iOS Safari CPU usage going crazy when e.g. watching YouTube

[motrek]

I have a new-ish iPhone 16e, really enjoying the new phone and the excellent battery life.

Except that CPU usage is out of control when I do something as simple and common as watching a YouTube video in Safari.

The phone gets VERY hot when I watch a YouTube video. Like, I really do not want to hold the phone. And it burns through battery power at about 1% per minute. I just watched a 25 minute video and it used about half a day of battery life.

I switched to low-power mode halfway through but the phone only went from VERY hot to still-pretty-darn-hot and it still used a tremendous amount of power.

I've also noticed that the phone gets SUPER hot and battery life is awful when I browse to one of those crappy web sites with multiple crappy pop-up ads. This was the case with my old SE2 except that the SE2 didn't get as hot and it didn't use as much power.

The YouTube thing must be a bug, right? There's no way that everybody in the world is using up all their iPhone battery power just watching a handful of YouTube videos, right? How do I fix this?

Is there any way I can limit the maximum CPU power that Safari can use, without manually turning on low power mode whenever my phone gets hot?

I know the answer is no but I needed to vent. Thanks.

 

[Bigwaff]

I have a new-ish iPhone 16e, really enjoying the new phone and the excellent battery life.

Except that CPU usage is out of control when I do something as simple and common as watching a YouTube video in Safari.

The phone gets VERY hot when I watch a YouTube video. Like, I really do not want to hold the phone. And it burns through battery power at about 1% per minute. I just watched a 25 minute video and it used about half a day of battery life.

Your phone should not be getting this hot. I would take to Apple Store or Apple Service Provider. Perhaps they can run diagnostics or review logs. iPhone 16e should be under AppleCare. You may be provided a replacement device.

 

[motrek]

Your phone should not be getting this hot. I would take to Apple Store or Apple Service Provider. Perhaps they can run diagnostics or review logs. iPhone 16e should be under AppleCare. You may be provided a replacement device.

I'm sure that the phone is functioning within its design parameters.

It's just that there's no reason why Safari should be using all the available CPU power just to play a YouTube video, no?

Clearly a software bug, since nothing else I do with the phone causes this problem.

 

[motrek]

I have a new-ish iPhone 16e, really enjoying the new phone and the excellent battery life.

Except that CPU usage is out of control when I do something as simple and common as watching a YouTube video in Safari.
...

Actually, now that I'm watching a YouTube video on my Mac, I see that YouTube is using a tremendous amount of CPU power on my M1 Pro... up to 250%.

This wasn't always the case. Feels like a bug with YouTube at this point.

Edit: Actually, just brought the video up in Chrome on my Mac and it's hardly using any CPU power at all. So I guess it's a Safari bug.

 

[HouseLannister]

Use the YouTube app. Google has been very serious about cracking down on ad blocking on YouTube and now everything going through a browser is getting extra overhead for checking and preventing this stuff, even if you aren’t using extensions.

 

[Cobalt Blizzard]

Actually, now that I'm watching a YouTube video on my Mac, I see that YouTube is using a tremendous amount of CPU power on my M1 Pro... up to 250%.

This wasn't always the case. Feels like a bug with YouTube at this point.

Edit: Actually, just brought the video up in Chrome on my Mac and it's hardly using any CPU power at all. So I guess it's a Safari bug.

Do you have an Adblock installed? Try disabling it and see if it’s working normally.

 

[motrek]

Do you have an Adblock installed? Try disabling it and see if it’s working normally.

I do have it installed but it's disabled for YouTube.

But now that I've been watching a YouTube stream for a while on Chrome, its CPU usage has increased enormously, it's always using 100% when frequent bursts over 400%.

Okay I'm back to thinking that it's a bug with YouTube. Ugh.