MacRumors Site/Forums Causing Battery Drain?

[iStorm]

Has anyone else noticed their battery draining rather quickly when browsing MacRumors on their iPad (possibly iPhone and/or Mac too)? I got the new iPad Pro and thought it was odd that my battery was draining quicker than usual. It wasn't until I came across this thread that I realized maybe it was MacRumors that was causing the issue. I stopped browsing MacRumors on my iPad and the battery drain went back to normal.

Today, I did some more testing/troubleshooting to make sure this was indeed the issue and not the iOS 14.6 battery drain issue (which I don't seem to be experiencing). I charged my iPad to 100% and browsed Amazon.com in Safari for 30 minutes. The battery drained 2% and my iPad was still cool. I then switched over to the MacRumors Forums to browse for another 30 minutes. The battery drained 12%! The iPad was also warm, which is unusual for me when browsing the web. I've done this twice so far with similar results, so it does seem that MacRumors is the culprit. At one point, there was a spinner in the status bar that wouldn't go away unless Safari was in the background or the MacRumors tab was closed.

I would encourage others to perform similar tests and/or report their experience. Hopefully this is something they can look into and fix. I would love to be able to browse MacRumors on my iPad without draining my battery so quickly; but for now, I'll do it when I'm plugged in on my Mac.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I haven't had any problems on my iPad.

 

[doboy]

I ran into similar experience as OP when not using a content blocker on my M1 11” Pro. The iPad at the time was fresh out of the box without restoration or any other apps installed from the App Store.

 

[rui no onna]

I don't have an issue but then again, I've been using content blockers in Safari ever since that feature was added to iOS (9 or 10?)

 

[doboy]

I don't have an issue but then again, I've been using content blockers in Safari ever since that feature was added to iOS (9 or 10?)

That more or less solves it. Noticed this issue on my new M1 Pro before restoring the iPad (which includes content blocker of course). MR without it is horrible for battery life.

 

[iStorm]

Out of curiosity, I just tried this on my iPhone XS in reverse order and saw similar results. I browsed the Mac Rumors Forums for 30 minutes; battery drained 14% and phone got warm. Then switched to Amazon.com for 30 minutes; battery drained 4% and the phone cooled down. Not to mention, MR was using dark mode, so theoretically it should have used the same or less power compared to Amazon's white pages on the XS's OLED screen. (I realize other factors are involved, such as ads and javascript; but still, it should not be using nearly 4-6 times more battery power.) I really haven't noticed this issue before, but I also haven't been frequenting the forums quite as often on my iPad until I got my new one.

I don't have an issue but then again, I've been using content blockers in Safari ever since that feature was added to iOS (9 or 10?)

I'd bet the content blocker is preventing this behavior. I've never used these before since ads haven't really bothered me, but maybe it's time I start!

 

[atmaka]

It is also happening to me, iPad Pro 11“ 2020 and iPhone 12 Pro Max, devices get quite hot while browsing MR, especially Show Off Your Apple Watch thread. That thread also made me buy 2 Apple Watch Series 6 and multiple bands/loops/links within one month, but that’s another problem..

 

[topdog9000]

Same here. Thought something was wrong with my new M1 iPad Pro 11” because the battery was draining so fast. Thought it could be a faulty magic keyboard. Ultimately I found it was macrumors causing the battery drain and device getting hot. Installed AdGuard content blocker on my iPhone and iPad and it helped a lot. I also closed out the MR tab after browsing and the battery drain was gone.

 

[Apple_Robert]

If you like Macrumors and appreciate the timely articles and helpful community, consider becoming a Contributor ($25.00 / year). One of the perks of contributing is the removal of ads.

⭐️ Paid Membership (Ad Free)

forums.macrumors.com

 

[doboy]

If you like Macrumors and appreciate the timely articles and helpful community, consider becoming a Contributor ($25.00 / year). One of the perks of contributing is the removal of ads.

⭐️ Paid Membership (Ad Free)

forums.macrumors.com

Or use a free content blocker It’s not smart for a website to drive users to install a blocker, but that’s just me thinking out loud.

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

Or use a free content blocker It’s not smart for a website to drive users to install a blocker, but that’s just me thinking out loud.

Yeah I could think of better things to spend £17 on to be honest. I only use this forum through Tapatalk so ads don’t show up in the threads and it doesn’t drain my battery.

 

[ericgtr12]

If you like Macrumors and appreciate the timely articles and helpful community, consider becoming a Contributor ($25.00 / year). One of the perks of contributing is the removal of ads.

⭐️ Paid Membership (Ad Free)

forums.macrumors.com

Don't want the site to needlessly drain your battery? Pay money to remove the cause.

 

[Doctor Q]

Paying for membership to remove ads is a nice perk, but you shouldn't have to do so to preserve your battery. The site engineers have been alerted.

 

[iStorm]

If you like Macrumors and appreciate the timely articles and helpful community, consider becoming a Contributor ($25.00 / year). One of the perks of contributing is the removal of ads.

⭐️ Paid Membership (Ad Free)

forums.macrumors.com

Cool, I wasn't aware of this, but I hope it's not "the solution" for the battery drain and heating issue.

Don't want the site to needlessly drain your battery? Pay money to remove the cause.

A site can still show ads without draining your battery or heating up your device. Some of us don't mind the ads; however, we shouldn't have to pay money just so it'll run more efficiently though. Can you imagine if that becomes a new trend on the web...Hey, pay us money so our site doesn't eat up your battery and heat up/throttle your device. (I'm not at all saying or implying this what MacRumors is doing here.)

It’s somewhat frustrating that a site mainly used for reading can have a big impact on the battery. The forums don’t even show that many ads compared to the articles or homepage. I’m suspecting some inefficient Javascript is running in the background, but maybe MacRumors doesn’t have much control over this if it’s coming from a 3rd party.

 

[chown33]

Has anyone who is experiencing the problem on an iPad tried it on a Mac?

If so, and the problem also appears on a Mac, does Activity Monitor show anything useful about CPU or energy usage?

 

[iStorm]

Has anyone who is experiencing the problem on an iPad tried it on a Mac?

If so, and the problem also appears on a Mac, does Activity Monitor show anything useful about CPU or energy usage?

I tried connecting my iPad to my Mac to use the Web Inspector to see if I could troubleshoot anything, but that wasn't working. (The inspector wasn't showing all the tabs and seems to be something that broke in a recent update.)

It's hard to know if I'm experiencing this issue on my Mac since I'm always plugged in, but I did run the Web Inspector there and started a timeline recording while sitting idle on a page for a minute. This is what I see...

 

[chown33]

Thanks for posting the screenshot. What's the Mac model and OS version shown?

Can you stretch out the timeline (zoom in) so the full window width covers only about a 3-5 second time span?

There's clearly a lot of JS activity, and it's definitely taking up the largest amount of CPU, but I'm curious what a closer look at the timeline will show about the duration of the individual "blips".


What happens if you visit the forums, instead of the front page?


Does Activity Monitor break down things in any more detail than Safari's timeline shows? For example, does it show a URL or a %CPU or energy usage?

 

[arn]

I'm asking them to look into this.

 

[iStorm]

Using a 2017 MacBook Pro, with Big Sur 11.4. The forums are showing the same behavior.

I zoomed in to a 1.5 second time span since there was still a lot going on within that.

Activity Monitor doesn't break things down any further...it just shows the details at the tab or process level.

 

[chown33]

The screenshot of JS & Events lists a bunch of things that ran at 6.14 secs.

I searched for the exact word "rx_lidar.js" and one of the results is this:

Tracker Radar Wiki - googletagservices.com

slayterdev.github.io

That page also shows "osd.js", another name that appears in the screenshot list.

 

[arn]

Can you post screenshots of your Settings -> Battery that show the fast drop off and what consumed the most battery?

 

[iStorm]

Screenshots are below. Just to summarize what you're seeing...battery was charged to 100% at 4pm yesterday, and didn't start using it again until last night when I watched a video on YouTube for about a 40 minutes - battery drained to 96%. Then to get some metrics this morning, I browsed only MacRumors for about 1.25 hours and replied to a couple posts - battery drained to 58%.




I started to charge my iPad, but this last screenshot is just to show that the time for Safari should be 35m instead of the 12m seen above. That screenshot was taken too soon before everything was completely tallied up for the hour.

 

[Crow_Servo]

Yeah, I hope they can fix this. Like someone else said, I don’t mind ads, but I do mind them when they kill my battery worse than anything else I can do on my phone/tablet. I can play a graphics-intensive game with all the settings at full, and even that doesn’t drain my battery as bad.

 

[Alicia1]

I am experiencing the same issues on my new M1 12.9". What is a good free ad blocker? I actually returned my first ipad because I thought it had a bad battery issue!

 

[doboy]

I am experiencing the same issues on my new M1 12.9". What is a good free ad blocker? I actually returned my first ipad because I thought it had a bad battery issue!

I know, it’s crazy. I personally use Firefox Focus since it’s a separate browser and also has a content blocker feature for Safari.