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Quickly drain the battery of your Android or iPhone
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Want to drain the battery on your phone? If you want to get your phone's battery down to 0% before giving it a charge, you can turn on the flashlight, disable auto-locking, boost your screen brightness, or do a number of other tricks that are guaranteed to drain your battery. No matter the reason, this wikiHow article will teach you the fastest ways to drain your phone battery without ruining it forever.

Things You Should Know

  • The fastest way to drain your phone battery is to turn on the flashlight.
  • Disable automatic screen lock and boost your screen's brightness to the maximum.
  • You can also use graphically intensive apps and games, launch lots of apps that use your location, and enable sounds and vibrations.
2

Disable automatic screen lock.

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  1. If your screen automatically turns off after a short period of time, increasing the amount of time it stays on will help drain the battery faster. You can completely disable automatic screen locking on all iPhones, but most Android phones will only let you increase the screen-on time to 10 minutes.
    • On an iPhone, go to Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto-lock and tap Never.
    • Some Androids, including Samsung Galaxy models, don't allow you to set the auto lock feature to Never, but you can increase it to keep your phone screen on longer. Go to Settings > Display > Screen timeout and choose the longest amount of time (or Never, if it's an option).[1]
    • Some newer phones, like the iPhone 14 and the more recent Samsung Galaxy models, have an Always-On Display feature that keeps the screen on at all times. To turn on this battery-draining feature, go to Settings > Always On Display (Android) or Settings > Display & Brightness > Always On Display (iPhone) and make sure the switch is toggled to the On position.
3

Raise the screen brightness.

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  1. The higher the brightness, the more battery power your phone will use—especially if you've turned off or extended automatic screen locking.
    • iPhone; Go to Settings > Display & Brightness and drag the slider all the way to the right. Additionally, turn off the "Automatic" switch to ensure that your phone doesn't try to adjust the brightness based on lighting.[2]
    • Android: You'll need to disable Adaptive Brightness to raise the brightness, which you can do in Settings > Display > Adaptive Brightness. Then, drag the brightness slider all the way to the right for maximum battery drain.[3]
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6

Turn on location services.

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  1. But if your goal is to drain your battery, you'll want to make sure location services are on, and that plenty of apps are able to access your location in the background.
    • iPhone: Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services. Then, scroll down and reenable location access for any apps you've blocked.[4]
    • Android: Go to Settings > Location and turn on Location. Then, select App permissions and allow apps to use your location.[5]
    • Once location services are on, start a bunch of apps that use your location in the background—for example, Apple Maps, Google Maps, Lyft, Uber, Weather, dating apps, and some social media apps.
7

Turn on vibrations and haptics.

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  1. Enable vibrations for notifications. This will be especially effective if you get a lot of notifications!
    • iPhone: Go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics and enable both "Play Haptics in Ring Mode" and "Play Haptics in Silent Mode." Then, tap Text Tone, Ringtone, and all the other alert types and choose the longest vibration pattern you can find.
    • Android: Go to Settings > Sounds and vibration > Vibrate. Also, tap Vibration pattern to choose a particularly long or recurring vibration pattern for best results.[6]
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9

Don't use dark mode.

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  1. Studies show that dark mode saves a little bit of battery life, though not as much as previously thought.[7] Still, if your goal is to drain your phone battery as quickly as possible, it's best to use light mode to get rid of the battery-saving benefits of dark mode.
    • iPhone/iPad: Go to Settings > Display & Brightness and select Light.[8]
    • Android: Go to Settings > Display and tap Dark.[9]
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13

Start a social media conversation.

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Community Q&A

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Add New Question
  • Question
    How can I restart my phone if it froze?
    Community Answer
    Community Answer
    Open up the back and take out the memory card. Leave it out for a few seconds. This might help speed up the process of the phone shutting down and get it out of its frozen mode,
  • Question
    How can I use my phone as a hand warmer?
    Community Answer
    Community Answer
    You can charge your phone; when it's on the charger it gets hot. You can also get a portable charger to take on the go. Make sure it doesn't get too hot, otherwise you could damage your phone. Also, don't leave your phone charging on a bed or other flammable object because it may start a fire.
  • Question
    How do I stop my phone from getting so dirty if I don't want to use a stylus?
    Community Answer
    Community Answer
    You could use a screen protector to cover your phone, or get a wallet phone case.
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Tips

  • These tricks may not drain your battery very quickly if you only do a few of them, so make sure to do as many as possible. The more steps you take to consume battery power, the faster your phone battery will drain.

Tips from our Readers

  • I've found that turning your volume up all the way and playing music super loud drains my phone battery really quickly.
  • Turn bluetooth on, but don't connect to anything. This will also help drain the battery super fast!
  • Apps that use your location (Google Maps, Pokemon Go, etc.) are great at draining battery.
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Warnings

  • If your phone gets too hot while draining the battery, it's better to close some apps and give your phone a break than to proceed. Otherwise, your phone could overheat and crash.
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Expert Interview

Thanks for reading our article! If you’d like to learn more about computers and technology, check out our in-depth interview with Luigi Oppido.

About This Article

Luigi Oppido
Co-authored by:
Computer & Tech Specialist
This article was co-authored by Luigi Oppido and by wikiHow staff writer, Nicole Levine, MFA. Luigi Oppido is the Owner and Operator of Pleasure Point Computers in Santa Cruz, California. Luigi has over 25 years of experience in general computer repair, data recovery, virus removal, and upgrades. He is also the host of the Computer Man Show! broadcasted on KSQD covering central California for over two years. This article has been viewed 498,024 times.
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Co-authors: 19
Updated: September 27, 2024
Views: 498,024
Categories: Smartphones
Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 498,024 times.

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