How To Fix Lag In iOS 11

Did you download iOS 11 yesterday only to notice that your previously zippy (or at least tolerable) device has started to lag whenever you try to do, well, anything? You're not alone. Especially on iDevices that are a few generations old, a new iOS can cause headaches. Here's how to reclaim your performance.

1. Reboot Your Device

This may seem eye-rollingly simple, but sometimes all a misbehaving iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch needs is a hard reboot to clear out the device's cache. Do this first before you try anything else.

Hold the power button, slide the Power Off slider to the right, and wait for the device to power all the way down. Wait a few seconds (30 should be sufficient), then power your device back up again.

2. Reset Your Settings

If your device is still pokey when it fires back up, then the issue could be a setting that's been carried over from iOS 10 that's now causing problems. In the Settings app select General > Reset > Reset All Settings. After you confirm the selection and settings are cleared, go ahead and reboot your device again.

You'll have to re-enter your settings on an app-by-app basis, but you won't lose content in any of your apps (that's what the Erase All Content and Settings option is for).

3. Switch To Low Power Mode

Part of the issue when it comes to lag is that iOS 11 is doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work. Location Services are keeping track of where you are. Your apps are busy updating their information. The operating system is making things prettier by adding motion and effects to various actions. You could go in and turn things off on a setting-by-setting basis (see the above screenshot) or you could knock it all out in one fell swoop.

In the Control Center, click the Low Power Mode icon. In Low Power mode, background refresh, visual effects, and a host of other power-hungry features are disabled. If the lag you were experiencing disappears in Low Power Mode, then you can start disabling the features I mentioned above one-by-one to see what's at the root of the problem.

4. Clear Up Some Space

I mentioned this in my post earlier this week, but the new Storage settings in iOS 11 provides more than deep analysis of what's taking up space on your device. It also provides suggestions on how to clear up space. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage to see what you can have iOS 11 do automatically to free up space. More free space on your device should equal better performance.

5. The Nuclear Option

If all else fails, you can try downloading the IPSW restore file to your PC, hooking your device up to iTunes, and doing a complete operating system restore. This will blow away everything on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch and give you a factory-clean device (the folks over at Redmond Pie have an excellent tutorial as well as links to the files you need).

Honestly, though, if you've tried the first four options in the lists and haven't seen any improvement, it's very possible that even the nuclear option won't save your device. It could be that its performance has degraded with age. It could be that, in typical Apple fashion, older devices aren't optimized for performance with the new iOS version. It could just be the ghostly hand of Steve Jobs plucking at your wallet.

The hard truth is that upgrading an older device is a risky venture. Apple has backed off the more aggressive hardware sunsetting that it used to employ, but I think that by doing so they've built more frustration into their ecosystem. There have been plenty of times when I finished an upgrade because I could only to find out that I really shouldn't have. Just tell me an upgrade is going to nerf my device and let me decide if it's worth it to buy new hardware to run it optimally. I think that, ultimately, that honesty could have a positive impact on the Apple customer experience.