Adaptive Battery Management Lands on the iPhone in iOS 26
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Among the rumors leading up to this week’s iOS 26 unveiling were reports that Apple was planning a new AI-powered battery management mode for the iPhone. While Apple made no specific mention of this during its keynote presentation, the good news is that several new battery management features are indeed tucked into iOS 26.
Apple briefly hinted at these when it showed a list of other features on a large 6×6 slide while wrapping up everything new in iOS 26, although there were no indications that AI or Apple Intelligence are involved. Apple is merely calling it an “Adaptive Power” mode, although it likely relies on at least some machine learning to do its thing.
The new feature is already in the first iOS 26 beta and can be found in the Settings app under the Battery settings.
Much like Apple did with Optimized Battery Charging when it added a Charge Limit to the iPhone 15 lineup in iOS 18 last year, this year, iOS 26 moves Low Power Mode from the top-level battery screen and places it in a new “Power Mode” section alongside the new Adaptive Power switch.
As part of Apple’s major 2025 redesign, the settings have also been moved to the bottom of the Battery screen, with a new charging status section at the top that also includes an estimated charging time. That’s something we heard rumored for iOS 18.2, but it now seems apparent Apple was merely laying the groundwork to unveil this in iOS 26. Tapping that block opens Apple’s Why Lithium-ion? page.
Below that is a new Daily Usage that provides more insights, not only charting power consumption but also noting if you’ve used more battery than usual, both overall and within specific apps (unsurprisingly, everything is well above normal for me, as power consumption in early developer betas is always significantly higher). However, this is more than just a visual reminder; it also ties into the new Adaptive Power management, as we’ll see in a moment.
You’ll need to scroll down to find all the usual sections for Battery Health, Charging, the new Power Mode section, and the Battery Percentage toggle.
Beyond their new visual appearance, Battery Health and Charging remain unchanged from iOS 18.5. However, in the new Power Mode section is a toggle for Adaptive Power, which Apple describes thusly:
When your battery usage is higher than usual, iPhone can make small performance adjustments to extend your battery life, including slightly lowering the display brightness or allowing some activities to take a little longer.
It’s hard to say what the practical impact of this is at this early stage. Toggling Adaptive Power off hasn’t made much difference for me yet — I ran for a full day with it off and another with it on. However, that’s not surprising as even if it’s already fully baked (which is had to say), everything in the first developer beta is more power-hungry and sluggish than usual. That’s just life with beta one.
Apple also notes that “Low power Mode may turn on at 20%.” The use of the word “may” here is interesting, as it suggests that low power mode won’t always be automatically enabled; presumably, iOS 26 will somehow intelligently decide if low power mode is necessary and govern itself accordingly.
There aren’t any official support docs or developer APIs to offer more insight into how this works, so we may need to wait for this fall when Apple releases iOS 26 and publishes all the accompanying documentation. Still, at least some machine learning smarts are likely at work here.
Apple has already employed sophisticated algorithms for things like Optimized Battery Charging and Clean Energy Charging, so this may work in tandem with those to optimize power usage while also making an educated guess as to when you’re most likely to hit a charger. For example, Optimized Battery Charging keeps track of your schedule to delay charging your iPhone above 80% until you’re ready to pull it off the charger in the morning. Clean Energy Charging does something to avoid using “dirty” energy when it doesn’t need to, such as when it knows you’ve likely set your iPhone down for the night so it can wait for an off-peak time to begin charging.
There’s also no word on which iPhone models will support Adaptive Power. It’s available on my iPhone 16 Pro Max, so the entire iPhone 16 family will likely be included. I suspect it may also extend to the iPhone 15 lineup, as that was the year Apple added the fixed Charge Limit and made significant battery hardware changes to provide deeper insights into power usage and cycle counts.
