Have you ever wondered how much of your battery is being used? Or have you ever wondered why sometimes when you use certain apps your battery dramatically drains? New in the iOS 8 Settings application is the ability to track battery usage per each app you have installed on your device. This method is very similar to tracking your cellular data usage.

In iOS 7, it shows you how much you used the battery and how long the battery was on standby since the last full charge, but it did not define or describe how that was effected. To monitor and track your battery usage in iOS 8, first go into Settings.

Then tap on General and then Usage.

With iOS 8, by default the Battery Percentage is turned off. I recommend turning it on, as it will immediately give you a better representation of what your battery life is as opposed to the picture of the battery.

Tapping on Battery Usage, will first display the Time Since Last Full Charge. This information was available in iOS 7. It shows you your Usage, how long you have actually been engaged with the device using the display and it will show you Standby, how long the device has been idle and not been used.

If you scroll down further, there are suggestions to increase your battery usage. One suggestion would be to reduce the brightness of your disply. Personally, I have my devices set to maximum brightness. I want to be able to fully enjoy the Retina HD display on my iPhone 6 and not strain my eyes. In regards to the screen, another suggestion would be to enable Auto Brightness which will adjust the display’s brightness automatically based off your surroundings. Another suggestion it might display is to turn Wi-Fi on. When you use Wi-Fi to access data, it uses less battery power than a cellular network connection.

Also, you will see a list of the apps and see how much the app used the battery. This information can help you determine if you are constantly using certain apps or it could be due to background activity. You can view battery usage in the Last 24 Hours, or in the Last 7 Days.

There are several different reasons why apps will use a lot of the battery:

The app is being constantly used by you. In my example above, that is precisely the case with Tweetbot. The app is being used in the background. It could be downloading content, uploading content, using location services or streaming audio. In my example, the Mail app is downloading new emails in the background. The app is being used in an area with poor cellular service. When this happens, it puts more work on the battery and drains it quickly. If this happens, the Phone app will be listed and it will list low signal. The app is not working properly. For example the app can be constantly crashing. Or the app you barely use, but yet it is at the top of the list. The app is using AirPlay. The app is streaming audio to AirPlay speakers, or video to an Apple TV.

When using this tool, a usage percentage is a percentage of the battery that is being used. For example, if your iPhone has 80% battery but it lists that Music has used 50%, that means Music used 10% of your battery’s power. This tool should be used occasionally. I would recommend checking it when you think there are issues with the battery because it is draining faster than usual, which would then give you insight on how to fix any apps that are draining the battery.

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