GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. — Does it seem like your phone just can't hold a charge these days? It turns out, there are some apps that zap your juice "faster" than others. So, we talked to the folks at PC Mag to figure it out and find a solution.
“Some of the top apps that are using the most battery life are the ones that people use the most,” says Chandra Steele, Senior Features Writer at PC Mag.
Okay, so it’s probably not a huge surprise that apps like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube are zapping the life out of your phone battery. But, for all the single ladies, and gents out there, swiping right and left is more than just emotionally draining.
“Tinder, Bumble, Grindr, those are all using a lot of battery life,” says Steele.
Sucking up space? There's an app for that. Actually, there's lots of apps like that. Things like maps and travel and fitness apps.
"Lyft, Uber, those definitely take up a lot of space on your phone too. They have to integrate with a lot of other apps, they're integrating with maps, they're looking for your location, these are memory hog sort of apps,” she says.
One big reason? Permissions. That means you're allowing those apps to do work in the background even when you're not using them.
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“You might see they have access to your camera, your microphone, those will all be draining your battery, so you can reduce some of that usage,” Steele says.
And here’s how; Go into your phone's settings and click on battery. You can see which apps are using the most juice and then change the permissions.
"You might say only turn on Uber looking for your location only when I'm using the app,” she says. “You don't want it constantly trying to find out where you are."
That’s also a privacy issue too. You really don’t need or want an app tracking your every move. You can also see in there how much time you’re spending on each app. An eye-opener for sure.
Steele has two other pieces of advice; if your phone is set to constantly search for nearby Wi-Fi networks, turn it off, that's a battery drain. And turning off "automatic app refresh" can help save battery life too.
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