Check uptime
How long has it been since you last reset your iPhone or rebooted your device? Looking at uptime can tell you how many days in a row a device has been in use. This can be useful if your device is behaving strangely. For example, maybe you haven’t restarted your device in a year. In that case, it’s not unusual for your iPhone or Mac to crash more often. Regularly installing iOS and macOS updates should automatically restart your device, but if you’ve neglected to do so on a Mac or iPad that you rarely use, there’s an easy way to check.
Check Mac Uptime
On a Mac or other Unix-based computer, you can check uptime via the Terminal:
- On your Mac, open the Terminal app.
- Enter the command ‘uptime’.
- You can now see when the Mac was last started, in this case 2 days ago.
Checking Uptime on iPhone and iPad
Why would you want to know the uptime of an iPhone? There are several possibilities. For example, you may be experiencing the problem that your iPhone suddenly shuts down regularly. Suddenly you think you have found the solution… and yes, your iPhone does not shut down anymore. In that case, you may want to know after a few days how long it has been fine again. It may also be that you are a detective investigating a crime and want to know when a certain device has restarted. Or maybe you are just interested in knowing how long your iPhone has been able to last.
Check uptime with third-party apps
On the iPhone and iPad, you don’t have a standard Terminal app. There are third-party apps that offer a Terminal function, such as the rather expensive OpenTerm (link) and the cheaper alternative LibTerm (link). After installing the app, you only have to give the command ‘uptime’. Another option is System Stats (link), of which there are two versions: free and paid.
Here’s how you can check it:
- Install a suitable app from the App Store.
- In an app with Terminal functionality such as LibTerm or OpenTerm, simply type the command ‘uptime’.
- In an app like System Status, scroll down. Boot Time will show you the time the device rebooted, and Uptime will show you the amount of time that has passed since then.
System Status provides even more information, such as battery status, network information, and IP address. You can also see CPU usage and performance. You can take a screenshot of your iPhone screen to save the information for later comparison.
Every time you install an iOS or iPadOS update, your device will restart, so most people don’t really need to worry about the uptime of their device. If you rarely install updates, it does make sense to restart your device every now and then.
Check out our complete iPhone tips overview. With hundreds of iPhone tips, we discuss almost every setting and possibility!
