Battery and charging
Charge Limit
Most people call this the manual cap on how full the battery gets.
You can tell your iPhone never to charge past a chosen percentage, so the battery spends less of its life sitting full.
This setting is present on your iPhone.
- We have this path on file but have not yet confirmed it against an official source.
Where to find it - iOS 18 and later
- Settings
- Battery
- Charging
- Charge Limit
What it does
Unlike Optimized Battery Charging, which decides for itself, Charge Limit is a hard ceiling you set. The phone stops at the percentage you pick and does not top up later.
Early versions offered only an 80 percent option. Later releases added steps between 80 and 100 percent.
What changes
When it is on
Charging stops at your chosen ceiling and stays there. You lose the top slice of runtime every day.
When it is off
The phone charges to 100 percent, subject to whatever Optimized Battery Charging decides.
Should you turn it on?
Good reasons to turn it on
- You want the battery to last more years rather than more hours today.
- The phone lives on a charger for most of the day anyway.
- You rarely need a full day of runtime away from power.
Good reasons to turn it off
- You need every hour of battery you can get.
- You are travelling and cannot charge again soon.
- Optimized Battery Charging already handles your routine well enough.
Battery
Helps
Privacy
No real change
Performance
No real change
Cellular data
No real change
Storage
No real change
Out of the box: Off. The phone charges to 100 percent unless you set a limit.
What your iPhone needs
- Needs iOS 17 or later
- Only on the iPhone 15 generation and later
Where this setting used to live
Apple moves settings between releases. This is every location we have on file.
-
iOS 18 and later
Settings > Battery > Charging > Charge Limit
-
iOS 17
Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging > Charge Limit
Questions people actually ask
- Is 80 percent charging better for the battery?
- Yes, keeping a lithium battery away from a sustained full charge reduces how quickly its capacity drops.
- Will I notice the missing 20 percent?
- You lose roughly a fifth of a day of runtime. Whether that matters depends entirely on how far you are from a charger.
If it is not working
- If you do not see the option, your iPhone model does not offer it. It arrived with the iPhone 15 generation.
- The percentage shown can briefly drift a point or two above or below the limit. That is normal.