Battery Drain on iOS 26 and iOS 26.0.1.

You’re not taking into consideration the extra processes that go on after an upgrade (from 18.x.x to 26.x.x) and then an update.

Please update all your apps. Third party apps may not have been optimized for iOS 26 yet and that can cause severe battery drain. After updating your apps, please do a forced restart and give things another few days to settle in.

Force restart iPhone - Apple Support

martinjames1962 wrote:

Down loaded two days ago. It drains faster than it will charge

You haven't provided any information that would be needed for assistance:

• What is your Battery Health?
• What are the apps consuming the battery?
• What kind of charger are you using, 20W, Wireless, etc?
• Have you tried a different charging cable?
• Have you tried the Force Restart?

Indexing is expecting for 3-5 days and will also depend on the size of your photo library to process the object detection algorithms. Since you just installed 2 days ago, this is still occurring and you should be experiencing heat, lag, and increased battery drain. That is documented by Apple here:

About Apple software updates - Apple Support

In addition, we cannot comment on the issues that have been improved in the iOS 26.1 version that is currently in beta and being tested. You may find better optimization with battery performance. I see another user referred to iOS26.1, but I think they were mistaken and actually meant 26.0.1, since they were asking about downgrading and beta software can be removed, just not the release versions.

Had the same issue on my iphone 16 after upgrading to 26.0.1.

i did these things and battery life seems to be normal. Following are the things i did.

1. update all the apps manually and do a hard reset by pressing volume up, release, volume down, release & finally hold power button until you see the apple logo. This will force your iphone to restart.
2. turn on reduce motion from setting. This will disable lockscreen 3d image feature. But maybe this helped to reduce my battery draining. (accessibility—> motion)
3. turn on the prefer cross-fade transitions(accessibility—> motion). This will disable modern transitions and new glass effect.

somehow these things prevented my rapid battery draining issue.

also please note that for first 2-3 days there are some background processes running to indexing after the update. So maybe that will also take a huge battery power for that process better to give 2-3 days and then try these methods. All or one will help you.

Hi, Lock Screen is probably running in the background too. This often indicates a Widget is stuck in a loop and consuming your battery. It also might be due to high screen brightness, notifications being stuck in a loop, background activity being pushed to apps from servers (turning off background activity does not stop server side pushes).

Id start with deleting all widgets and adding them back one by one until you find the culprit. Sometimes just a forced restart will work, but I find that the widget gets in a loop until the developer updates. Particularly bank widgets have been an issue in the past.

• You emphasized NEW, so not sure if that means you just purchased it from Apple. It was discontinued on September 9th, another source could have been refurbished and new to you and not disclosed. The battery values can be "boosted" on those phones as that phone was released over 2 years ago.
• When did you update? The background process will continue for 3-5 days indexing files and cause battery drain, lag, and increased heat.

About Apple software updates - Apple Support

• Post the screenshot of Settings > Battery that includes the green battery graph for the previous 24 hours and also the top apps using the battery. Below that you will see System usage, and Home & Lock Screen is an indication of those background processes still being performed.
• As for the next update currently being tested in beta, we cannot comment on the issues that have been resolved in that version. We can be a tester, but disclosing the information is a violation of the terms here and also the user agreement being a tester of the beta. You may see improvement when it is officially released.
• From what I read on X, the earth is flat, and you will find many that agree.

You are showing a 50% drop in 10 hours. You should be getting all day battery life and charge your phone all night, every night. The apps are not listed there to identify the background process being used that will drain your battery even when those apps are not being used. Also the import system usage on the bottom of the page where Home & Lock Screen usage may indicate those background file indexing still being performed. With the consistent rate, I would suspect there are some background processes running. Turning off Refresh in Background, means something completely different than the background processes an app will use.

Have you tried the Force Restart?

Force restart iPhone - Apple Support

As it was said before:

After a major update like from 18-26 the phone needs 2-5 days running processes (system-optimizing) in the backround.

I am atill on an iPhone 13 Pro max.

Changed the battery last Tuesday, today (5 days later) my battery feels like a new one. Before it was almost drained out faster than the old 75% capacity Battery.

Today I am fine :) before I was not. But I know how it works... so a Llittle bit more patience, it will be okay after 2-3 days.

hi there friends,for me about battery drain,i have an iphone 16 pro max and happened the same to me....but the best solution for me was to update and restore iphone with Mac or PC with the full iphone firmware downloaded.....but remember to backup your stuff....from 5:00am to 1:30pm i was at work and started to use my iphone after work have 91 % and started to use on youtube,web search and whatever well at least not gaming and at 7:57 i still have a good 55% i hope it works for you 👍🏽

It's not an issue inherent to iOS 26.

The most common reason is one or more of your apps wasn't properly updated for iOS 26 and is using excessive amounts of battery.

Check battery usage on your iPhone - Apple Support

jon-luc84 wrote:

…. I left the house with 51% at 6:30 am and ended up on 20% by 10:30 am with my screen on time being only 1hr 40mins??

I agree with Jeff, you should not leave the house with 51% early in the morning, you must charge overnight.

Having said that it doesn’t surprise me that you lost 30% in 4 hours whilst the phone desperately tries to catch up what it missed overnight.

The standby time has also worsened severely, I’m losing 20 a 25% battery overnight, for comparison back when I had the 13 Pro Max on iOS 15 that phone never dropped more than 5% which is honestly unacceptable

if you leave it turned on overnight, not on charge, then 20% is not unusual.

You must must start charging overnight, every night, on Wifi to allow the phone to curate and index.

Why aren’t you charging the battery at night? Are you also turning your iPhone off at night? A best practice is to charge your iPhone overnight and to leave it on. A lot of background processes run at night and when the iphone is not plugged in or turned off it does them during the day. This is why your battery drained so quickly in the morning.

What are the apps running on your iPhone? Here’s mine,

I’ve got 5 ½ hours of usage and I’m at 50% battery capacity remaining. But I’m not using Meta apps, TikTok or Google apps. I understand your usage is different but until those companies update their apps, your battery usage will not change substantially (unless your usage changes). Sorry.

…did you READ what I wrote?

going from 47% to 10% is not normal. And it gets worse: this morning it went from 100% to 10% instantly. That has nothing to do with battery health and EVERYTHING to do with the software.

but for those curious it was in the upper 80s for battery health before the update, and now it’s down to 66% battery health…AGAIN, because of the SOFTWARE!

The problem is 100% a software bug.

[Edited by Moderator]

This is expected after each major iOS version, let alone a once-in-a-while UI language update like iOS 26. The last time this happened was iOS 7 in 2013, and the exact same thing occurred to battery life. Over time and over the next updates (note the plural "s", not just the very next update), Apple will be obligated to improve battery life

Because the Facebook and YouTube apps update every few days and there may be bugs in an update that seriously burn power.

For example, there was a Facebook app update not long ago that had a bug that continuously checked with Location Services, something that takes a fair amount of power to check GPS even if you haven't moved. It was burning through power at a rate that was almost visible.