Battery Drain on iOS 26 and iOS 26.0.1.

The old "It's not our fault, really, despite the fact that other apps don't suffer from this issue" comment.

The bottom line is given only Meta's apps seem to do this, only they can fix it.

Meta has a reputation for being power inefficient with their apps, and it seems to be getting worse.

sk8gal wrote:

I am another user with dismal battery life…it started for me with iOS 18 and got worse with 26. iPhone 13 mini. Looking at daily battery usage I see Facebook is significantly more of a hog than other apps. I use WhatsApp but it is not using much battery. I’m going to try deleting Facebook from my phone. Good experiment. Will report back with results

Hello~ What’s your battery health on your iPhone 13 mini?

Understand your iPhone battery usage and health - Apple Support

~Katana-San~

bouthaina81 wrote:

Hello team Apple

i have iphone 15 pro max, in February 2026 will be exactly 2 years of use. 2 months ago i have checked my iPhone battery capacity and it was 91% and after the update of ios 26 it dropped to 88 last month and now to 87 ! Honestly it is very frustrating to drop this fast. This is not my first iphone but this is the first one that the battery drops quickly like only one month apart !! Can you do something abt it ?

What are your Charge Cycles? The battery drop you see is not linear and Battery Optimization will only happen when allowed to charge to 100%. Some months may not drop at all and other months may drop more. Your iPhone is expected to last 1000 charge cycles with the recommendation to replace the battery when the capacity falls below 80%, so that equates to about 1% drop in Battery Health for every 50 Charge Cycles on average.

As stated this is not linear meaning that when it hits 51 charge cycles it would drop 1%, that is just an average over time. The iOS update does not change the expected cycle count of the battery or change the number of charge cycles on your device.

sk8gal wrote:

Removing Facebook from my phone has helped. However, battery life is still poor. Battery health is 85%. Apps are up to date. Apple needs to address the issue.

Apple has addressed the battery consumption issue in iOS 26.01 and 26.1. What model iPhone and what version iOS are you using?

kateM_17 wrote:

Yes I had this issue. I have iPhone 15 and before the update it was at 90% but now it is 83%

And your Charge Cycles are.....?

That will have a direct impact on your Battery Health and the Charge Cycles do not change after an iOS update.

I like, many of the others have the battery problem after upgrading my iPhone 16 pro to iOS 26. I've tried all of the suggestions here and elsewhere, and they make no difference whatsoever. As far as the supposed excess battery use for a few days after installing, Apple could have had a pop up alerting the end user to that. Since Apple makes it impossible for 3rd party apps to run something like the System Activity Monitor (on mac OS) on the iPhone, they could have monitored it themselves, but chose not to. Another bit of strangeness is the reports from the Battery monitor in settings. For example, 3 times a week I make a 1 hour facetime call. After the call ends I check Battery and sees that it reports that it has used 11 or 12 percent (which sounds reasonable). The FaceTime app is then terminated and not used again, but by the end of the day, Battery reports that it's used 30% (see attached screen shorts). I've turned off all background refresh. At one point I thought that FaceTime had gotten itself into a corrupted state so I deleted the app (not just from the home screen, but a full delete), and then reinstalled it from the App Store. At the end of the day Battery reported that a Deleted App had used 30%.

What's using your battery?

I have a 17 Pro Max and at the end of a long day my battery is rarely below 70%.

Note also your signal strength affects battery life; if you only have one or two bars of battery signal you will use a lot more as it struggles to remain in contact with your local cell tower(s).

It really has nothing to do with either of our credentials, it is simply an explanation of what each setting does. There are 3 of them that do different things. Most users have Find My turned on and even a larger percentage have the Location Services setting turned on to assist with tracking other devices on the Find My network, without any battery drain issue.

It is a simple test anyone can do and switch it off to compare, but as suggested it may have been something else that contributed to the problem and an App Update is a more likely reason where you saw improvement. All that matters is that you now see improvement and that is a win.

Do you have any cards in your Wallet app?

The cause is clear. iOS 26 is 100% a battery drain. I’ve been on ios26 for two weeks maybe, the day I upgraded I noticed the how bad the batter was on my 15pro.

I am having the same issue and all my apps have been updated. It’s definitely the IOS26. If there’s a way where I can get back the old one I would. Because my battery health has really been terrible.

You can diagnose it using the steps described several times in this thread.

Wait another day. Mine was the same way but now It's running perfectly. I even bit the bullet and downloaded macOS 26.1 on my Mac. Everything is back to normal. Apple was right.

If you're still within your return period, you're more than welcome to do that.

You are talking to other Apple users here, not Apple.

Please create a new thread asking how to resolve your issue.