Phone or laptop for Glastonbury tickets? Setting up either

Phone or laptop for the Glastonbury sale, and the settings to change on iPhone, Android and laptops so your screen doesn't lock and your battery lasts.

By Jonathan Connolly, who books for a group of friends every Glastonbury ticket day and built this site's tool. Facts checked 30 October 2026.

5 min read

A phone that locks, dims or runs out of battery in the queue is one of the few ticket day problems that's entirely in your hands. Setting it up takes about five minutes, and the best time is the evening before the sale, not the morning of it.

The steps below follow Apple's and Google's own help pages. Menu names vary a little between models, brands and software versions, so if you can't find a setting, type its name into the search bar at the top of your Settings app.

Phone or laptop?

Neither gets you through the queue faster: your place is tied to your registration, not your device (see how the ticket queue works). So use whichever you're most comfortable copying and pasting on.

	Phone	Laptop
Good at	Always to hand, and your bank's app is on it for approving the payment	A bigger screen, a keyboard, and two windows side by side
Watch out for	The screen locking, low battery, and switching between apps at checkout	Sleep settings, updates that want a restart, and needing your phone anyway for the bank check
Best for	Most people, once it's set up as below	Anyone who finds pasting on a phone fiddly

If you queue on a laptop, keep your phone next to you for the payment check.

Use one device per registration. In the 2027 coach sale, Time Out reported, each person got a queue ID linked to their registration and could only enter the queue once, and NME reported that the general sale also tied each registration to a single place in the queue. The festival says using several devices or tabs will lose you your place. And open your group's details on the same device you're booking on: copying on your phone won't paste on your laptop.

On an iPhone

Stop the screen locking. Open Settings, tap Display & Brightness, then Auto-Lock, and choose a longer time. Apple notes this uses more battery, so plug in too.
Turn off Low Power Mode. Open Settings and tap Battery. On some newer iPhones the switch is one step further in, under Power Mode. Apple says Low Power Mode limits features including Auto-Lock, so leave it off while you queue and charge instead. If it switches itself on when the battery is low, that's another reason to stay plugged in.
Silence everything else. Open Control Centre, tap Focus, then Do Not Disturb. If you want the group chat to come through, you can allow chosen people or apps in the Focus settings.
Practise switching apps. On an iPhone without a Home button, swipe right along the bottom edge of the screen to jump back to the app you were just using. With a Home button, double-click it to see your recent apps.

You don't need to close all your other apps first. Apple says apps you're not using don't use resources unless they're doing something in the background, so closing them won't speed things up.

On an Android phone

Stop the screen locking. Open Settings, tap Display (called Display & touch on recent Pixel phones), then Screen timeout, and choose the longest time. Pixel phones also have Screen attention, which keeps the screen on while you're looking at it.
Turn off Battery Saver or your phone's power saving mode while you queue, and plug in instead. Power saving modes are designed to cut back what your phone does.
Silence everything else. Swipe down from the top of the screen and turn on Do Not Disturb.
Try split screen. Many Android phones can show two apps at once, so you can see the booking page and your group's details together. On a Pixel, swipe up from the bottom and hold, tap the app's icon at the top of its preview and choose the split screen option, then pick the second app. Other brands have their own versions.

On a laptop

Plug it in and set it not to sleep or turn off the screen while plugged in. You'll find this in your power or battery settings.
Install waiting updates the day before, for both the laptop and your browser, so nothing asks to restart during the sale.
Close the heavy stuff. Big downloads, game updates, video calls and backups all compete for your connection and can slow an older laptop down.
Put the group's page in its own window next to the booking page, so you can copy from one and paste into the other without hunting for tabs.

Your connection

Use the connection you trust most, which for most people is their home broadband. Know how to switch your phone to mobile data, or use it as a hotspot, in case the broadband drops. Treat that as a backup, not a trick: your place is linked to your registration, so a second connection doesn't give you a second chance.

Stick to your normal connection. The 2025 sale FAQ warned that refreshing the page, using multiple tabs or many devices can look like suspicious behaviour and trigger the anti-bot software. In the 2027 general sale, NME reported, some buyers got "access restricted" messages even though they said they weren't using a VPN. If others in your home are on the same broadband, ask them to hold off on streaming and downloads for the hour.

Things to avoid once you're in

Don't refresh the queue page unless the official instructions on the page tell you to.
Don't open new tabs during checkout. In 2025 the official advice was that the session could expire if you did, so open your group's page before you join the queue.
Don't let the phone lock while you're switching between the booking page and your details. Glasto Quick Copy's Keep screen on helps while its page is open, but your Auto-Lock or screen timeout setting covers the rest.

A five minute check the night before

Charger plugged in where you'll sit, and the phone or laptop charging.
Screen lock set to a longer time, and power saving off.
Do Not Disturb ready to switch on.
Browser and system updates done.
Your group's page open in the browser you'll use, and checked: tap a box and paste it into a note to make sure copying works.
Your bank's app working, and your card details to hand.

Our ticket day checklist covers everything else for the night before.

Afterwards

Once the sale's over, put your screen lock back to its usual setting and turn off Do Not Disturb, so your phone isn't left awake and silent for the rest of the day.

Get your group's page ready

Sources

Last checked 30 October 2026. Ticket rules can change from year to year, so always confirm on the official Glastonbury and See Tickets websites.