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You could argue that the iPhone is in its final form, since changes in recent years have been incremental instead of substantial. The features missing from the iPhone 16e versus the iPhone 16 were minor, and perhaps the biggest change to the iPhone 17 Pro is hiding the Face ID sensor — aside from copying the camera bar of the Google Pixel. It’s not necessarily bad news. Smartphones haven’t changed much recently because, well, we’ve perfected them. Apple products have always had a reputation for “just working,” so if you were on the fence about buying an iPhone, now is a great time. Any future improvements can only be minor. “Just working” or not, though, there are some settings we recommend turning off.

We’ve talked before about 5 things you should do immediately after buying a new iPhone, and iPhone settings you can change to extend battery life. In this list, we provide a generalized set of recommendations for settings you ought to disable. These include settings for privacy, usability, or a better phone experience overall. Whether you’ve just bought an iPhone or have owned one for years, consider turning off these five settings.

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Apple Intelligence looked like a revelation when it was first unveiled. On-device intelligence features that can do anything on your phone with a voice command, and know you personally like a butler? I’ll take two. Then Apple Intelligence face-planted. Hard. It was discovered that Apple had effectively made up the new Siri 2.0. The features it did ship were lackluster at best. You’ve got some okay writing tools, a decent emoji maker, notification summaries, and a Google Lens equivalent (Visual Intelligence) that isn’t terrible. iOS 26 adds a couple more cool ones, like Live Translation for calls and call screening. But that big Siri upgrade that wowed everyone at WWDC? That’s not coming until 2026, and it wouldn’t be unfair to say it’s probably not going to be as powerful as that original presentation, either. Despite how disappointing Apple Intelligence is, it’s installed by default on supported phones — and can take up to 7 GB of space.

If you’re not using it — or using it sparingly — then we recommend disabling it entirely. Let Apple get its crap together first, and in the meantime you’ll save on storage space and battery life. Head to the Settings app > Apple Intelligence & Siri and switch off the toggle for Apple Intelligence.

Keep in mind that if it’s a specific feature that’s bothering you, some can be individually disabled. Take those Mail summaries. In Settings > Apps > Mail. Under Message List, turn off the toggle for Summarize Message Preview. Keep in mind, this is only going to apply if your device supports Apple Intelligence in the first place. Only the iPhone 15 Pro onward does, but it does include budget devices like the new Apple iPhone 16e.

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Many turn to the iPhone to get away from the privacy-lacking cesspool that is Google, but Apple isn’t without its flaws in this regard. Apple has been fined millions for breaching data protections and shelled out a $95 million settlement for the Siri lawsuit, to name a few. It collects a lot more data than most people realize. Worse, in past cases, anonymous analytics were able to identify individual users. There are millions of iPhone users out there supplying analytics for Apple to improve its products, so it’s best if you just turn all the data collection off.

First, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Analytics & Improvements. One by one, turn off every single one of these toggles unless there’s a particular feature you would like to help Apple improve. Back out of that, and right below Analytics & Improvements, you’ll see Apple Advertising. Turn off Personalized Ads. Back again in the previous section, go to Tracking and disable Allow Apps to Request to Track. 

Return to the main page of Settings, then Apps > Safari > Privacy & Security, and disable the option for Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement. Since Apple in the past has proven that anonymous analytics may not be so anonymous, it stands to reason that you shouldn’t trust anonymous ad reporting, either. Go back to Settings again, and then Search, and disable the Help Apple Improve search toggle.

Your iPhone also collects a (potentially) alarming amount of location data. Although the data is end-to-end encrypted, it may be concerning for some that your phone is figuring out which places you spend the most time at. Drop into Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations and hit the Clear History button.

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At the top of the list of the 10 best phone cameras available, you’ll find Android phones, not iPhones. Regardless, people buy iPhones for the camera. The pictures look great for most people, the video is excellent, and the camera app overall is easy and straightforward to use. There is, however, one feature that you may want to switch off: Prioritize Faster Shooting. You’ll notice that if you tap the shutter button rapidly, your iPhone is able to keep up without breaking a sweat. Useful, if something is happening fast and you need to snap the perfect shot at the right moment. But this comes at a hidden cost.

Apple states that the Prioritize Faster Shooting feature can make pictures appear worse. You may have to do some pixel-peeping to notice the difference between a sequence of quickly captured images and the rest, true, but lower-quality pictures may make you wish you’d turned the feature off later on; Imagine you want to use a particular image as a wallpaper for your Mac, but you find out it’s not as sharp as it could have been because of the Prioritize Faster Shooting feature.

Disabling this feature is easy. Go to Settings > Camera, then navigate to the Prioritize Faster Shooting toggle and disable it. Speaking from personal experience, you’re not missing out on much here. Your iPhone will still be able to take pictures very quickly. We only recommend leaving this setting on if you don’t care about picture quality at all and just want to capture the moment. Otherwise, you might consider tweaking these four settings to get better photos while looking at these settings.

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For reasons known to the gods alone, Apple enables keyboard sounds by default. iPhone keyboards already have keyboard haptics and Character Preview pop-ups to indicate to users when a key has been pressed, so a sound on top of that is just overkill. After all, one of the benefits of having a touchscreen instead of a physical keyboard is that you can have no sound at all. Everyone knows how annoying it is to be around someone who’s making a clicking racket when typing on their iPhone. If the clicking doesn’t bother you and you have it enabled, then consider this a friendly PSA: You’re making a clicking racket that’s causing the blood pressure of everyone around you to skyrocket.

Kindly disable the keyboard sounds in Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Keyboard Feedback. If you want to save on a bit of battery, you might disable the haptics, too. While you’re in that section, we also recommend toggling off the Lock Sound. Opinions may vary, but your screen going black is probably an indication enough that it’s off.

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Always-on displays became a part of the iPhone Pro series in 2022 with the iPhone 14 Pro. It’s certainly a great, minimally distracting way to see the time, notifications, and widgets when your phone is set to the side. However, it’s also a silent battery killer. Even though the always-on display is set to an extremely low refresh rate and brightness, the battery drain can be noticeable. User testing has suggested that the mode could be leeching away as much as a couple of hours of battery life on its own. Since phones are distracting enough as it is, we reckon most people want to be less distracted by their phones, not more, so this one is worth turning off.

Head to Settings > Display & Brightness > Always-On Display. You have two options here. If you like the display but are frustrated with the battery drain, then toggle off the Show Wallpaper option. Your phone will only show the clock, widgets, and notifications, which keeps the rest of the OLED screen black and therefore saves some battery. If you’re ready to say goodbye to the always-on display, however, then nuke it with the bottom toggle.

There is a nice halfway point that allows you to enjoy the always-on display you paid for without sacrificing any battery life. Open the Shortcuts app and then go to the Automations section. Create a shortcut that sets the always-on display to enable whenever your phone is charging, then a second automation that turns it off when you unplug it from the charger. We recommend this if you charge your phone when it’s within arm’s reach, such as when you’re at your desk.