How To Stop Your Phone From Overheating

A slightly warm phone is pretty normal, but when your phone becomes uncomfortably hot, that’s when you have a problem.

Persistent overheating can quietly damage your battery, impact your phone’s performance and become a safety risk if you leave your phone to charge overnight. 

Fortunately, most causes of overheating can be easily resolved. Let us help.

What causes a phone to overheat?

Whatever phone you have, its processor generates heat whenever it’s working hard. This can be when you’re streaming, gaming, on maps or running too many apps at once. This is normal! However, heating becomes a problem when it builds up faster than your phone can cope with.

This is usually the case when external factors exacerbate the issue: a hot car, direct sunlight, or leaving it on top of a thick duvet at night. All of these can push temperatures too high.

10 ways to stop your phone from overheating

To help keep your phone at a safe temperature, we’ve covered the most obvious issues that cause a phone to overheat.

1. Close background apps

Apps can commonly run in the background, even when they’re not in use. It runs processes to sync data, refresh content or keep the memory running. Over time, having lots of apps running in the background can cause your phone to work harder than it needs to.

Get into the habit of swiping apps closed after you’ve finished using them, especially battery-drainers like social media apps or streaming platforms. 

2. Keep it out of direct sunlight

Perhaps the most obvious, but one of the most common sudden causes of overheating, is direct sunlight. Whether that’s on the beach or on a windowsill, direct sunlight can push internal temperatures dangerously high even when not in use. If you’ve ever had the thermometer show up on your screen and stop you from using your phone, you’ll know what we’re on about.

Keep your phone in a bag or in the shade and away from the rays.

3. Remove your case while charging

Charging is always going to generate heat, but in some cases can act as an insulator to this heat and allow temperatures to climb. If this happens to you, removing the phone case can make a big difference.

4. Restart your phone

Yes, that simple turn it off and on again step, but regularly restarting your phone is good for its health. It wipes the slate clean, clears the RAM and fixes any stuck processes. If your phone is regularly overheating, try doing this once a week.

5. Update your apps and software system

Software updates include lots of performance improvements and bug fixes that make sure your phone is operating efficiently. Outdated apps or systems could cause your phone to run hotter than it should. Check for updates regularly and try to notice if any particular apps cause it to glitch.

6. Turn off any features you’re not using

Bluetooth, GPS and hotspotting can all consume power and generate unnecessary heat when you’re not actively using them. Make a habit of switching off what you’re not using. This should also help your phone’s battery health. 

7. Lower screen brightness

A phone screen uses a lot of power, and a consistently bright screen generates quite a lot of heat. It’s also an easy fix! Enable auto-brightness to make the most of natural lighting or set it to below 70% whenever you don’t need maximum brightness.

8. Check for battery-draining apps

A single app can be responsible for the majority of your phone’s heat. Social media apps are notorious for this as they often run in the background, track location, and send notifications even when you haven’t opened them for hours. 

Go into the settings of your phone, whatever model you have, and look at which apps use the most battery to see where you can uninstall or restrict certain apps.

9. Avoid charging and using it at the same time

Charging generates quite a lot of heat for your phone, so by intensively using your phone whilst it’s charging. Whether that’s playing games, video calling, texting or streaming, you are essentially doubling the heat load that your phone has to manage at once. 

Try to charge your phone when you’re not using it to reduce overheating.

10. Choose a breathable case

Your phone case plays a bigger role in temperature management than you might realise. Bulky cases can trap heat against the back of the phone and prevent it from cooling naturally. A slim, well-designed phone case can make a big difference.

Overheating is one of those phone problems that sneaks up on you and quietly causes damage long before you notice anything seriously wrong. The good news is that almost all of the causes are within your control. A few small habit changes and choosing the right case can make a significant difference to your phone's temperature, performance, and long-term health.