Learn how to get a notification when your iPhone uses Adaptive Power Mode to extend your battery life, which may cause apps to run slower and the device to lag.
Apple’s iOS 26 operating system brings Adaptive Power Mode, an intelligent battery saver mode that extends battery life when your device usage is abnormal. This new power management option is in addition to Low Power Mode, which temporarily suspends many background activities to make your iPhone last longer.
However, Adaptive Power Mode makes smaller adjustments that don’t affect your iPhone’s performance as drastically as Low Power Mode. Here’s how to toggle the Adaptive Power notification if you’d like to know when Adaptive Power Mode has reduced the device’s performance.
How to toggle the Adaptive Power Mode notification
You can manage the Adaptive Power Mode feature and notification in the Power Mode section in your iPhone’s battery settings, provided you’re running iOS 26.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone 15 Pro and later.
- Navigate to Battery > Power Mode.
- Turn on the Adaptive Power and Adaptive Power Notifications switches.
If you turn on this switch, your iPhone will show a notification when Adaptive Power Mode has decreased device performance to conserve battery life, saying, “iPhone is adjusting performance to help extend your battery life.” The notification shows up on the Lock Screen when the device is locked and during active use.
How does Adaptive Power Mode work?
Adaptive Power Mode uses artificial intelligence to dynamically adjust device performance, meaning it only works on devices that are compatible with Apple Intelligence (iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16, and iPhone 17 lineup). Adaptive Power Mode is turned on by default on the entire iPhone 17 series. However, it’s disabled on other models, requiring you to enable it manually from Battery settings.
Adaptive Power Mode makes performance adjustments, decreases screen brightness by 3%, and limits background activity to save battery. It even turns on Low Power Mode automatically when your battery reaches 20%.
Make your iPhone last longer
There are many iPhone battery saving tips to stretch your battery life, like keeping Low Power Mode turned on all the time with a little help from a Shortcuts automation. Personally, I don’t like to keep Low Power Mode turned on throughout the day as its heavy restrictions make my device way too laggy for my taste.
But Adaptive Power Mode doesn’t throttle your device so drastically, and it’s a feature that automatically kicks in when needed without deactivating a lot of background activities and features such as Background App Refresh, mail fetch, Always-on display, iCloud syncing, 5G data, as well as 120Hz display refresh rate (ProMotion) and brightness.