Technologies

iPhone Battery Tanking Fast? These 3 Settings Are Probably to Blame

Struggling with short battery life on your iPhone? These simple setting changes can help.

If your iPhone feels like it’s always on the verge of dying, you’re not imagining things. Over time, every phone’s battery loses its ability to hold a charge-but that doesn’t mean you have to live tethered to a charger. Even if your iPhone is a few years old, there are simple setting tweaks you can make right now that can noticeably extend your battery life. You might be surprised how much longer your phone lasts with just a few smart changes.

Whether you’re using your phone to get directions, stream music, or send that one last text, the last thing you want is for it to shut down at the worst possible moment. Instead of scrambling for a charger or switching on Low Power Mode every few hours, take a minute to check your iPhone settings. Turning off a few power-draining features could be the fix your battery desperately needs-and it only takes seconds to do.

You can also keep an eye on your Battery Health menu — it’ll tell you your battery health percentage (80% or higher is considered good), as well as show you how many times you’ve cycled your battery and whether or not your battery is «normal.»

We’ll explain three iOS features that put a strain on your iPhone’s battery to varying degrees, and show how you can turn them off to help preserve battery life. Here’s what you need to know.

Turn off widgets on your iPhone lock screen

All the widgets on your lock screen force your apps to automatically run in the background, constantly fetching data to update the information the widgets display, like sports scores or the weather. Because these apps are constantly running in the background due to your widgets, that means they continuously drain power.

If you want to help preserve some battery on iOS 18, the best thing to do is simply avoid widgets on your lock screen (and home screen). The easiest way to do this is to switch to another lock screen profile: Press your finger down on your existing lock screen and then swipe around to choose one that doesn’t have any widgets.

If you want to just remove the widgets from your existing lock screen, press down on your lock screen, hit Customize, choose the Lock Screen option, tap on the widget box and then hit the «—» button on each widget to remove them.

Reduce the motion of your iPhone UI

Your iPhone user interface has some fun, sleek animations. There’s the fluid motion of opening and closing apps, and the burst of color that appears when you activate Siri with Apple Intelligence, just to name a couple. These visual tricks help bring the slab of metal and glass in your hand to life. Unfortunately, they can also reduce your phone’s battery life.

If you want subtler animations across iOS, you can enable the Reduce Motion setting. To do this, go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion and toggle on Reduce Motion.

Switch off your iPhone’s keyboard vibration

Surprisingly, the keyboard on the iPhone has never had the ability to vibrate as you type, an addition called «haptic feedback» that was added to iPhones with iOS 16. Instead of just hearing click-clack sounds, haptic feedback gives each key a vibration, providing a more immersive experience as you type. According to Apple, the very same feature may also affect battery life.

According to this Apple support page about the keyboard, haptic feedback «might affect the battery life of your iPhone.» No specifics are given as to how much battery life the keyboard feature drains, but if you want to conserve battery, it’s best to keep this feature disabled.

Fortunately, it is not enabled by default. If you’ve enabled it yourself, go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Keyboard Feedback and toggle off Haptic to turn off haptic feedback for your keyboard.

For more tips on iOS, learn how to download iOS 18 and how to automatically delete multifactor authentication messages from texts and emails.

Technologies

Meta Wants AI to Handle Every Part of Ad Creation. Here’s What That Means

This move can impact all Instagram and Facebook subscribers and the future of the global advertising industry.

Meta is diving even deeper into artificial intelligence. According to an exclusive Wall Street Journal report released Monday, the company behind Facebook and Instagram is developing AI systems that could eventually fully automate the process of creating and buying ads on those popular sites. This means no human copywriters, designers or media buyers will be involved.

It’s a controversial move that could shake up the $600 billion global ad industry. The announcement also raises fresh questions about creativity, accuracy and the future of marketing jobs.

A representative for Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read more: What Is Meta AI? Everything to Know About the Tech Giant’s AI Tools

How would this work?

Seemingly, Meta’s end goal is to create a system that lets businesses simply explain their product or marketing ideas, alongside a budgeting goal, to the AI-driven ad tools and then the machine takes over from there. That means AI generates ad copy, visuals, targeting strategies and even media placement decisions, all without human intervention.

In the short term, this would start with AI making suggestions or streamlining parts of the ad process. But over time, Meta reportedly wants AI to be capable of managing entire campaigns on its own, from start to finish.

Meta’s spokesperson told the Journal that advertisers would remain «in control» of their campaigns, but the broader vision paints a future where AI is the creative director, media planner and performance analyst all in one.

Meta is all in on AI

AI is central to Meta’s long-term strategy. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called AI the company’s «single largest investment area,» and with competitors like Google and Amazon also building AI-powered ad systems, Meta is racing to claim its stake in the game.

This also aligns with Meta’s broader ambitions to weave AI across its platforms. Meta has already integrated its Meta AI chatbot across Instagram, Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp, explored creating AI avatars on Instagram, and worked generative AI tools into its apps, so automating advertising is just one more piece of a much larger puzzle.

Read more: How to Opt Out of Instagram and Facebook Using Your Posts for AI

Can anyone benefit from this move?

The effort builds on Meta’s existing suite of AI-powered ad tools, like Advantage+ and generative tools introduced in 2023. Those features already allow marketers to automatically create image backgrounds, write copy variations and test ad formats. What’s coming next could push those tools into full autonomy.

According to Meta, this isn’t just about improving efficiency, it’s about scale. Meta claims small businesses would be the key beneficiary of this AI approach, especially those lacking the time or resources to hire marketing teams. The idea is that AI can level the playing field between small businesses and multi-million dollar companies.

«In the not-too-distant future, we want to get to a world where any business will be able to just tell us what objective they’re trying to achieve, like selling something or getting a new customer, how much they’re willing to pay for each result, and connect their bank account and then we just do the rest for them,» Zuckerberg said during Meta’s annual shareholder meeting last week.

While Zuckerberg is calling this «a redefinition of the category of advertising,» critics are already raising concerns.

Mainly, media and ethics experts warn that fully automating ad creation could open the door to misinformation, biased targeting and further erosion of accountability in digital advertising. AI isn’t immune to mistakes or manipulation, and can be used to spread harmful messaging, such as AI-generated deepfakes.

Read more: Trump Signs Bill Banning Deepfakes, Nonconsensual Images

What can this mean for advertising agencies and jobs?

Critics are not just concerned with the accuracy for AI-driven ads, they’re also worried about the future of traditional ad agencies and marketing jobs.

Meta claims that its focus on AI-driven ads is not intended to wipe out ad companies and their employees. Alex Schultz, the chief marketing officer and vice-president of analytics at Meta, has said these AI systems are meant to assist ad agencies and he doubled down on the claim that this will be an asset to small and medium-sized businesses.

«We believe in the future of agencies,» Schultz wrote in a recent LinkedIn post. «We believe AI will enable agencies and advertisers to focus precious time and resources on the creativity that matters. While we think there will ultimately be more automation in marketing, the role that agencies play is going to become ever more important through their ability to plan, execute and measure across platforms.»

What can this mean for Instagram and Facebook users?

If you’re a business owner, marketer or even just a regular social media user, you’re going to feel the ripple effects. You can expect to see more ads that were built by AI machines and possibly tailored to your interests in ways that feel more personal, even if no human ever touched them.

Technologies

I Live in the City Where Netflix’s Thrilling New Crime Drama Is Set. I Barely Recognize It

Commentary: This bingeworthy detective show cast my hometown in a noirish light.

Any well-reviewed crime drama that draws numerous comparisons to Apple TV’s brilliant Slow Horses will easily earn a place on my to-watch list, but as soon as Dept. Q hit Netflix last week, I hit play without hesitation. The reason I was in such a hurry to dive in is that I live in Edinburgh — the city where the new detective show is set.

Edinburgh is often used as a filming location, but most of the time it simply provides a picturesque and/or historical backdrop for a TV show or film — it’s more about the aesthetic effect rather than playing a pivotal role in the plot.

Dept. Q is different. Jaded detective Carl Morck, played by a grizzled Matthew Goode, who is recovering from a shooting that killed one police officer, nearly killed him and paralysed his partner on a call-out, has been tasked with running a new department delving into Edinburgh’s cold cases. The case that Goode picks out, along with the circumstances surrounding his shooting, has complex, knotty links to Edinburgh’s justice system and criminal underworld.

Here, the city provides more than just a pretty skyline — it’s pulled into the foreground, with the key players moving between the grand courts on Edinburgh’s famous Royal Mile and the grimier parts of the city that tourists never see. As someone who calls Edinburgh home, I’m more than familiar with the landmarks, but I don’t recognize the side of the city I see in the show at all. That’s not to say it’s not accurate.

Sure, Edinburgh isn’t exactly a hotbed of violent crime compared with other cities in the UK and definitely compared with cities in the US. In the five years I’ve lived here, I can remember only one fatal shooting making the news. But I also fully acknowledge that the majority of organized crime is often hidden from the view of those not immersed in that world.

Occasionally, violent incidents, police raids or trials spill over, sending ripples of anxiety through neighborhoods and cropping up in headlines. But artistic portrayals, while often exaggerated for dramatic effect, can expose us to versions of places that otherwise might remain hidden from view.

As a city famed for its beauty, often thought of as genteel and rather sedate, it’s interesting to see Edinburgh portrayed as a place that is so much more than the tourist ideal. Not since the 1996 film Trainspotting has a less romanticized vision of the city been seen on screen.

Dept. Q even wasn’t originally set in Edinburgh — it’s actually adapted from a Danish novel of the same name — but as a resident, I appreciated the way it provided a different perspective on the place that I know and love. It was also fun to spot parts of town I’m intimately familiar with appear in a relatively high-production show — the castle view from outside my favorite indie record store, for example.

There are many flaws with Dept Q, from little niggles (what local journalist can afford to drive a Porsche?) to pacing issues — especially in the first episode. The plot is so meaty that at times it becomes convoluted. But in spite of all of this, I found myself staying up past my bedtime to watch «just one more episode» — as my husband and I would tell each other with a sideways glance, fully aware that we were succumbing to a full-on binge.

Is it perfect? No. Am I already hankering after season 2? Absolutely. Am I hoping Edinburgh will loom even larger in future episodes? I’m asking nicely — yes, please.

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for June 3, #1445

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle, No. 1,445, for June 3.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle could be tricky. I think of it as an abbreviation and I didn’t know Wordle allowed those as answers. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.