Simple trick makes your iPhone lightning-fast again if it’s been slowing down lately

Back in the glory days when iPhones were aggressively subsidized by carriers, upgrading to a new device every two years was routine. Not only that, it made sense. After two years, a once brand-new iPhone would start to show its age. Battery performance would degrade. Performance would decline. And oftentimes, older phones would have a tendency to crawl when running a brand new iteration of iOS. The situation today isn’t as dire, thanks in large part to incredibly powerful hardware that can leave phones humming along for years. Suffice it to say, iPhone speed isn’t as much of an issue as it once was.

That said, even an otherwise new iPhone can sometimes experience an unexpected bout of sluggishness. And if this happens on a newly released device like the iPhone 13, well, that’s a far cry from a pleasurable user experience. The good news is that if your iPhone 13 isn’t quite as snappy as it once was, there may be a quick fix. As we’ll get into below, a post on Reddit recently relayed a simple iPhone tip that may get your iPhone running as it was right out of the box.

A helpful tip to improve iPhone speed

An iPhone 13 user on Reddit recently noticed that his device wasn’t running as smoothly as it used to. After running it through Geekbench 5, he noticed that the CPU wasn’t operating at full steam. The user notes that he was able to fix the iPhone speed issue with a force reboot.

For those unfamiliar, you can initiate a force reboot by pressing and then quickly releasing the volume up button, followed by doing the same for the volume down button, and then pressing and holding the side button. Keep the side button pressed down until the Apple logo appears. Once the logo appears, release the side button. Note that this mechanic works the same for every iPhone going back to the original iPhone X.

The Reddit post reads:

Hi guys, have noticed more and more jerks on my iPhone 13. Geekbench 5 then revealed that the CPU was only running at half power. Maybe there is someone here who has a similar problem. I was able to “fix” it by forcing the iPhone to reboot: press and release the volume up button, press and release the volume down button, hold down the power button until the Apple logo appears.

After that, the Geekbanch score was 1501 in SingleCore and 3666 Multicore. Everything was now smooth again as usual. iOS 15.1.1 is currently installed.

It’s worth noting that you shouldn’t force restart your iPhone at the slightest hunch that something is amiss. While a force restart is completely safe, Apple support documentation relays that it should only be implemented when a normal restart doesn’t fix the issue in question.

Additionally, it’s worth adding that force restarting your device might result in lost data if not already saved.

As a precautionary measure, you should only force restart your iPhone after checking that your software is current. You should also check that you’re not running low on storage as this can also harm system performance. With those warnings out of the way, this is an iPhone speed tip you’ll want to keep in mind.

Another trick to boost iPhone performance

If you’ve noticed that mobile Safari is a bit sluggish, you might want to try clearing the cache. This will remove a variety of useless files like images and scripts. Upon doing so, there’s a good chance you’ll notice some iPhone speed improvements.

To clear the cache in mobile Safari, go to Settings > Safari. Next, scroll to the bottom and select “Clear History and Website Data.” You should know beforehand, however, that doing this will delete your entire browsing history along with any saved passwords.

Incidentally, if you’d like to delete browser cookies but keep your browser history, go to Settings > Safari > Advanced > Website Data, and then tap Remove All Website Data.