The longer you’ve had your iPhone, the more you’ll notice the battery doesn’t hold up the way it did when it was brand-new. That’s natural. It’s normal for phone batteries tp naturally wear down over time, which means they can’t hold as much charge as they once did. That doesn’t mean you need to keep it plugged in all day or rely on Low Power Mode nonstop. With a few quick setting changes, you can stretch out your battery life, even on an older device.

No one wants their phone shutting off mid-directions, in the middle of a playlist, or right before sending a text. Instead of scrambling for a charger, take a minute to look at your settings. Turning off a few features that quietly drain power could give you more hours of use without much effort.

It’s also smart to check the Battery Health menu. This section shows you your battery’s maximum capacity percentage, how many charge cycles it’s been through and whether it’s still considered «normal.» Anything above 80% is generally a good sign.

We’ll walk you through three iOS settings that drain your iPhone’s battery the most and explain how turning them off can help you get more life out of your device.

Don’t miss any of CNET’s unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add us as a preferred Google source on Chrome.

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, read about how to access your Control Center more easily and why you might want to only charge your iPhone to 95%.

Facing criticism for degraded search results and angst from users wanting to avoid AI Overviews, Google has announced a new search feature that lets you choose the sites you want to see in your news and search results.

Google said in a recent blog post that it’s launching Preferred Sources in the US and India this month. The new feature can be accessed through a plus icon to the right of Top Stories panels or a direct link to your preferences.

«Once you select your sources, they will appear more frequently in Top Stories or in a dedicated ‘From your sources’ section on the search results page. You’ll still see content from other sites, and can manage your selections at any time,» Google said.

The new feature is the result of a Labs experiment. Google says that in that version, half of its users added four or more sources. Google offered advice to website publishers and owners on how to direct readers to add their site.

How you can select your own preferred sources on Google Search

It’s simple to add preferred sources for Google Search. You can click the star icon to the right of any «Top Stories» panel in Google Search, which will spawn a pop-up window to add sources, or you can visit the settings page directly at https://www.google.com/preference/source.

Once you see the search box that says «Search by name or website,» type the name or URL of a site you definitely want to include in your search results — such as CNET or its sibling tech sites ZDNET, Mashable, PCMag and Lifehacker — then select the checkbox next to each site you want to add.

To view and manage your preferred sources, click on the «Your sources» link at the bottom of the preferences page. To remove any of your preferred sources, simply uncheck the checkbox for any sites you want to delete.

You can use any web browser on desktop or mobile to take advantage of Google’s new preferred sources feature, but you will need to be signed in to your Google account. 

What it means for news sites and their readers

News organizations and other information sites have shifted before to cater to Google’s search algorithm as well as those on other platforms including Facebook and Instagram. Publishers executed a pivot to video in the 2010s, and in recent years produced more bite-sized content suitable for sharing on platforms such as TikTok.

The addition of news preferences might be a double-edged sword, giving you more control over search results while further shutting out some legitimate news publishers as new echo chambers get built. 

«It’s almost like a tone-deaf move by Google in my point of view, because news organizations are already concerned about losing traffic to the AI overviews,» said Alex Mahadevan, director of MediaWise at Poynter, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media literacy program. «Now they have to figure out how to get people to pick their source in the source preferences.»

For bigger news publishers who have a loyal audience, Preferred Sources might prove that audience engagement efforts can pay off. But Mahadevan says it will depend on how willing people are to effectively subscribe to and curate their own news sources list. 

«I question how many people will actually use it,» he said.

People may see their own beliefs reinforced, not challenged

Publishers who haven’t cultivated engaged, loyal followers and don’t have the means to steer their audiences might suffer, Mahadevan says.

«The thing that does concern me about this is you know for the organizations that may have not done that, it’s just going to further erode the amount of Google traffic they get,» Mahadevan said. «If way more people want news from Fox News and are choosing Fox News among their source preferences, then that’s going to be crowding out other news sites that might need that traffic.»

As an experiment, Mahadevan says he set Breitbart News Network as a source using the Google Search feature, saying he chose the far-right news source because it has been known to share misinformation.

«I started Googling about tariffs, and the first thing I see is Breitbart,» he said. «So this concerns me also from a media literacy standpoint because I think it might further push people into echo chambers,» where they only see beliefs that correspond with those they already hold.

«It just seems like a way for people to narrow down their news diet even more via Google Search,» Mahadevan said.

If SEO, the way that websites have for decades drawn Google traffic by generating good, relevant content, is effectively out the window, what does that mean for the future of publishing and media? 

«Is there a strong enough media literacy base for people to make sure they’re choosing good, legitimate news outlets and a varied variety of news sources?» Mahadevan asked. «I don’t know if we’re quite there yet.»

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

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is a tough one. There are only four answers, but they are all quite long and quite complicated — and some of them just aren’t used that much. If you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story. 

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Dash it!

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Long words separated by a piece of punctuation.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints, but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

• COPS, DALE, PALE, HOTEL, PILL, PILLS, DATE, WENT, HILL, HILLY, WHEN, WANE, TOIL, TOILET, WILL, NILL, COPY

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight, but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

• PELLMELL, HOCUSPOCUS, HOITYTOITY, WILLYNILLY

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is HYPHENATED. To find it, look for the H that’s five letters down on the far-left row, and wind across.

Toughest Strands puzzles

Here are some of the Strands topics I’ve found to be the toughest in recent weeks.

#1: Dated slang, Jan. 21. Maybe you didn’t even use this lingo when it was cool. Toughest word: PHAT.

#2: Thar she blows! Jan.15. I guess marine biologists might ace this one. Toughest word: BALEEN or RIGHT. 

#3: Off the hook, Jan. 9. Similar to the Jan. 15 puzzle in that it helps to know a lot about sea creatures. Sorry, Charlie. Toughest word: BIGEYE or SKIPJACK