Last Updated: April 1, 2015

There's nothing worse than being in the middle of your favorite song, the most exciting part of a movie, or at a key point in a game and having your iPod touch run out of battery. That's so frustrating!

The iPod touch packs a lot of juice, but people who really use it can go through their batteries quickly. Luckily, here are 17 ways to save lots of battery life and squeeze every last minute of fun out of your touch. You probably don't want to use them all at once—you'd turn off every interesting feature of your iPod. Instead, try picking the ones that work best for how you use your device and see how much more battery they give you.

1. Turn Off Background App Refresh

Your iPod touch likes to be smart. So smart that it pays attention to what apps you use when and tries to make life easier for you. For instance, do you always check Facebook during breakfast? Your touch learns that and, in the background, updates Facebook with the latest posts so you see fresh content. Cool, but it also takes up battery. You can always update content in apps yourself.

To turn it off, go to:

1. Settings
2. General
3. Background App Refresh
4. You can choose to disable the feature completely or only turn it off for some apps.

2. Turn Off Auto-Update for Apps

Another way the iPod touch tries to make your life easier. Instead of forcing you to update apps to the new versions yourself, this feature automatically updates them whenever they come out. Nice, but those downloads and installs can suck up battery life. Maybe wait to update all at once when your battery is charged or your touch is plugged in.

To turn it off, go to:

1. Settings
2. iTunes & App Store
3. Automatic Downloads
4. Updates
5. Move slider to Off/white.

3. Turn Off App Suggestions

Another way the iOS, the operating system that runs the touch and the iPhone, tries to help out is by looking at the kind of apps you like and the places that you go and suggesting apps that you might enjoy based on that. Useful in helping you discover apps, but it requires a lot of connecting to the Internet to do, and that drains battery.

To turn them off, go to:

1. Settings 
2. General
3. Handoff & Suggested Apps
4. Move the My Apps slider to Off/white
5. Move the App Store slider to Off/white.

4. Turn Off Motion and Animations

One of the cool things that iOS 7 introduced was some animations and visual effects when using the OS. Among these were some pretty fancy transition animations between screens and the ability for apps to float over the top of the wallpaper and move as you tilt the device. They look cool, but when you're trying to conserve energy, they're definitely not essential.

To turn them off, go to:

1. Settings
2. General
3. Accessibility
4. Move the Reduce Motion slider to green/On.

5. Avoid Animated Wallpapers

Just like the animations and movement burn up battery life you probably want to hold onto, the animated wallpapers introduced in iOS 7 do the same. Again, they're nice to look at, but they don't do all that much. Stick with regular, static wallpapers.

To avoid them, tap:

1. Settings
2. Wallpapers
3. Choose a New Wallpaper
4. Do not select options from Dynamic

6. Keep Bluetooth Turned Off Unless You're Using It

Any time you need to connect to other devices, you use battery life—especially if you spend time trying, but failing, to connect. That's true for Bluetooth and the next two items on this list. Trying to connect using Bluetooth means your touch is constantly scanning for devices to connect to and sending data back and forth—and that burns battery. It's best to turn on Bluetooth only when you're going to connect to a device.

To turn it off:

1. Open Control Center by swiping up from the bottom of the screen
2. Tap the Bluetooth icon (third in from the left) so that it is grayed out.

To turn Bluetooth back on again, open Control Center and tap the icon again.

7. Turn Off AirDrop Unless You're Using It

AirDrop is Apple's wireless file-sharing tool—and it's great, unless it's sucking up your battery. Only turn AirDrop on when you're going to use it and when the person you want to share files with is nearby.

To turn it off:

1. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to open Control Center
2. Tap AirDrop
3. Tap Off.

8. Turn Off Wi-Fi Unless You're Using It

Wi-Fi is one of the worst culprits when it comes to wireless features that drain battery. That's because when Wi-Fi is on and if your touch is not connected, it's constantly scanning for a network to connect to and, when it finds one, trying to join it. This constant churn is rough on batteries. Keep Wi-Fi turned off until you're using it.

To turn it off:

1. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to open Control Center
2. Tap the Wi-Fi icon (second from the left) so that it is grayed out.

?To turn Wi-Fi back on again, open Control Center and tap the icon again

9. Reduce Screen Brightness

The energy that it takes to light up the screen on the iPod touch is something you can't avoid using. But you can control how much you use. That's because you can change the brightness of the screen. The brighter the screen, the more battery life it needs. Try keeping the screen brightness low and your battery will stay charged longer.

To change the setting, tap:

1. Settings
2. Display & Brightness
3. Move the slider to the left to make the screen dimmer.

10. Only Upload Photos When You Mean To

If you didn't already have one, you probably set up an iCloud account when you set up your touch. iCloud is a great service that provides a lot of benefits, but if you take a lot of photos, it can also be a problem for your battery. That's because of a feature that automatically uploads your photos to iCloud whenever you take them. Guess what? That's bad for your battery.

To turn it off, go to:

1. Settings
2. Photos & Camera
3. Move the My Photo Stream slider to Off/white.