There are lots of battery-powered devices that can give you an estimate of how much longer they’ll need to stay plugged in until they’re fully charged. It’s not exactly a new feature. MacBooks gives you this info in the Battery menu of Settings or the menu bar, for example.
With all the battery management and analysis built into our modern iPhones, it’s kind of remarkable that they don’t do this. Fortunately, a “time to charge” feature may be on the way.
9to5Mac discovered some code in the latest iOS 18.2 beta that points to a new BatteryIntelligence framework. The framework will take into account the amount of charge your battery can hold, its state of charge, and the amount of power it’s receiving from the charger (USB-C or wireless, we assume) and produce an estimate of how much longer it will take for the battery to charge.
According to 9to5Mac, users will be able to do things like get a notification stating how long it will take to charge to the current limit (80% or whatever you set it to). I could see Apple incorporating the info into the Dynamic Island, or perhaps on the lock screen.
The feature is not yet enabled, so it’s unclear if it will come in iOS 18.2 or a later release. It may also be restricted to specific iPhone models, much like the custom charge limits or other battery features.
Author: Jason Cross, Senior Editor, Macworld
Jason has written about technology for more than 25 years - first in the gaming press, then focusing on enthusiast PCs and general technology. He enjoys learning how complicated technology works and explaining it in a way anyone can understand.