iOS 26 tells you how long it will take for your iPhone battery to finish charging

iPhone battery settings get a nice update in iOS 26, including a new intelligent battery saver mode called Adaptive Power. The iPhone will also now track extra battery stats, like your average power consumption throughout the day.

But perhaps the most notable enhancement is that the iPhone can now tell you exactly how long it will take for your battery to charge. Right at the top of your lock screen, when plugged in to power, your phone will now show the estimated time to charge until it hits 80%.

So, if your iPhone battery is below 80%, you can glance at your iPhone while is it charging to see the current time until battery hits 80%.

This feature is useful if you use a variety of chargers, perhaps a combination of slow and fast chargers. The battery time estimate will account for whatever the current charging speed is.

In the above example, the iPhone battery is currently at 77%. The phone is plugged in to a slow charger, and the system predicts it will take another seven minutes to add 3% battery to hit 80%.

Beyond the 80% mark, battery charge time estimates can also be found in the newly revamped Settings -> Battery section. The very top of this screen now tells you about current charging status, including time to finish charging. If the phone is unplugged, it reports the current battery percentage and what level it was charged to when it was last plugged in.

The other main section of the Battery settings screen is a new chart that compares your current consumption to your daily and weekly averages. It will also try to notify you if an app is using more battery than normal, and why.

To make your iPhone last even longer on a single charge, there’s also a new Adaptive Power toggle in the Power Mode settings screen. This sits alongside Low Power Mode as another way to tune the longevity-performance tradeoff of your phone.

Here’s how Apple describes the Adaptive Power mode:

“When your battery usage is higher than usual, iPhone can make small performance adjustments to extend your battery life, including slightly lowering the display brightness or allowing some activities to take a little longer. Low Power Mode may turn on at 20%.”

The description is a little vague, but it sounds like the system will check if your battery usage is abnormal and conditionally turn down the performance of your device to compensate. This might mean your email may be fetched less regularly, or some things may take a bit longer to mode when Adaptive Power is throttling your device.

It sounds like the adjustments are meant to be subtle (“slightly lowering”, “a little longer”) so you shouldn’t notice too much difference in practice. And if you have plenty of battery and are not using more than normal, your device performance is unchanged. This is why it is called an adaptive feature.