Some iPhone Users Report Significant Battery Drain Due to Music App Background Activity in iOS 13.5.1

Same thing happened to me with my iPhone SE (original). The phone would get really hot and actually drain the battery while plugged in to a USB port. The music app taking a large amount since last Friday. It also took up so much processing power that other apps were slow to respond. Rebooting the phone could make it go away from time to time but it would often start over heating again.

All of this lead me to conclude that my old SE was on it's last legs and prompted me to pull the trigger on a new SE (sneaky Apple!).
 
I have had the rapid batter drain issue as well and have been able to fix it.

1) Check the various app setting for background data in General -> Background App Refresh. Some may be "on" though you didn't formally turn them on. An alternative is turn off the feature completely.

2) Also in Settings, go to Music and then turn off "Show Apple Music". This has worked for me every time in dealing with the battery drain issue. The problem is a couple of times it has turned itself back on and the only thing I can think of is something on the server side caused this. I think I once read somewhere that the problem occurs for those who, like me, are NOT signed up for Apple Music. It could be the phone and server get stuck in some loop trying to reconcile something that's irreconcilable.
 
My iPhone 11 Pro definitely has issues since this update. It occasionally runs really hot, and has a lot of battery drain. I'd never had to charge mine during the day, until this update. Glad to hear it's not just me. I hadn't had time to dig around forums yet.
 
This is happening to me on my iPhone 11 Pro Max running 13.5.1 but I don't have an issue with the Apple Music app.

I have an app called DriveTribe and it's just running almost constantly in the background. I only open this app once or twice per day and I force close all my apps every night before bed. You can even see the Flipboard app is having this issue but not at the same level.

I keep background app refresh turned off also, like everyone else stated this is definitely a bug within the iOS system.

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Correct, this is not just happening with the music app, this is happening with anything. I've had this happen with Wells Fargo, Costco, and several other apps. My wife has had the same experience with other apps.

BackgroundAppStuck.jpg


This has even happened on my iPad 11 Pro with random applications. This is a pretty big bug.
 
Squuiid said:
I’ll ask again and re-phrase. Does everyone with this issue subscribe to iTunes Match?
Click to expand...

I use iTunes Match, and I have the issue.

I believe the assumptions about a server side issue are correct. I typically manually download a couple of playlists to my iPhone for offline listening. For the past couple of days I haven't been able to download the songs in any of my playlists. It looks like the phone starts to download a song, then fails and keeps retrying. I might be able to download a few songs, but the majority won't download. They don't time out and give an error or anything, the app just keeps trying to download them, which I think is where the background utilization/hot iPhone issue is happening.

My phone got so hot one day the flash wouldn't work until I was able to cool the device down.

It's now 10:00 AM. I unplugged my iPhone at 7:00 AM with 100% charge and haven't used it much today. I'm at 57% battery. I have a iPhone SE 2020.
 
doraemonkey said:
All of this lead me to conclude that my old SE was on it's last legs and prompted me to pull the trigger on a new SE (sneaky Apple!).
Click to expand...

Maybe apple are doing this deliberately to make people think they need a new iphone.

Maybe apple are not selling enough iphones and think now is the time to start draining everyone’s batteries.

Maybe people will discover this and buy an android instead.
 
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Happened to me yesterday. iPhone 6S Plus running 13.5.1 with a recent factory reset (last week).

Had a few stuck music downloads. Deleted the albums. Didn't help. Turned off phone for about 10 minutes, turned it back on and turned on Low Power Mode. For me that worked.
 
Squuiid said:
I’ll ask again and re-phrase. Does everyone with this issue subscribe to iTunes Match?
Click to expand...

Yes to iTunes Match, no to Apple Music. Turning Match off had no effect.

hudson1 said:
2) Also in Settings, go to Music and then turn off "Show Apple Music". This has worked for me every time in dealing with the battery drain issue. The problem is a couple of times it has turned itself back on and the only thing I can think of is something on the server side caused this. I think I once read somewhere that the problem occurs for those who, like me, are NOT signed up for Apple Music. It could be the phone and server get stuck in some loop trying to reconcile something that's irreconcilable.
Click to expand...

“Show Apple Music“ was not toggled on when this happened for me, the Music app hadn’t been opened in weeks, and it took logging out of iCloud to get this resolved on mine. It’s also affecting non Music related apps for some of us.
 
I noticed this issue yesterday, my phone was running really hot and the battery was dropping like a stone. It's a two year old iPhone 8 Plus with the battery health noted as "service" put it down to that but when I looked at my my battery stats it looked like on Saturday the background activity of the music app jumped through the roof using up all of the battery. I was on iOS 13.5.1 so switched to the public beta for 13.6 and was still having the issue. So earlier I deleted the app, reinstalled it then did a force reset of my phone, touch wood it's been fine since then. Two other iphones in the house both on the same Apple Music subscription and they didn't have the same issue.
 
Same symptoms with my original SE over the past few days. Excessive heat, rapid battery drain, endless background activity, slow/unresponsive touch screen, Books and Music apps stopping playback for no reason. Per this thread I've been turning off everything I can think of, including Apple Music. Here's to luck.
 
Thrutheroofnunderground said:
I was trying to figure out what the heck was going on last nigh. I charged by phone and went to bed. Had 100% charge Woke up at 4:00am to get ready for work and was at 1%, and all the phone had done in that time was sit there. The music app wasn't even open, so I don't know how it's doing what it's doing...
Click to expand...

Similar after updating to 13.5.1 -- went to bed and the next morning, phone was at 1% (normal is for a few percent loss overnight). No particular app was listed that seemed to be the culprit (usage was distributed over a group of apps), but I did learn that 16GB of cellular data was used despite the phone being on WIFI. Oddly, the cellular statistics on the iPhone showed 9.3GB (which is an accumulation of many months since I last reset the statistics), yet AT&T showed 16GB of using in that period. How can the iPhone not count the cellular data usage when it is (obviously) using it?

I just restarted my iPhone and it hasn't happened since.
 
I've seen this myself on 13.5 - sporadically. But I'm not convinced it's an issue with the app (as opposed to the OS' battery reporting). I've had the app supposedly pull my phone down to very low battery (1-3%); yet, if I plug my phone in and reboot, the battery immediately jumps back to 40-50%, or even higher.

Battery health reported by the phone is 93%.
 
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YES, I’ve noticed my battery dropping way down and couldn’t figure what it was as I haven’t downloaded any new apps.
 
I have also been puzzled by my battery draining dramatically on my XR recently. I'm seeing the same Apple Music battery usage.
 
I’m seeing similar behavior but with the Weather Channel app. Even with background app refresh turned off system wide the Weather Channel app is my number 2 battery hog with most of it occurring in the background.
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It happened to my GF's iPhone. I discovered it was caused by Mac-iPhone sync via wifi. If you switch it off in the sync options, the battery drain stops
 
I’ve been noticing my iPad mini (iOS 13.5.1) getting suspiciously hot lately while performing light tasks and I discovered just today that I have the same issue: the Music app keeps working in the background all the time, even when nothing is playing.
 
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