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How to turn off automatic updates on your iPhone to save data and battery

Steven John   

How to turn off automatic updates on your iPhone to save data and battery
Tech3 min read

iPhone apps

Avery Hartmans/Business Insider

It's easy to turn off automatic updates for the software or apps on your iPhone.

There are many good reasons to let your iPhone update itself automatically. An updated phone will be running the latest version of apps and other software, meaning the best possible user experience and likely the fewest glitches.

iOS updates also help keep your iPhone as secure as possible. And best of all, with automatic updates, you don't even have to do a thing.

On the other hand, there are also reasons to disable automatic iPhone updates. If your phone is near its data limit or almost drained of its charge, that forced update might incur a charge for overages or use the last of your battery.

Or maybe you simply prefer to control how and when your iPhone updates - whatever the reason, it's easy to turn off automatic updates on an iPhone.

Here's how to do it for software and app updates.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone XS (From $999.99 at Best Buy)

How to turn off automatic software updates on an iPhone

1. Open the Settings app and scroll down to the General tab.

2. Tap the Software Update tab.

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Steven John/Business Insider

Click Software Update in General.

3. Tap "Automatic Updates."

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Steven John/Business Insider

Select the Automatic Updates tab.

4. On the next page, toggle the switch off (so it turns white instead of green).

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Steven John/Business Insider

You can turn off automatic updates by switching the toggle to white.

If you want to turn automatic updates back on, you would simply toggle the switch back to green.

How to turn off automatic app updates on an iPhone

1. Open your Settings app.

2. Scroll to and tap the iTunes & App Store tab.

3. Toggle off the "Updates" tab so it turns from green to white.

iphone updates

Business Insider

Toggle off the "Updates" tab.

You can now manually update apps from the App Store's "Updates" tab, or enable automatic updates again by toggling the above tab back to green.

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