iPad Pro WiFi draining my iPad Pro 12.9 2018 on standby

[playtech1]

My iPad Pro isn't used all that much, partly because whenever I go to it I find it's out of battery and am tethered to a charger.

Turns out it is draining heavily on standby - drains around 20% overnight.

I tried various things (turning off bluetooth and various iCloud options) and have found that if I turn off WiFi the standby draining stops and it loses around 1% overnight, which is much better!

Still, it's a bit of a pain to have to turn off WiFi when leaving the iPad, so I want to figure out the root cause.

Any thoughts as to what might be sucking up the battery?

I have already turned off iCloud syncing of Notes.

 

[secretk]

Is it possible to be related to your WIFI setup itself? Maybe for some reason the iPad constantly looses connection and tries to reconnect. The more it tries to reconnect the more battery it drains.

Also I tend to switch off background app refresh for the apps when I know that it is not needed.

 

[ericwn]

If you look at Settings - Battery have you looked through the apps that are listed there for high energy consumption?

 

[playtech1]

Is it possible to be related to your WIFI setup itself? Maybe for some reason the iPad constantly looses connection and tries to reconnect. The more it tries to reconnect the more battery it drains.

Also I tend to switch off background app refresh for the apps when I know that it is not needed.

Could be I suppose - although not a problem any of my other iPads have. I have my ISPs router as a backup to my Time Capsule, so will try shifting to that for a bit.

Thanks!

If you look at Settings - Battery have you looked through the apps that are listed there for high energy consumption?

Yes - it shows nothing - the highest consuming app at the moment is settings because I am checking the battery level!

The absence of apps being listed as a drain is why I think perhaps it's a system service that is causing it (although that system service might be servicing a non-Apple app I guess).

Thank you!

p.s. had already turned off Background App Refresh for all apps - no change

 

[Tdosthp]

I have the same issue with my 11 Pro iPad and have checked everything. I do not experience this with my work phone, which sits on my desk, next to my iPad on the weekends and does not experience the same battery loss, though I am more diligent about charging it. The only thing I can think of is that, for some reason, the iPad is communicating differently with the cell tower, even on Wifi and that is draining the battery. I live in a rural area and cell reception is not great. Useable, but not great.

 

[playtech1]

I have the same issue with my 11 Pro iPad and have checked everything. I do not experience this with my work phone, which sits on my desk, next to my iPad on the weekends and does not experience the same battery loss, though I am more diligent about charging it. The only thing I can think of is that, for some reason, the iPad is communicating differently with the cell tower, even on Wifi and that is draining the battery. I live in a rural area and cell reception is not great. Useable, but not great.

Thank you.

I have not tried turning off cellular yet - that was my next port of call, but I left it on when I turned off the WiFi and the battery did not drain, so I think the cell service is not the issue for me.

It does narrow it down though to something which uses WiFi but not cellular, which is a good point.

 

[sparksd]

I was having this problem on my 10.5 Pro and disabled Siri and Learn from App for all apps and a similar standby drain stopped.

 

[secretk]

Btw did you buy recently the iPad? I mean when did you buy it and was it always like that?

 

[playtech1]

I was having this problem on my 10.5 Pro and disabled Siri and Learn from App for all apps and a similar standby drain stopped.

Thanks - I have always had Siri turned off. Is there a separate 'learn from App' setting to adjust as well?

Btw did you buy recently the iPad? I mean when did you buy it and was it always like that?

I have had the iPad for about 9 months. I wish I knew how long this has been going on for - I simply didn't use it enough at the beginning to know if it is recent or from the outset.

 

[secretk]

I have had the iPad for about 9 months. I wish I knew how long this has been going on for - I simply didn't use it enough at the beginning to know if it is recent or from the outset.

I see. I wanted to check if it has always been like or something recently changed (whether it is the WIFI signal or iOS version update or some app update). My iPads do not lose more than 2-3 % during the night but there are WIFI only - no cellular.

I know that my phones do lose a lot battery if they lose connection to the cellular tower but you do not report issues with cellular. You report issues with WIFI.

 

[sparksd]

Thanks - I have always had Siri turned off. Is there a separate 'learn from App' setting to adjust as well?

Yes, but it's a pain. In Settings, you have to go into each app's listing and it has a "Siri & Search" option - it's in there. This was the change that fixed my issue - I read about it in a similar thread on standby battery drain. But why it was an issue on my 10.5 but not my 12.9 Pro is beyond me. But it's just another option you can try.

 

[rui no onna]

Yes, but it's a pain. In Settings, you have to go into each app's listing and it has a "Siri & Search" option - it's in there. This was the change that fixed my issue - I read about it in a similar thread on standby battery drain. But why it was an issue on my 10.5 but not my 12.9 Pro is beyond me. But it's just another option you can try.

Yep, wish there was an easy way to disable or set the default behavior.

 

[sparksd]

Yep, wish there was an easy way to disable or set the default behavior.

Sometimes I think that Apple has two different human factors groups, The Geniuses and The Knuckleheads. The latter group came up with this and the scattered control options for pointing devices.

 

[secretk]

Sometimes I think that Apple has two different human factors groups, The Geniuses and The Knuckleheads. The latter group came up with this and the scattered control options for pointing devices.

I would add to this that they suffer from something other companies suffer too. Apple is big enough to not have different R&D teams talk to each other. And it shows sometimes.

 

[sparksd]

I would add to this that they suffer from something other companies suffer too. Apple is big enough to not have different R&D teams talk to each other. And it shows sometimes.

Yeah, I'm retired now but I worked for a major aerospace company as a system-level architect and I was always trying to get these major, multi-billion dollar programs to collaborate - at least share ideas, lessons learned, etc. Impossible. It was always, "Those other guys don't know what they're doing, we're smarter than them."

 

[secretk]

Yeah, I'm retired now but I worked for a major aerospace company as a system-level architect and I was always trying to get these major, multi-billion dollar programs to collaborate - at least share ideas, lessons learned, etc. Impossible. It was always, "Those other guys don't know what they're doing, we're smarter than them."

Exactly! They don't even try. I am working in a software company that is not a small one (around 20000 employees) - different teams, different countries etc. We spend so much time to sync and it is still not working.

 

[AutomaticApple]

Yep, wish there was an easy way to disable or set the default behavior.

Fingers crossed for iPadOS 14? 🤞

I hope that Apple gets their act together.

 

[playtech1]

Thanks to everyone who suggested that I turn off the Siri 'learn from App' feature (and to everyone for trying to help out generally).

I had worked my way down through my apps manually changing each of them to disable this feature. I got to the end of apps starting with 'C' before I got bored. Left it overnight and hey presto, 100% battery this morning! Not even a 1% drain overnight!

Looking through the disabled apps, the ones I really use (in case it makes a difference) include Apollo (the Reddit browser), App Store, Calendar, Camera, Clock and Contacts. Next step is to re-enable and see which of these likely candidates is the rogue, or if it's something I don't really use much and so can just delete / reinstall.

 

[secretk]

Thanks for sharing guys. I will have this in mind if I have battery issues. I had no idea that this setting (Learn from Siri) could cause issues.

 

[sparksd]

Thanks to everyone who suggested that I turn off the Siri 'learn from App' feature (and to everyone for trying to help out generally).

I had worked my way down through my apps manually changing each of them to disable this feature. I got to the end of apps starting with 'C' before I got bored. Left it overnight and hey presto, 100% battery this morning! Not even a 1% drain overnight!

Looking through the disabled apps, the ones I really use (in case it makes a difference) include Apollo (the Reddit browser), App Store, Calendar, Camera, Clock and Contacts. Next step is to re-enable and see which of these likely candidates is the rogue, or if it's something I don't really use much and so can just delete / reinstall.

That is a good data point. In my own case, I thought that was the culprit as it seemed to address my battery issues but I could never be quite sure. Thanks for reporting back on it.

 

[playtech1]

One final note on this. Turning off the Siri 'learn from App' feature has indeed fixed the problem (so far at least - it's been a few days now with only losing 1 to 2% a night instead of the previous 30%+ overnight drops), but having reported success with only disabling some apps, I ended up having to disable the Siri learn from app setting for all of them to get it fully under control. So I can't be sure now whether it's a rogue app or a rogue Siri without further investigation. What a pain!

 

[sparksd]

One final note on this. Turning off the Siri 'learn from App' feature has indeed fixed the problem (so far at least - it's been a few days now with only losing 1 to 2% a night instead of the previous 30%+ overnight drops), but having reported success with only disabling some apps, I ended up having to disable the Siri learn from app setting for all of them to get it fully under control. So I can't be sure now whether it's a rogue app or a rogue Siri without further investigation. What a pain!

Same experience on my 10.5 Pro. What baffles me is why this exists only on that device. I also have a 2018 12.9 Pro and XS Max and all have essentially the same set of apps installed and are on 13.4.1. The only real difference is that the 10.5 is LTE while the 12.9 is WiFi only. I have disabled Siri on the other devices but I have not gone through and turned of Learn from App.

 

[Cheule]

Edit: after testing, turning off "learn from" did not solve the issue.

I'm so glad I've found this thread. I have a several year old iPad Pro (12.9 inch 2nd gen) that has had it's battery driving about 30-40% overnight when not plugged in for as long as I can remember. Recently I tried several factory reinstalls of iOS because that is what Apple recommended. Nothing worked.

I finally decided maybe it was due to the Apple Pencil (it wasn't), and that led me to experimenting with turning the WiFi/Bluetooth off at night. This returned my iPad to losing only 0-1% battery overnight.

I've just done as suggested above, and turned off Settings -> Siri & Search -> <all apps listed> ->Learn from this App. I'll report back if that solves it for me as well.

 

[Cheule]

As promised, I'm writing back in. Turning off "Learn from this app" for everything did not fix the problem. iPad dropped from 99% to 63% overnight. So far, only turning off my wifi solves the issue.