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iOS 9.1 YouTube Background Activity Battery Drain

rsbacon

rsbacon

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 29, 2015
94
112
Apologies if this is being discussed elsewhere - I tried searching but couldn't find a relevant discussion.

So last night I was playing a video on the YouTube app, paused it to check email and browse the web and then went to bed. The phone had ~65% battery at the time, but I woke up this morning to see it dropped down to 41%.

Here are the battery consumption screenshots:

i5uosi.png


119c87o.png


2lx6u8g.png



There is no way in hell my 6S had 11 hours & 46 minutes of on-screen time. My TSMC chip is good, but not that good! Anyone else noticing this on their phones? Is the workaround to manually kill the app until YouTube gets their act together? I was really looking forward to Red... :(
 
I'm sorry, but I don't understand what the problem is here. You are not having a problem with your battery looking at those screenshots. Therefore, what difference does it make if YouTube runs in the background?
 
Eileen89 said:
I'm sorry, but I don't understand what the problem is here. You are not having a problem with your battery looking at those screenshots. Therefore, what difference does it make if YouTube runs in the background?
Click to expand...

The problems are a) the battery drained a lot more than it usually does overnight (~15%) and b) On-screen time is now wildly inaccurate (11hr 46min Usage). iOS seems to think that a video was played for like 8 hours overnight, except it wasn't. The stock YouTube app does not support background playback, so how did it consume so much battery overnight?
 
Just to clarify, the usage time is not on-screen time, just the time the device was doing something (even if the screen is off). If you tap on any app on that screen you will see an breakdown between actual on-screen time and background time (if any) for each app.
 
Last edited:
It could be similar to the facebook bug where nothing is playing but it's keeping the device from going to deep sleep. The battery usage is "minimal" compared to if something was actually playing, but annoying nonetheless. I suggest you restart your phone, make sure the YT app is up to date, and continue to monitor it.
 
The same happened to me this morning. I fell asleep watching a Youtube video and woke up with about 20% battery lost overnight. At first I thought this was because I was jailbroken and allowed for backgrounded Youtube videos, but if this also happens for those without a jailbreak, there might be something else at play here.
 
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rsbacon said:
Apologies if this is being discussed elsewhere - I tried searching but couldn't find a relevant discussion.

So last night I was playing a video on the YouTube app, paused it to check email and browse the web and then went to bed. The phone had ~65% battery at the time, but I woke up this morning to see it dropped down to 41%.

Here are the battery consumption screenshots:

i5uosi.png


119c87o.png


2lx6u8g.png



There is no way in hell my 6S had 11 hours & 46 minutes of on-screen time. My TSMC chip is good, but not that good! Anyone else noticing this on their phones? Is the workaround to manually kill the app until YouTube gets their act together? I was really looking forward to Red... :(
Click to expand...
Maybe I'm being too simple-minded here, but do you have YouTube toggled "off" in background app refresh?

Also, (again, not being purposefully simple here), have you killed the app from the app switcher (double clicking the home button and then swiping up to kill it)? I don't do this for all apps, but only for apps I suspect of misbehaving or apps that I don't use very often.
 
C DM said:
Just to calcify, the usage time is not on-screen time, just the time the device was doing something (even if the screen is off). If you tap on any app on that screen you will see an breakdown between actual on-screen time and background time (if any) for each app.
Click to expand...

Guessing you meant to say "clarify" ;) but yes you're right about usage time and I shouldn't use it interchangeably with on-screen time. The YouTube app on-screen time was 7 minutes and background activity was 8.2 hours

that be me said:
The same happened to me this morning. I fell asleep watching a Youtube video and woke up with about 20% battery lost overnight. At first I thought this was because I was jailbroken and allowed for backgrounded Youtube videos, but if this also happens for those without a jailbreak, there might be something else at play here.
Click to expand...

Mine is bone stock 9.1. Definitely something at play, and I'm surprised people haven't noticed the significant battery drain yet.

willmtaylor said:
Maybe I'm being too simple-minded here, but do you have YouTube toggled "off" in background app refresh?

Also, (again, not being purposefully simple here), have you killed the app from the app switcher (double clicking the home button and then swiping up to kill it)? I don't do this for all apps, but only for apps I suspect of misbehaving or apps that I don't use very often.
Click to expand...

Yes, YouTube is toggled OFF for background refresh, as are most of my other apps. I'd like to think that I'm a semi-advanced user of iOS, and have app refresh and location services settings optimized for battery life. I also, to your second point, typically kill apps that I suspect could misbehave with background activity (Google Maps, Fb etc.) but I've never had issues with music and video apps like YouTube in the past
 
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Weird. I do not have this issue. iPhone 6s Plus. Background activity off and always using YouTube, but no background activity or battery drain.
 
If you haven't already, try closing the video (swiping away the minimized thumbnail) before leaving the app. I read about someone having the same issue and they concluded there's a bug in the current Youtube app that's causing this. I always do it out of habit so it doesn't affect me but it may be helpful in your troubleshooting.
 
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I have had this happen to me two days ago. I was watching a video and backed out using the home button. Several hours later when I wanted to open the phone, the unlock screen showed that youtube was 'running', with this customizations bar showing (where you can adjust volume, fast forward/backwards/check runtime). No data was used though, as I checked with my bundel.

Solution, just double tap home button and close the youtube app fully.
 
There were some users writing that if you don't swipe away the video inside the app when going out of it, the app is still active when in background. So try that next time.

Youtube app = garbage since the Material redesign. It displays 3 (three!) videos in the list at the time when scrolling on iPad Pro big ass screen. Google must have decided that if they aren't capable to ship tablet Android apps, iPad won't have any either.
 
willmtaylor said:
People still use the YouTube app? Why? Why put up with all of the ads? There are several YouTube clients that's strip the ads out.
Click to expand...

Could you please recommend me some of those several other youtube apps? I'd seriously consider switching.
 
Does ProTube has History as in official app and on website ? Not local history .. Perhaps there's no API for history, since I didn't see a free app with it so far.
 
I'm actually having this issue with the App Store. My battery suddenly started draining very quickly. Checked and the App Store has used 77% of my battery in the last 24 hours. It's also used 67% in the last 7 days. It says 13 mins on screen and 88.9 hours in the background.
 
stevemiller said:
its doubly ****** that they clearly had a background processing bug, and they don't even provide anything useful in the background.
Click to expand...

Yeah the darn app wouldn't allow background playback, but was very happy to consume battery just being idle memory
 
rsbacon said:
Well, well, well look what we have here in the update notes:

n2mm9x.png
Click to expand...

stevemiller said:
its doubly ****** that they clearly had a background processing bug, and they don't even provide anything useful in the background.
Click to expand...

rsbacon said:
Yeah the darn app wouldn't allow background playback, but was very happy to consume battery just being idle memory
Click to expand...

That's for YouTube Red subscribers, which supports background play. I wouldn't say an enhancment in performance indicates a "bug" necessarily.
 
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