Hey everyone! Writing here because I’m hoping someone can explain how to make an old iPhone faster.
I have a basic iPhone 13 with ios 26.4 which by today’s standards already feels kinda old, and up until this year it worked fine. But lately I’ve noticed it slowing down a lot, especially when I try to open the camera or photo editing apps (which are part of my work). On top of that, the phone gets hot like a kettle while doing it.
Are there actually any toggles or settings that can change this, improve iPhone performance, and stuff like that? Or is this just the point where I should start saving for a new iPhone 18?
You can’t really make an iPhone faster in settings with some magic toggle (iOS doesn’t have them), but in the same Settings app, you can usually find the reason why older iPhones slow down. The first two things I’d check are storage space and battery health.
See how much free space you actually have left. If the phone is nearly full, either delete unnecessary files/apps or move a lot of your data to iCloud.
Then check battery health. If it’s below 80%, that can explain the lagging and overheating. iPhones start throttling performance when the battery can’t provide stable power anymore. A battery replacement often makes an older iPhone feel surprisingly normal again.
Welcome to the iPhone-snail club What helped make my old iPhone faster (11 Pro in my case) was doing a massive cleanup of my photo and video library. I had a 256 GB model and around 180 GB of it was just photos and videos, so the problem area was pretty obvious. I ended up delegating the cleanup to Clever Cleaner and removed something like 20 GB of similar photos and another 50 GB of videos I didn’t even realize I still had. The phone can finally breathe again. So if your storage situation looks anything like that, definitely try cleaning up the media library!
Since you use your iPhone for work, I’d still consider upgrading at some point. That said, while you’re deciding what to buy next, you can still try to make older iPhone faster with some basic optimization steps:
Check your storage first. If it’s heavily filled up, start deleting unnecessary files. The most effective approach is usually starting with the categories taking the most space. Ideally you need to keep around 20% of the storage free
Clear app caches where possible
Check battery health and make sure Low Power Mode isn’t permanently enabled. That mode absolutely slows down background processes and performance
Try turning off Reduce Motion and Transparency effects (Settings > Accessibility > Motion)
Those are the main things that come to mind immediately. There is also a good guide that gives more tips.
Thanks for all the advice, everyone. My storage actually is really full, so that probably explains at least part of the problem. I’m gonna start cleaning it up now and see if that helps speed up old iPhone or not
Also, you could try taking some pressure off the phone by moving more of the editing work to a computer. I don’t know what apps you use, but if you’re on a Mac, there’s a chance the same app exists there too, so maybe check the App Store. And if you use Windows, there are definitely alternatives for pretty much everything. Photo/video editing absolutely cooks older iPhones over time.
If none of the stuff people mentioned helps, you can always just reset the iPhone to make it faster. Obviously that wipes everything on it, but that’s kinda the whole point - fresh start, less junk, less background garbage.
As far as I know, Apple updates slow down older devices to some degree. Your iPhone model is still officially supported by iOS 26, but it was also a pretty massive update, so it could absolutely leave a footprint on overall performance and speed. I think your phone probably would’ve felt more stable on iOS 18.
But since downgrading isn’t realistic, just focus on trying the optimization steps people mentioned above first. Good luck!
Ok guys. I cleared around 90 GB of storage by deleting old photos, videos, and apps I haven’t used in forever. So far I can’t fully tell if it managed to make my old iPhone faster yet, but I’ll probably notice the difference more during work over the next few days. Also checked the battery health and it’s pretty worn out too. I can’t really take the phone to a service center for a battery replacement right now, so I guess it’s finally time for me to learn some desktop editing software instead.
What helped make my old iPhone faster (11 Pro in my case) was doing a massive cleanup of my photo and video library. I had a 256 GB model and around 180 GB of it was just photos and videos, so the problem area was pretty obvious. I ended up delegating the cleanup to