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.

Estimate Cost : 0

Time Needed : 3 minutes

Need help stopping your iPhone 14 apps from automatically checking new content whenever the device gets online? Feel free to refer to these subsequent steps.

  1. 1. First, launch the Settings app menu by tapping on the Settings icon from the Home screen or Apps screen. The Settings icon is represented by a gear-shaped figure.

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    You can also access the Settings app shortcut from the quick settings panel of your phone.

  2. 2. From the Settings menu, scroll to find then tap General.

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    On the next menu, you’ll see a list of all system management features.

  3. 3. Tap Background App Refresh to continue. Another menu opens with the Background App refresh toggle. 

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    Beneath it are the list of apps that are allowed to refresh content in the background whenever the phone is online.

  4. 4. If you want to stop individual apps from refreshing in the background, just turn off the switch next to the desired apps. 

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    If you want to stop all apps from automatically refreshing content even when suspended, tap Background App Refresh instead.

  5. 5. On the succeeding window, you will see three main options to choose from including Off, Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi & Cellular Data. To disable the feature for all your apps, select OFF. 

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    With the feature disabled, all apps are prevented from automatically refreshing content whenever the phone connects to a Wi-Fi or cellular data network. This setting applies to all apps unless specified.

Tools
  • Settings
Materials
  • Apple iPhone 14

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.

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