How to Disable Background App Refresh on iPhone 14

This post will walk you through reducing power usage on the iPhone 14 by turning off the iOS feature that automatically refreshes suspended applications in the background. Here’s a quick guide to disable background app refresh on the Apple iPhone 14 series.

You can always change this setting whenever you need to re-active Background App Refresh for all your applications. Just repeat the same steps to return to the General settings menu where you can find the main toggle to enable the feature.

What happens when you disable Background App Refresh on your iPhone?

Background app refresh is an iOS feature that allows apps to refresh content when connected to a Wi-Fi or cellular network. It’s a background process that automatically instigates as soon as your device connects to the internet. 

While this may yield some benefits, particularly for suspended apps that are able to check for updates and new content, keeping this feature active also has some downside. Apparently, iPhones with background app refresh enabled at all times turned out to drain the battery faster. That said, turning this feature off is therefore recommended if you’re aiming to preserve battery life.

And that’s all about disabling background app refresh on the iPhone 14 and other iPhone models running on iOS 16 and later versions.