There’s a particular kind of frustration that comes from a slow phone. Apps take forever to open, the keyboard lags half a second behind your typing, and switching between apps feels like wading through mud. The temptation is to assume the phone is just old and needs replacing.
In most cases, that’s not true. A slow phone is usually a phone that needs some maintenance — and the fixes are simpler than most people expect. This guide walks you through the most effective steps to speed up your phone, in order of impact.
Why Phones Slow Down Over Time
Before jumping into the fixes, it helps to understand why phones slow down in the first place. There are a few common causes:
Storage that’s nearly full — When your phone’s storage is close to capacity, performance degrades significantly. The operating system needs free space to create temporary files, run processes, and manage memory efficiently.
Too many apps running in the background — Apps that you installed once and never use are often still running background processes, consuming memory and battery.
An outdated operating system — Older software versions can have performance issues that are fixed in later updates.
A cluttered cache — Apps build up temporary data over time that can slow them down if it’s never cleared.
A battery in poor condition — On older phones, a degraded battery causes the phone to throttle performance to prevent unexpected shutdowns.
Understanding the cause makes it easier to apply the right fix.
Step 1: Free Up Storage Space
This is the most impactful change you can make. If your phone’s storage is above 80% capacity, freeing up space will produce a noticeable improvement in speed almost immediately.
Start with the obvious:
- Delete apps you haven’t used in the past month
- Remove duplicate photos and screenshots
- Clear downloaded files you no longer need (check your Downloads folder)
- Move photos and videos to cloud storage or your computer
For a more thorough approach, our guide on How to Free Up Space Without Deleting Important Photos covers the full process without losing anything you want to keep.
Step 2: Restart Your Phone Regularly
This sounds almost too simple, but it works. Most people leave their phone running for days or weeks without restarting it. Over time, background processes accumulate, memory fills up with cached data, and performance gradually degrades.
Restarting clears the RAM, stops background processes, and gives the phone a clean slate. A weekly restart takes ten seconds and makes a consistent difference in day-to-day performance.
Step 3: Remove Apps You Don’t Use
Every app installed on your phone has the potential to run in the background, send notifications, sync data, and consume resources — even when you’re not actively using it.
Go through your app list and ask yourself honestly: have I opened this in the last 30 days? If not, uninstall it. You can always reinstall it later if you need it. Fewer apps means less background activity and more available memory for the things you actually use.
For guidance on identifying which apps are causing the most slowdown, see our guide on How to Remove Apps That Slow Down Your Phone.
Step 4: Clear App Cache
Apps store temporary data — called cache — to load faster on subsequent uses. Over time this cache can become large and outdated, and clearing it can improve both speed and storage.
On Android:
- Go to Settings → Apps
- Select the app you want to clear
- Tap Storage → Clear Cache
Repeat this for apps you use frequently, especially social media apps like Instagram and TikTok, which tend to accumulate large caches.
On iPhone: iOS manages cache automatically, but you can achieve a similar result by offloading an app: Settings → General → iPhone Storage → select app → Offload App. This removes the app but keeps its data, and reinstalling restores everything.
Step 5: Update Your Operating System and Apps
Software updates often include performance improvements and bug fixes that directly affect speed. If you’ve been dismissing update notifications, it’s worth taking a few minutes to install them.
Update Android: Settings → Software Update → Download and Install
Update iPhone: Settings → General → Software Update
Update apps: Open the Play Store or App Store → tap your profile → Updates available
This is also important for security — outdated software is one of the most common entry points for malware, as covered in our guide on How to Avoid Viruses and Malware on Your Device.
Step 6: Reduce Animations and Visual Effects
Your phone uses processing power to render animations — the transitions between screens, the way apps open and close, the parallax effect on your home screen. Reducing or disabling these effects makes the phone feel noticeably faster, even if the underlying performance hasn’t changed.
On Android:
- Go to Settings → About Phone
- Tap Build Number seven times to unlock Developer Options
- Go back to Settings → Developer Options
- Find Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale
- Set all three to 0.5x or Off
On iPhone:
- Go to Settings → Accessibility → Motion
- Turn on Reduce Motion
The difference is immediately noticeable — apps appear to open and close much faster because the animations are shorter or eliminated.
Step 7: Check Which Apps Are Using the Most Battery and Memory
Both Android and iPhone let you see exactly which apps are consuming the most resources. This is useful for identifying the culprit behind unexplained slowdowns.
On Android: Settings → Battery → Battery Usage (shows which apps are draining the most power)
On iPhone: Settings → Battery → Battery Usage by App
If an app you rarely use is consistently at the top of the list, that’s a sign it’s running unnecessarily in the background. Either restrict its background activity or uninstall it.
Step 8: Reset Network Settings (If the Slowness Is Connection-Related)
Sometimes what feels like a slow phone is actually a slow or unstable network connection — apps appear to hang because they’re waiting for data rather than because the device itself is slow.
If your Wi-Fi or mobile data connection feels unreliable, resetting network settings can help:
Android: Settings → General Management → Reset → Reset Network Settings
iPhone: Settings → General → Transfer or Reset iPhone → Reset → Reset Network Settings
Note that this will remove saved Wi-Fi passwords, so you’ll need to reconnect to your networks afterward.
Step 9: Consider a Factory Reset as a Last Resort
If you’ve tried everything above and your phone is still significantly slower than it should be, a factory reset restores it to its original state — removing all apps, cached data, and settings that may have accumulated over years of use.
This is a drastic step, but it often makes an older phone feel almost new again. Before doing it, make sure everything is backed up. Our guide on How to Back Up Your Phone Data walks through the full backup process so you don’t lose anything.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does closing apps make your phone faster? On modern smartphones, manually closing apps from the recent apps menu doesn’t typically improve performance — and can actually make things slightly slower, because the phone has to reload the app from scratch next time you open it. The operating system manages background apps automatically and suspends them when they’re not needed. The exception is apps that are actively running in the background (like navigation or music apps).
Will adding a memory card speed up my phone? A microSD card can expand storage on Android phones that support it, which helps if storage is nearly full. However, it won’t improve RAM or processing speed directly. The benefit is indirect — more storage means the OS has more room to work with.
How much free storage should I keep? As a general rule, keep at least 10-15% of your total storage free. On a 128GB phone, that means keeping at least 13-19GB available at all times.
Does dark mode improve performance? On phones with OLED screens (most modern flagship phones), dark mode reduces battery consumption because black pixels on OLED displays use no power. This extends battery life but doesn’t directly improve processing speed.
My phone is old — is it worth trying these steps? Yes. These steps work on all phones regardless of age. A factory reset in particular can dramatically revive an older device. That said, if your phone is more than five or six years old and still feels slow after everything above, the hardware may genuinely be the limiting factor.
Final Thoughts
A slow phone is almost always fixable without spending money. Start with freeing up storage and restarting your device — those two steps alone resolve the majority of slowdown complaints. Work through the rest of the list from there, and in most cases you’ll notice a significant improvement within an hour.
If you want to go further in optimizing your Android device specifically, our guide on 10 Settings You Should Change on Your Android Right Away covers the settings that make the biggest difference to both performance and everyday usability.