’t able to exist independently. As such, widgets themselves do constantly need to sync with the app.
Therefore, even when the source app is not running, it will require a continually running background process to serve the widget.
This process slightly impacts the phone’s overall battery life. It typically isn’t a significant concern however as the impact is usually minor, and only those that are particularly sensitive about their battery percentages will notice.
Additionally, the effects on the battery will really only be noticeable if you are running several widgets simultaneously.
Nevertheless, it can be a good idea to uninstall widgets you barely use to save not only a smidgen of battery life but also a little bit of the phone’s RAM.
If you don’t know how to do this, here are the steps you can follow to remove a widget on your smartphone:
On Android
Firstly, unlock the device to access your home screen.
Locate the widget you wish to remove, hold down on it, and tap on the “Remove From Home” option. That’s it!
On iPhone
Unlock the device to access the home screen.
Just like with Android phones, locate the widget on your home screen, hold down on it, and tap on the ‘Remove From Home” option.
Alternatively, swipe from left to right using your finger and tap on the edit option at the bottom of your screen. Next, tap the minus button next to the widget and tap on the “Remove” option. Tap Done to save your settings. That’s it!
Are Widgets Bad For Your Phone?
If you’re wondering whether or not widgets have any adverse effects on your phone or battery life, the answer is No.
Widgets are designed to make your apps and home screen more accessible, so they definitely do more good than harm!
These handy tools have a variety of functions and can improve both the features and appearance of your home screen.
The biggest downside widgets have on your phone is related to your battery.
Expect your battery to drain a little faster than it normally does if they are set to constantly update themselves, or to carry out background tasks even when the device is locked.
You may also notice slight lagging if your phone has limited processing capabilities.
How To Preserve Your Smartphone’s Battery Life If Widgets Are Draining It
New widgets are sometimes introduced whenever you update your smartphone’s operating system.
Unfortunately, if your phone starts to have too many widgets running on the Home screen, it can cause the battery life to shorten quite noticeably!
If you believe one or two (or more) widgets are causing your phone’s battery to drain quickly, here are some tips to help you out:
Turn Off Location Tracking Widgets
If you’re using an iOS device, it’s best to turn off location services for both apps and widgets to improve your battery’s performance.
For instance, rather than allow the widget to detect your location every few minutes/hours, set a default location instead.
Once you have set a default location, you can then turn off location services and still be able to receive weather reports.
To achieve this, head to the device’s settings and tap on “Privacy & Security.” Next, tap on “Location Services” and tap on “Weather” (or any other widget).
Lastly, tap on the “Never” option and save the changes.
With this setting in place, widgets that use location services will no longer affect your battery performance. You can repeat this step for any widget that utilizes location services!
Delete Unwanted Widgets
If you have a few widgets that you don’t use very often, consider removing or uninstalling them entirely.
It’s easy to reduce the number of widgets on your home screen on an Android device by holding down on the widget and tapping on the Remove option.
If you are using an iOS device, follow these steps to remove widgets from your home screen or the “Today” view.
First, unlock the device and go to the first page “Today” view.
Tap on “Edit” at the bottom and tap on the minus button next to the widget. Finally, tap on the Remove option and save your changes.
Turn On Power Saving Mode
This feature has been a part of general smartphone infrastructure since the very beginning.
Low Power mode helps to optimize battery performance by limiting widget background processes and other app activities.
Enable Battery Saver mode if you feel your battery is draining too quickly and need it to last a while longer.
Limit Background Activities
Your apps and widgets will always be in use if you don’t alter this in your default settings.
As long as there is a network connection, certain apps and widgets will continue to run in the background.
Of course, with background activities fully operational, expect these widgets to slowly drain your battery percentage!
To prevent this from happening, you can turn off background activity and select the exact apps that are able to open or refresh themselves in the background. Here’s how:
On iOS
Head to Settings, tap on General, and click on “Background App Refresh“.
From here, you can select how you want the background refresh function to work for particular apps.
It’s possible to turn the background refresh completely off, or to set it to run over Wi-Fi alone.
If you want to turn off the background refresh feature for specific apps, toggle the slider next to the app to turn it off!
On Android
Head to your Settings, tap on Connection & sharing, and go to the “Data Usage” option.
Next, tap on Mobile Data Usage, select an app, and turn off the “Background data” option.
In Conclusion
If you were intent on adding new widgets but weren’t quite sure of the answer to the question, “Do widgets drain battery?” then hopefully we’ve been able to clear that up for you today.
It’s important to note that every activity on your phone affects your battery life somewhat. Just having the device turned on alone is enough to reduce your battery percent bit by bit!
Like any other app component, widgets are no exception as they perform various tasks on your smartphone (and often in the background).
However, their effect on a device’s battery life is usually minimal, especially when you don’t have a large number of them running at the same time.
If you do notice that your battery is draining too quickly, it can be beneficial to reduce the number of widgets on your phone if there are too many, as well as turn off all background app activity!