The Settings app shows you a single battery health percentage and nothing else. It won’t tell you how many charge cycles your iPhone has been through, which is the number that actually matters when you’re judging wear or buying a used phone. Battery Checker pulls that figure, and a lot more, straight out of the diagnostic logs iOS already keeps.
What this shortcut does
Your iPhone quietly records detailed battery telemetry inside its analytics files, the same logs Apple uses for crash diagnostics. This shortcut parses one of those files and lays out the readings in plain language: charge cycle count, the original design capacity, the current nominal and raw maximum capacity, and two separate health figures calculated from those values. Newer releases also surface internal resistance and a timestamp for the reading. Nothing leaves your device, and you don’t need a Mac or any cable.
How to install
- Tap Add Shortcut on this page to open it in the Shortcuts app.
- Scroll the preview to the bottom and tap Add Shortcut to confirm.
- The first run asks permission to read your analytics file. Allow it so the shortcut can parse the data.
It runs on iOS 17, and version 5.3 or later is the one to use if you’re on iOS 18.4 or newer.
How to use it
Before anything else, the data has to exist. Open Settings, go to Privacy & Security, then Analytics & Improvements, and turn on Share iPhone Analytics. Apple writes a fresh log roughly once a day, so if you just enabled it, wait until the next one appears.
When a file is ready, stay on the Analytics Data screen and tap the most recent entry. Its name starts with Analytics- followed by the date on iOS 16 and later, or log-aggregated- on older versions. Hit the Share button at the top right, pick Battery Checker from the share sheet, and your readings appear in a few seconds. If you own an Apple Watch, both devices log here, so make sure you select the iPhone file.
FAQ
Why doesn’t this match the percentage in Settings?
Settings rounds a single capacity ratio. Battery Checker shows the raw values behind it plus the cycle count Apple hides, so you get the fuller picture rather than one tidy number.
It says no battery data was found. Now what?
Try an older file. The newest log occasionally lacks the battery section, and users often find a reading two or three days back. Beta builds of iOS can also drop the data entirely.
Why did it time out on me?
A handful of analytics files balloon past the roughly 2.6 MB that Shortcuts can process. When that happens the run stalls, and the workaround is to trim the file’s text in a notes app before retrying.
