Finding the exact battery percentage on an iPhone unfortunately isn't as easy as it used to be as Apple removed the ability to have it permanently in your status bar alongside the battery icon.
You can get a general idea of where things stand from the icon alone, but sometimes 10-15% can make a real difference and that isn't so easy to parse on that tiny icon. There's no magic trick to get it back in the status bar, but here are the fastest and easiest ways to see your battery percentage on an iPhone.
- Best smartphones in 2021
- iPhone 13: Price, release date, specs and more
- Best phone deals of April 2021
The easiest way to see your battery percentage on iPhone
- Swipe down from the top-right corner of your screen
- Look in the upper-right corner of Control Center and you’ll see your battery percentage
This quick and easy method doesn’t require much effort, but it does remove the glanceability of the old method. If you want that back, you’ll need to turn to the widgets that were introduced with iOS 14 this year.
How to use iOS 14 widgets to see your battery percentage on iPhone
- Long press on an open spot on the home screen.
- Tap on the “+” button in the upper-left corner of the screen.
- Scroll down and select “batteries.”
- Choose the battery widget that you would like and tap “Add widget” at the bottom of the screen.
- Place the widget wherever you prefer.
That’s all there is to it, now you have your battery percentage easily glanceable on your home screen or multiple home screens if you like. Of the three available options, two of them will also display the battery life of any other devices that you have connected to your iPhone like an Apple Watch or AirPods.
While I still find it frustrating that Apple doesn’t simply allow you to view the precise battery percentage in the status bar anymore, these two techniques render it a lot less irritating and with the widgets actually give you some helpful added info with the look at your battery life across all of your connected devices. Rumors persist that Apple will be adding an always-on display mode to the iPhone 13 and if that holds true battery percentage would be a prime use case and may finally make this information effortlessly glanceable again.
