My iPad Air has seen better days. Over the years, it has slowed down considerably, which has only been compounded by Apple’s Liquid Glass overhaul from last year. Plus, with only 64GB of internal storage capacity to work with, it has been a constant struggle to keep the tablet in optimal working condition.

With this in mind, there are a few different ways I’ve been able to speed up my iPad Air’s performance, which has kept it usable even in the Liquid Glass era. Aside from clearing storage space to provide extra breathing room, here are three tricks I use to keep my Air relatively zippier than it otherwise would be.

Brand

Apple

Storage

128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB

CPU

M4

Operating System

iPadOS 26

Ports

USB-C

Display type

Liquid retina display

Apple’s upper-mid-range tablet, the iPad Air ships with an M4 processor, support for Apple Intelligence, optional 5G connectivity, Wi-Fi 7, and much more.

Enable Reduce Transparency

Solidify user interface surfaces

To start off, one of the first tweaks I made to my iPad Air was to enable Reduce Transparency mode within iPadOS. This feature, which can be found under accessibility settings, removes various translucency effects throughout the operating system, all of which can take a toll on performance when active. Disabling transparency effects takes away some of the Liquid Glass luster, to be sure, but it’s a worthwhile tradeoff to ensure smoother performance on the whole.

To enable Reduce Transparency, follow these steps:

1. Launch Settings.
2. Navigate to Accessibility > Display & Text Size.
3. Toggle on Reduce Transparency.

Enable Reduce Motion

Save your GPU the rendering headache

Next up, I enabled Reduce Motion on my iPad Air to help with performance. iPadOS is filled with aesthetically pleasing animations, but these rely on the GPU doing some heavy lifting behind the scenes to remain fluid and eye-catching. Disabling these animations is a little bit jarring at first, but it certainly does help speed up the iPad experience to a demonstrable degree. I found that within a couple of days, I had fully acclimated to the lack of animations.

To enable Reduce Motion, follow these steps:

1. Launch the Settings application.
2. Navigate to Accessibility > Motion.
3. From here, toggle on Reduce Motion.

Disable Background App Refresh

Keep your installed apps at bay

Disabling Background App Refresh is arguably one of the most potent tweaks you can make to iPadOS to not only save on battery stamina, but to also improve performance. By default, installed applications are able to fetch data and run processes in the background, which can slow foreground activities down to a crawl on older iPad models. You can disable Background App Refresh entirely for best results, or, alternatively, you can disable the feature on an app-by-app basis for a happier middle ground.

To disable Background App Refresh, follow these steps:

1. Launch Settings.
2. Go to General > Background App Refresh.
3. Toggle off Background App Refresh.