How to Check Data Usage on iPhone, and How to Effectively Reduce High iPhone Data Usage?

Updated Jun 02,2016 | by Niko

“After updating my iPhone 6 to iOS 9 and 9.0.1 I have seen that the mobile data usage has dramatically increased.”

In fact, this is not an isolated case. And we find that excessive iPhone data usage is quite common when people download iOS 9 on their iPhone devices. No matter you confront with high iPhone data usage issue or not, we would like to share some tips that can help you reduce high iPhone data usage effectively.

Before that, we figure out how to check data usage on iPhone firstly. How to check data usage on iPhone? Go to Settings > Cellular, and you will see the current celluar usage. Scroll down, and your iPhone apps usage information is listed. Now, you can follow these steps to reduce high iPhone data usage.

Turn Wi-Fi Assist Off

If you are using an iOS9 device, you must’ve noticed the Wi-Fi Assist feature to switch to cellular automatically when you have a poor Wi-Fi connection.  Wi-Fi Assist is a highly effective feature when you are on-the-go.

It helps you maintain stable cellular data connection and ensures smooth connection experience. On the other hand, it can be harmful as well. Wi-Fi Assist feature is considered as a main cause of excessive iPhone data usage. Due to this feature, you could be consuming significant amount of data unknowingly. If you want to reduce high iPhone data usage, we suggest you turn Wi-Fi Assist off.

Settings > Cellular (at the bottom) > turn Wi-Fi Assist off

Disable Cellular Data Usage for iCloud Drive and Music

As iPhone users, many of you rely on iCloud Drive to backup data and move files back and forth between different devices. However, it would be a data-hungry addition if iCloud works via your cellular connection. Disable cellular data usage for iCloud Drive will effectively help reduce iPhone data usage.

Settings > iCloud > iCloud Drive > disable Use Cellular Data

Disable high quality music streaming

Apple always stream music at the highest quality, while music files will need more data to load and also take longer to start playing. It’s quite simple: the higher the quality, the larger the file. If you want to reduce high data usage on iPhone, just disable high quality on cellular or turn off cellular data use for music streaming & downloading directly. In this way, you may get high iPhone data usage reduced.

Settings > Music > disable High Quality on Cellular or Use Cellular Data

Avoid Automatic Download and Updates over Cellular Data

Since iOS 7 update, Apple allows automatic download of apps and updates. It is not always a desirable feature because most of you are trying to keep your iPhone in maximum performance and reducing data usage as well, anyhow, you cannot get Wi-Fi connection all the time. So, how to avoid automatic download and updates over cellular data, and reduce iPhone data usage?

Settings > iTunes & App Store > disable Use Cellular Data for automatic downloads

Setup Background App Refresh

Even though you are not using them, apps can run and update in the background. Imperceptibly, it causes excessive iPhone data usage as well as battery usage. One of the best ways reducing iPhone data usage is to stop background cellular data usage. In Settings > General >Background App Refresh, and you can turn it off. It all depends. If you need some certain apps keep refreshing all the time, you can just turn them on, and toggle others to the OFF position.

Prevent Data-Hungry Apps for Using Cellular Data

Not only for iOS 9 users, this trick is feasible for all iPhone/iPad users.  You have to admit that some apps consume much more data than others (we mentioned how to check data usage on iPhone above). It is always good to figure out which apps are data-hungry, more importantly, if they can access to cellular data. You can find the whole list of apps that use cellular data in Settings > Cellular. What you need to do is to prevent those data-hungry apps for consuming cellular data, and turn them off one by one. 

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