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YouTube iOS App Causing Battery Drain, Overheating Issues for Some Users

I didn't even realize there was an issue until reading this. None of my devices were acting strange. I did find an update this morning though for Youtube so applied it. We'll see if I see a difference.

Devices in use:

iPhone 7 plus
iPad Air 2
iPod Touch 6th generation

All devices are on iOS 11.1.1
 
emulajavi said:
And people still says that’s there no reason to close apps in the App Switcher.


People live in an fairy world where all apps are correctly programmed thus they can run in the background.
Click to expand...
No, we only say there’s no reason to close well-functioning apps. Every single article (and most posts on the subject) makes the distinction.
 
Stiss said:
Don’t really know if I can class this as high usage 6% with 11 mins of onscreen and 6 mins background but I’ve noticed the iPhone X does get hot when using YouTube. Hotter than I’d have expected and hotter than using any other app that plays video and audio.
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Not sure about the user’s stats, but if it’s getting hot, it’s draining your battery rather quickly.

Could be useful if you need a hand warmer in the winter, but not if you want your phone to last all day.
 
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Good it’s not just me experiencing a hotter than normal phone. I thought it was a defect in my new iPhone 8+ or something.
 
ThiGeever said:
I've been having this issue for months now, but the problem is not YT on my phone. I've been to the Apple Store so many times with a battery that lasts 3 hours and a boiling hot iPhone 7, but they don't know what's causing the problem, they just exchanged the phone, but the problem is still there.
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Its gotta be something. Are you restoring from backups or starting with a new setup? Could be one app, or a couple apps in combination.

Sounds like it would be a pain to troubleshoot, but if you start from new and add back apps maybe five at a time, you should be able to determine at what point it goes bad.
 
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Nozuka said:
There is no reason to close apps in the App Switcher unless you have problems.
This is such a case.
Click to expand...

I disagree, at least in one scenario: I often close music/radio apps in the app switcher to kill audio output when I'm using another app. It saves me the additional step of opening the app proper and pausing/stopping the track/stream.

I'm sure there are other scenarios where it's quicker to kill an app that's performing some activity in the background, than it is opening said app and stopping the function via in-app controls.
 
Yes! Please fix this asap! I was watching videos the other night and dropped 35% and was so warm and only watched videos for about 15-20 minutes, when it used to only drop about 4-5% during that time. Also using an 8 Plus
 
JuliusCaesar said:
My iPhone 7 Plus has been running really hot every time I use YouTube, thankfully I found this article cause I thought it was the phone. Hopefully an update will fix this.
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If the YouTube app makes your phone get hot—but other apps don’t—why would you suspect it’s the phone? Seems pretty clear it’s a bad app issue.

YouTube has acknowledged the problem, so I’m sure they’ll fix it, eventually.
 
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YouTube and ESPN app both run my battery down like crazy in the background if I don't remember to force quit them after use.
 
I can confirm that the YouTube app has been draining battery and causing my iPhone 7 Plus to run hot since updating to iOS 11.1.1. I have background app refresh turned off.

Battery drops more than 25% after watching 30-45 minutes of video.
 
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boccabella said:
And John Siracusa will still call you an idiot for force-closing your apps.
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Bing ATP reference

So how about google not trying to force software decode of video in the codec only they support. I know it is a novel idea and all but come on google HVEC apple adopted it your standard is going to go away.
 
Apple blogger said:
Ummm.. to my knowledge, the YouTube app has been draining app since a couple of years.. I've notified google like several times... never fixed...

It's not new.. so it's not some users, it's all users.. since I don't know.. 3-4 years or more... maybe from the time Google shifted to its material design
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Yep. It’s been an issue for years according to many old posts.

Personally, I noticed it in iOS 10.

Turning off background refresh does NOT fix this.

emulajavi said:
And people still says that’s there no reason to close apps in the App Switcher.


People live in an fairy world where all apps are correctly programmed thus they can run in the background.
Click to expand...

There are only two cases I can think of to force close apps on iOS. Facebook and YouTube, the other 99.9% of the time, you don’t have to.
 
I stopped using the app when it automatically started opening when l clicked on a link in Safari. I want to control that behavior. If I wanted to use the app, then I would have opened it. When it was embedded in a webpage and I wanted to watch it, then no, don't open the app. It's been years since I've used it for this reason, so maybe it's changed?
 
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boccabella said:
And John Siracusa will still call you an idiot for force-closing your apps.
Click to expand...

Yeah, often you have to force close apps because they just misbehave.

Waze is another one; it'll stay in the background using location services even after you're done with navigation. Even if you set location services to "while using" in privacy settings. So I have to force-quit Waze every time I'm done with it to get rid of the "Waze is using your location" banner and save battery. I've reported this problem to them multiple times over multiple versions... No fix.

WTF, devs. Fix your crap.

EDIT: Hmm. Waze was acquired by Google a while back. I wonder if they just don't care or don't put that much effort into iOS apps since it's a "competing platform"?
 
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I've also noticed audio sync problems when watching videos in the YouTube app, that don't exist when using other apps.

The YouTube app is pretty poorly coded to begin with. Moving around the UI is laggy and stuttery even on brand new hardware. They don't use the proper iOS video playing API, so you can't do things like picture-in-picture. It's a garbage app.
 
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Having the same issue, over heating and battery draining way too quick
 

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Just got 13 hours of battery usage on my iPad Pro 10.5 inch!

I love it!
 
ghostface147 said:
I stopped using the app when it automatically started opening when l clicked on a link in Safari. I want to control that behavior. If I wanted to use the app, then I would have opened it. When it was embedded in a webpage and I wanted to watch it, then no, don't open the app. It's been years since I've used it for this reason, so maybe it's changed?
Click to expand...

Instead of tapping a link in Safari, try a press-and-hold. This should bring up an option to open the video in another Safari tab. It works for me, when I remember to do it!
 
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