How To Clear RAM on iPhone To Run Faster?

Using an iPhone for a long time or having heavy usage might sometimes make it feel a bit slow or laggy. This could be due to overheating or many other problems. One such problem for that could be RAM overload.

We have often heard about RAM in devices like mobile phones, tabs, computers etc, like older versions of the iPhone used to have 1GB (GigaByte) of RAM and the newer versions hold 2GB of RAM. Meanwhile the latest upgrade in the series, the iPhone 12 have variants with up to even 4 and 6 GigaByte of RAM.

But what exactly is this RAM? And what does clearing RAM means, how do we do it?

Let’s find out how this works.

How To Clear RAM on iPhone?

Since we are talking about this, what exactly is RAM? RAM, short for Random Access Memory, is a memory allocated for our ongoing works on a device.

Every application working requires a small amount of memory to be used constantly at all times, this is done using the RAM on the device, the storage section, like internal storage or external SD/microSD cards, do not work in the same fashion.

Now that we know what RAM is, let us move on to our target, how to clear RAM on an iPhone?

On Android devices, you can simply use the accessibility button, or the ‘tabs’ button to take a peek at your open apps where there is almost always an option to simply clear your RAM.

Unlike androids, Apple devices like iPhones, which are based on iOS, do not have the option. For that, we need a special method to clean the RAM. Let’s learn how we can do that.

1. Unlock your device

Open/unlock your device using the tap to wake, or power button, or fingerprint sensor, however is the method to unlock your device from the lock screen method. Once we have our unlocked iOS device in our hand ready, we can move on to our next step.

2. Press Power Button

The next step, this is a little bit tricky, be cautious.

To clear our RAM on the iPhone, in the next step, we are going to press the power button, the sleep/wake button, which is usually on the right side of the screen, in older versions it can be on top of the device.

Now to clear RAM on our iOS device, we are going to press the power button and keep it pressed until the “slide to power off” message/option appears on our screen.

Once it appears, carefully, you have to press the “Home” button, which is the circular button on the bottom of your screen on the front side, for around 5 seconds, wait till the current screen disappears and you get back to your home screen.

Now that you are on your home screen, you will notice your device to be working a bit faster, better than before. We have just cleaned the RAM on our iPhone!

For iPhones X and advanced

If you are using iPhones released after the iPhone 8, like the iPhone X and iPhone 12 and so on, you must be wondering where is this home button that we are talking about? Well, like changes in technology and design, Apple decided to remove the home button from iPhone X onwards. But don’t worry, we have a solution for this too.

To clear RAM on iPhones that do not have a Home button, or to say iPhones released after iPhone 8, we will be using a special feature called the “Assistive Touch”

So let’s find out how to clear RAM on iPhone X , iPhone XR, iPhone XS, iPhone XS max, iPhone X pro, iPhone 11, iPhone 11 pro, iPhone 11 pro max, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 pro max.

1. Open Settings

The settings icon can be found on the home screen of your iPhone, you can find it by swiping left or right on your main screen as it can be sometimes present on other pages of the home screen menu.  

Once you have found the Settings icon, tap on it to open the settings of your iPhone.

2. General Option

Now that we are in the settings of our iPhone, there will be a tab named “General”. Once you find it, tap on it to open the general settings.

3. Accessibility

In the General settings option that we have navigated this far, we need to find another tab that says “accessibility”. Accessibility settings usually give us options to adjust and enable/disable features of our phone that are quite useful for us, like gestures.

4. Turn on Assistive Touch

Finally, in the accessibility tab, you will find the “Assistive Touch” option. This option will be our key for clearing RAM on iPhone. To further advance, let us now turn ON the assistive touch option. We can simply do so by tapping on the toggle option.

Now that we have enabled assistive touch on our iPhone, an on-screen button like this will appear:-

This is our assistive touch button. This will be helpful and necessary for us.

5. Final Step

Now that we have our assistive touch button ready, we can roll on to our final step.

To finally clear our RAM on iPhone X and above, we will use the power button again, but with a small change.
Once again, unlock your iPhone and go to the home screen.
Now press the power (sleep/wake) button for a few seconds till the “slide to power off” option appears on your screen.

Once this screen appears, you will find your assistive touch button floating on the screen. Tap on it. After tapping and opening it, there will be an option of “Home Button”. As you can see, this is the same way of getting the home button as we used in earlier older iPhone versions.

Now that we have the home button on your screen, touch it and keep it tapped on-screen without lifting your finger for a few seconds, wait till the current screen closes and you get back to your Home Screen. Once that happens, boom! You have just cleared your RAM on your iPhone!

Conclusion

In the end, it comes down to one part only, reaching the shutdown option, and pressing the home button long enough (nearly 5 seconds) till it refreshes, sends you back to the Home screen, and that’s it! RAM cleared!

So this was our detailed and easy to go guide for clearing RAM on all iPhone models, either with the power button or without it.