How to Speed Up iOS 7 (Video)

Whoops. You made a mistake. You listened to Apple when your iPhone 4 told you to update to iOS 7. You figured it would be fine. After all, if Apple sent you the update, it should work fine on your model of the iPhone, no? Lies! The update looks cool and all, but when you go to use an app it sits there as if you are speaking another language. Fear not, there is hope (some at least). There are a few features in iOS 7 that aren’t really necessary and if you disable them and make a few changes it should speed things up a bit (don’t expect a miracle but at this point some speed wouldn’t hurt). Here’s how to speed up things a bit on your iPhone 4 running iOS 7 (or any other iPhone for that matter).

In this video I use an iPhone 5S, and it will make that faster as well, but the process for iPhone 4 is the same (and definitely more necessary)

I. Turn off the Parallax Effect/Animations

Stops the device from needing to animate things.

1. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Turn On Reduce Motion

II. Disable Translucencies

Stops it from drawing translucencies which takes a bit more processing power to do.

1. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Turn On Increase Contrast

III. Lock Screen Orientation

Stop the sensor from constantly checking your device’s orientation.

1. Pull up the Control Center by swiping your finger up from off the bottom of the screen.

2. Tap the lock at the top right.

IV. Turn off Bluetooth/Wifi/AirDrop

When not using them.

1. Pull up the Control Center by swiping your finger up from off the bottom of the screen.

2. Turn off Wifi by tapping the Wifi logo until it’s not lit up.

3. Turn off Bluetooth by tapping the Bluetooth logo until it’s not lit up.

4. Turn off Airdrop by tapping the Airdrop logo until it’s not lit up.

V. Disable Background App Refresh

1. Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh.

2. Turn off App Refresh (either by app or all at the top).

VI. Disable iCloud

Stop iCloud from constantly saving things from the phone.

1. Go to Settings > iCloud.

2. Turn off anything you think you don’t need in a backup (but, of course, this means they won’t be backed up should you lose the device so keep that in mind).

VII. Disable Location Services (for Non-Essential Apps)

Stop the device from using GPS and checking to see where you are for apps (this means less accurate directions in most apps so keep that in mind).

1. Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services.

2. Turn off for all the apps you don’t need or turn them off entirely using the switch at the top.

VII. Disable Automatic Updating

Stop the App Store from automatically updating apps in the background (and stop it from using your processor and battery life to do that).

1. Go to Settings > iTunes and App Store.

2. Turn off Updates under Automatic Downloads.

VIII. Remove Unused Apps

Get rid of all the apps that you don’t use often to help speed up the system.

1. On the homescreen, tap and hold on an app until they all start to wiggle.

2. Tap the small X in the corner of each app that you don’t use and tap OK when prompted.

3. Repeat step 2 until all the apps you don’t need are removed.

Anything I missed? Leave it in the comments below for others!