Besides the current time, your iPhone or iPad’s battery level is perhaps one of the more monitored details of your device. This may especially be true if you regularly find yourself in locations without a charger. At first you may not care too much when the little battery indicator is green, but as you progress through the day you might find yourself watching the indicator a bit more. Here are some tips that can help you better manage and optimize your battery life.

First, if your device is supported, be sure to install the recently released iOS 9. This version of iOS has optimized code for managing graphics and other intense computations, which should at least initially offload some processing demands and help preserve your battery. Granted developers may soon take advantage of this and in lieu of more available computing resources add more features to their apps, but for now and overall, the new features should help. If you are skeptical of the initial release of iOS 9, then at least consider installing iOS 9.1 when it is out.

With iOS 9, you will have a new option for preserving your battery by way of low power mode, which is a quick way to turn off many of the features in iOS that can progressively drain your battery. These include background app refresh, and push notifications for mail. If your device runs into low-battery territory (20% remaining charge) you will see the classic low-battery alert, but now have a new option to put your device in low-power mode. Alternatively you can do this on-demand to ensure your device has maximal battery at all times:

1. Go to Settings > Battery
2. Toggle “Low Power Mode”

When enabled, your battery indicator will turn orange, and will show the percentage of battery you have left.

Note that you can also use some of iOS 9’s features to help tailor your uses and conserve battery. In the Battery settings panel, you will see a Battery Usage list, that will show you the apps which are using the most battery. This can be displayed over various available time frame tabs, and by tapping the clock icon, you will see the collective times that the apps have been in use. With this information, you can adjust how you use your apps, to help cut down on those that use the most battery.

In addition to these new features in iOS 9, you can take several additional steps to help preserve battery life on your iPhone or iPad:

1. Dim the screen as low as possible.
2. Turn off the Bluetooth and/or Wi-Fi antennas when they are not needed.
3. Disable background app refresh for apps you rarely use.
4. Remove apps that you do not use.
5. Power down your iOS device when not used for extended periods of time.
6. Avoid quitting frequently used apps.

The last option here basically applies to those 3-5 apps that you use the most, which in iOS 9 will appear in the Siri Suggestions section when you access the iOS search (seen by drag the first page of the home screen to the right). By default, only the four most-used apps will show, but you can tap “Show More” to view the top eight apps.