Some iOS 16 Users Complain About Slow Spotlight Search and Battery Drain

[ScubaCinci]

It’s kinda wild to be reading a MacRumors article and see your own post featured in it lol. Thank you MacRumors team for making these battery and performance issues more known so that Apple can hopefully become aware (if they’re not already) and fix them!

Yes, a first for me. I’m not confident Apple will pursue any fix for the spotlight search issue as I haven’t seen a ton of people complain about it but also not everyone uses the search often enough for it to be an issue for them. Also, it very well could be related to edge case scenarios as to how search settings are configured per app. I tried to prove that out but it would take a lot more time than I have to spend on it.

With every major release with an OS this complex, it‘s almost a certainty there will be bugs. I don’t understand the “there’s always complainers” people. We complain because we have high expectation of quality control, especially from Apple. If things don’t work properly or slowly as expected, that’s a problem. We use our phones for so much now that it can have a real impact on user experience, something which Apple takes great pride in. We aren’t picketing outside of their headquarters, we are just making it known that this is not working as expected and ‘is it just me or is this indicative of a larger issue’? Clearly the whole ‘allow paste’ issue is one that bothered people and Apple admitted was an issue so we aren’t all crying wolf here.

 

[Dowjohnny]

At least safari sure does feel snappier

 

[ScubaCinci]

I haven't noticed anything specific, however, Photo Library and Spotlight indexing of course take some time, so leaving your iPhone connected to power overnight for a couple of days is definitely recommended.

Nope, for me this wasn’t the case, after 3-4 days, it persisted. I thought that at first though!

My spotlight on a xs max got super slow too! So I did the apple thing a bought a new phone!
But seriously, it is a coding issue since the phone ran fine till like 15.6 which means they could with a bit more effort code
the problem out of the phone.

It happened on my iP12MP and I figured, well I’m getting the 14MP so that will fix it. Big fat NOPE. Restoring from iCloud also restored the bug/issue to the new phone.

I have encountered extremely slow spotlight search for several weeks during public beta and now final release. I ended up going into Settings > Siri and Search and turn off both toggles in "Content from Apple" and all four toggles in "Suggestions from Apple" and now spotlight seems fast again, but crossing my fingers that this workaround sticks.

I tried that as well as turning off all search options within each app, rebooted and enabled search in one but got the same results.

Also, for those saying it’s a few seconds slow, mine was 10-15 seconds and would not return partial searches at all much of the time (e.g. type W-A-L-L for ‘wallet’ and it would not return the search result for the wallet app. If I went to the app index screen where they are listed alphabetically, it worked super fast but only when I searched from there. I tried a ton of different combinations of search settings, reboots, language changes (to ostensibly force re-indexing), etc. but nothing worked. Only resetting all settings cured it (hopefully for good).

 

[SactoGuy18]

This is why I'll wait for the iOS 16.0.2 update circa Monday to resolve the issues. Or wait for iOS 16.1 in October (I'm doing fine with iOS 15.7 on my iPhone).

 

[chrono1081]

If there was no one to force things out the door, then nothing would ever get released.

You need a balance of designers who will forever iterate to perfection, and a decision maker who says “pencils down”.

Hard disagree. Project management types don't understand what it takes to engineer software, they think it's no different than writing an email. They get angry when you give long estimates because they think it should take a smaller amount of time, they get angry if delays happen because they didn't allow for the time the dev team originally asked for, and this is why crap gets rushed out the door.

The problem really is project management in most cases.

 

[decypher44]

Definitely draining the battery on my 12P fast! I’m hoping over the next few updates, it’ll get better. It’s very noticeable.

 

[EllZ89]

battery drain on my 14PM as well. was fine until about 3/4 days in. now it doesnt even charge up when plugged in to a laptop, it just stays on the same percentage, so the drain is countering the charge.

naturally though, it still rapidly charges when plugged in to a USB-C charger.

 

[Danindub]

My 13 Pro with iOS 16 was fine, but 14 Pro isn't: battery life seems to be lesser. I also noticed that photo library only seem to be scanning when phone is connected to wired charger, and not when it's on wireless MagSafe one for some reason :/

 

[RickDEGH]

Geez, iOS16 has been nothing short of a mess it seems.

With that being said, I haven’t had any issues at all and very much enjoy it.

The comment then should rather be about having had no issue at all, it would seem.

 

[themick4u]

Battery drain, homekit automations based on locations.... BIG issues!

 

[Kabeyun]

Geez, iOS16 has been nothing short of a mess it seems.

With that being said, I haven’t had any issues at all and very much enjoy it.

From the article: “I have the same issue. Before iOS 15.6 search was instant, but when I updated to iOS 15.6 it became very slow, taking more than 5 seconds for anything to show up while searching. I was hoping that iOS 16 would fix the issue, but it is just as slow.”

Maybe it’s not iOS 16. And maybe the article headline should match the content.

 

[willchris]

My 12 Pro's battery life got wrecked. Now I have to charge it twice a day. Yesterday at work it went from 44% to 26% in about hour and a half, sitting idle. Tonight I woke up in the middle of the night after only 4 hours of sleep, checked my phone, 6% gone. I've already disabled haptic keyboard and started closing the camera app because those were some of the things users have been complaining. It also gets hot quite often...
I waited about a week before I upgraded. Thought it was ok but I guess I should have waited longer... I really hope a software issue fixes this because at this point I couldn't even resell it to cover a portion of the cost of 14 Pro Max.
Hahahhahaa just realized my battery went from 18% to 9% while I was typing this comment. FFS

 

[JM]

Hard disagree. Project management types don't understand what it takes to engineer software, they think it's no different than writing an email. They get angry when you give long estimates because they think it should take a smaller amount of time, they get angry if delays happen because they didn't allow for the time the dev team originally asked for, and this is why crap gets rushed out the door.

The problem really is project management in most cases.

Nobody likes being told to finish work whether it’s “finished” or not, unless the person is that type and understands that there will always be ways to improve and perfect something but there needs to be hard deadlines to actually accomplish something.

It’s a push and pull between the personality types, and the scene you’re painting is an extreme: that sounds like a bad manager who gets angry at being told his expectations are unrealistic.

 

[Reeneman]

Think it’s worse on my 13 Pro as well.
Hope 16.1 and/or 16.2 bring an improvement.

 

[Xand&Roby]

🎶 “bugs bugs bugs.. all you need is bugs!..”🎶

 

[BobSc]

14 Pro Max and hugggge battery drain

14 pro max. My battery is great. No unexpected drain. The best of all previous iPhones.

 

[macfixx]

Hard disagree. Project management types don't understand what it takes to engineer software, they think it's no different than writing an email. They get angry when you give long estimates because they think it should take a smaller amount of time, they get angry if delays happen because they didn't allow for the time the dev team originally asked for, and this is why crap gets rushed out the door.

The problem really is project management in most cases.

We’re running into a philosophical issue of “spreading the pain” while taking our wealth.

Does Apple want to have internal first world corporate problems regarding their management and marketing to be blamed on “bad” devs?

Or does management and marketing want millions of customers to have to absorb the consequences of their (not so) bleeding edge upgrades as sort of an inverted reward for being loyal to Apple?

 

[Jonas07]

There’s no surprise here; any software release By Apple is usually broken and need to be fixed for one year to make it work as intended.

Basically it’s a loop of trash software with super duper devs trying to get it work well or like it worked before they added another useless gimmick only available for their latest ultra neuronal chip.

 

[Shasterball]

battery drain i think i saw people complaining on every iOS updates for a decade

I've never really seen a battery drain issue when upgrading iOS, except with iOS 16. There is a marked difference with battery life for my iPhone 13 Pro Max.

 

[michsu]

Please check your Analytics too, turn off all those and the app privacy report too. Also, turn off everything in "Before Searching", "Content from Apple", and "Suggestions from Apple" and disable Siri and enable it back (if you want) and restart the phone. Also, I noticed the battery percentage eats up quite a bit of battery since the first beta.

 

[vipergts2207]

Is this the buggiest release since antennagate? So many articles on various issues.

 

[ignatius345]

I find Siri is very slow to activate. I don't use "Hey Siri" but instead use the side button on my 13 Mini to activate it. I have been accustomed to hitting the button and starting to speak my query immediately, but since the update I'm finding Siri isn't "ready" for a few seconds after I hit the button.

But overall I'm surprised that anyone's surprised there are a lot of rough edges to this release. It seems more and more -- especially since they starting doing annual OS updates -- that Apple is willing to put out semi-buggy and incomplete releases that they then patch up and fill in over the course of the following 6-12 months.

 

[Mousse]

Maybe because I have a iPhone 14PM that I don’t notice the battery drain. It seems normal to me.

You have no point of reference for what normal drain on the 14PM. People with older iPhones can point to quicker drain than from previous iOS versions. What seems like normal battery drain now would seem excessive once an updated is released and battery life gets extended.

Some users are always complaining. Just ignore them.

Most of the complains I see are legitimate problems. Ignoring them smack of arrogance and complete disregard for the customers. Not every complainer is a Karen.😐

 

[itunexify]

With my iPhone 12 Pro, I can confirm the terrible battery life compared to iOS 15 (20-25% less). No problems with the 14 Pro

 

[Kissmo1980]

iOS 16 was sending nasty signals from the RC release.
I kept posting and telling people to hold back a bit because the battery gets hot and the power consumption is on the high side.

I got tons of disagrees back then.

This reminds me of a previous iOS release (can't remember which number) which was fixed much later in terms of battery hit.

In the meantime I bought a new iPhone 14 PM, and I can report battery life is trash - however I went into Siri and disable all Learn from Apps and search within Apps (individually).

Since yesterday, the battery life is great.


P.S. I saw many tests online on iPhones and their battery life was great - but then I realized it was because the reviewers never installed new apps. So Spotlight didn't scan those apps.