iOS 13 Photos - Background Activity High Battery Usage

I have an iPhone 6S, with OSX 13.3.1. I have had the same problem where, Photos eats up 50% and more of battery usage, even when I am not using the photos app during the time period I'm seeing reports for.

I noticed this started soon after I started using the "Albums" ... the Shared albums feature. The Photos app really became started performing poorly, it would crash when trying to work with the albums, whereas, it never crashed before, the phone started getting hot, the battery dropping like mad, etc.

Recently I got really fed up with it, anyways I downloaded everything I could from the shared albums, and disabled the shared albums. After 3 days it seems to have solved the problem. To disable:

Settings > Click on your face, the top Apple ID menu > iCloud > Photos > Turn everything off, especially "Shared Albums."

The photos themselves are backed up I believe as part of the backup of the phone. Periodically I move all the photos off the phone, and I have my own methods for simply backing things up using multiple external hard drives. I believe this is the best, most flexible, cheapest, safest way to do backups.

Thanks! Good luck,

Kevin

Update.

First: the long odd photo file names. After digging a bit into this topic on my Mac and PC, I would think, these long file names seems not to be the reason for the sync issues of the Photos app. I found may files with long hexadecimal names, also some with easy readablewords and even brackets - "(" and ")" - up to 51 characters long. However it seems to me that especially Whatsapp uses those hex names for photos since years. I found old files back from all the years, where I never have had any CPU load issues. Also the other photos with names given by some photo editing apps, are older than my current issue.

Therefore I think its not the filenames, that causes my problem.

Second: It seems, that I have made a promising step forward during the last two days. For the first time since two months, since yesterday my phone stayed cold and Photos cpu load under 50% and a few minutes ago at 10% and Whatsapp at the first place with 20% and another app at second with 13% !!!!!!!!!!! Wow!!!!!

So what did I have done? After I have backed up all my photos offline to my PC, and have had stopped all iCloud photo sync, I deleted all the photos in iCloud in on all my devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC).

Then I wiped my iPhone and installed a fresh new setup ==without restore from iCloud== and waited a day before I logged into iCloud again. And after iCloud login, I enabled photo sync again and the photos came back to my phone. Shared Albums are still off. No Photo stream.

Then the CPU load was high again for longer than a day, I guess, thats normal full-sync activity. Since yesterday however it is falling down again, device temp goes is down, and battery drain is back to normal.

By now it is still too early for giving all-clear, however it is looking promising. After a few days I will let you know about the situation again.

Just a thought for now: as a last resort I would remove all the photos from ALL my devices and start at zero photos in my Apple world. It is really a poor sign from Apple, that they do not properly address these serious issues of their customers, thats not premium at all.

I think I have fixed the issue now. However, the price was high:

1. Windows PC: all photo sync features disabled
2. On my Windows PC I used the tool "CopyTrans Cloudly" to make a full backup of all my iCloud photos to my PC.
3. Macbook: all photo sync features disabled
4. iPad: all photo sync disabled, and when it asked me, if I would want to keep or delete all iCloud-synced fotos: delete
5. iPhone: all photo sync disabled, and when it asked me, if I would want to keep or delete all iCloud-synced fotos: delete
6. Then:
7. On my PC using Cloudly to delete ALL of my photos and videos stored in iCloud (just two mouse clicks)
8. There were a few dozen remaining photos on the iPad, I had to delete them manually.
9. Some some dozen self-recorded video clips I kept on the iPad.
10. The iphone was - after removal from iCloud - almost empty, about one dozen videos and less than 10 photos remaining.
11. I waited a full day, iphone was still okay, no cpu problem with photo app.
12. Then I re-enabled iCloud on both the iPad and iPhone.
13. The few photos and videos synced both directions via iCloud and are now equal on each device.
14. Since almost a week now my iPhone is fine and Photo App load in the battery stats is low, about 5%, and battery life is back to normal. Device temperature is constantly cool. :) :)

Up to now I was not bold enough to switch Macbook and PC sync on again.

My theory is, that there might have been possible only one or a bunch of photo files, which may have gone corrupt or whatever, which made the Photo app gone crazy trying endless loops of sync attempts. Possible a thing, which might not have been an issue for years, and since the iOS update in December, this has become a serious problem for Photo app and iCloud sync.

My plan for the next couple of months is, to only make Photo backups via USB cable and iTunes.

And also want to for you guys here in the forum, which have the same problem, for your feedback within the next couple of weeks, if you were able to fix your issues too, and to hear your experienes.

Good luck!

Some updates!!

So I deleted all my photos on my phone AGAIN, after using it over half month, the background activity is not showing up, not overheating!

Interesting thing is before I deleted all the photos, I backed them up in icloud, and my iPad mini has icloud photo on, so my iPad mini is draining battery a lot faster than usual(not overheating because I'm not using it at all), using 82% of the battery in the last 10days. Then I deleted them all and turned off the icloud photo. ALL GOOD!

THEN, today I enabled icloud photo on my Mac Mini, it gets hot and the "photolibraryd" process thing is using 90% CPU and over 80% energy. I searched online and found lots of people complained it too.

So my conclusion is somehow my photo files don't get along with the photo app........when I going through my photos I find some photos have really long weird name like 50 characters...compare to normal ones [IMG12345], most of them are saved by some photo editing apps. So I went through ALL photos deleted all long name images, and turn off mac mini and turn on again. After 2 hours, it works fine! not hot, no photo background activity!

I'm not sure if this is the solution, I haven't try it on phone or iPad yet. But just let you know!

UPDATE3: after upgrading to 13.3, battery draining problem seems to be solved so far...

i got a way to solve this problem. at first use third tool export the photos(i recommend i4tool, it can keep time line and live photos).

then delete all the photos and in icloud - manage storage - photos - choise "disables & delete". you had to wait 30 days.

before the 30th day, you can import the photos without icloud sync. you could moniter if photo still use battery. my phone was normal at this step.

then after 30 days , start icloud , upload the photos , my phone was sync normally and battery was ok.

sorry for the bad endlish

I have the same problem.However after I tune my phone off and turn it on, it’s fixed

Hey Guys, also have a fix here. So what did I do:

I had 25.000 photos on my phone, some from 2009 with the first iPhone. I transferred the old photos from 2009-2016, which are about 10.000 photos via Photo App on Mac to my MacBook. Some of them couldn’t be transferred due to some broken data.

But it helped. I still have 15.000 left on my phone and another advantage is you get rid of all these photos with your Ex. Battery drain is over.

So I think some of the old photos are broken and the machine learning algorithm can’t handle them, that’s why we have the drain.

Pretty sure it would be still ok if I would transfer them, but I wanted to back them up anyway so I’m happy.

hope this helps

I backuped my phone via iTunes 2 days ago and reset iphone as a new phone for a day without any photos on, finnally the photos app is not in background. But it's so annoy without all my photos, so I reset the phone again and connected iTunes to recover my backup files. after a day using it I don't see photos app in the background so far. cant say anything right now, but may worth to try

https://www.apple.com/batteries/maximizing-performance/

I'm having this same issue iPhone 11Pro, running the latest software. I've tried every setting, every trick listed on every message board. Nothing works. Clearly there is something corrupt somewhere within my photos or within the Photos software and there needs to be a bug fix.

I have talked to apple support on the phone - they could not help.

I went to the Apple store - they confirmed that there was an issue and we did a restore from a Genius laptop. Problem popped back up after 2 days and has been present ever since. I would like Apple to fix this known bug. The only other option I have is to delete everything and set my device up as new. Which is exactly the opposite of what the Photos app and iCloud are for.

Seem here. It must be something to do with iOS13, I had updated my iPhone 8 to iOS13, it became supper hot and all photo background activity, luckily I had downgraded it to iOS12.

Then I got a iPhone 11 Pro Max and a 11 Pro, they both have the same problem!!! The temporary way to fix it is to turn the iphone off and on after every charge!

The online customer service has no use, they ran some test on my phone and told me that they can exchange one for me and ask me to wait on line for some information, after 10 mins waiting they just hang up on me without any follow up.

The store suggested to delete all photos, I haven't tried yet. but the worker weren't sound confident about the solution either.

Cannot believe there is no explanation from Apple about this issue.

Turn off and on after every charge works for me every time, but it still annoying . Some people saying it’s photo is indexing and analyzing all pictures, I do notice Photos -search screen changes after highly battery usage , but again, still annoying.

I am also having this issue - iPhone 6S. I have tried everything; disabling background app refresh, low power mode, every different Photos setting, disabling Photos in iCloud, resetting settings, and a DFU restore to iOS 13.2 (fresh, no restore from any kind of backup). Nothing I have done has seemed to have any affect on the background activity of the Photos app. Sometimes, it will stay active in the background for 100% of the time, even if my phone is about to die. Photos has been responsible for 58% of the battery usage over the past 10 days, and there is no indication anywhere as to what it is doing. I have been on iOS 13.2 for weeks now, and this also happened to me on previous versions of iOS 13.

I have exactly the same problem with my iPhone X. It all started around mid of last december, not sure exactly when. Before, I had never had any battery drain issue with my phone.

Since then I tried A LOT to get this fixed, no luck so far. Apple support only asked for factory reset including restore via ITunes. No success.

After full charge at night (wifi on) I can start my day as usual, phone body is cool (room temperature). As soon as I start using the iphone a little bit (eg checking for new emails, a little Whatsapp and reading a news magazine), the phone starts becoming higher temperature in the upper right corner at the back side. And then within the next 3-4 hours the battery drains down to 10-20%. (before that, it lasted usually1.5 days !!)

It is ALWAYS the Photos app, running in the background. Around 80-90%, all the rest of apps at a low single number % rate, and all time in background, almost zero foreground activity for Photos).

A few weeks ago I stopped all photo sync in icloud and on my devices (phone, pad, mac, windows pc), no luck. Later on I deleted all photos in iCloud and resettet my phone to factory default. NO RESTORE, instead I did set up a fresh new phone. And reconnected with my Apple ID and iCloud. Still same problem.

I will now try to verify the length of all photos file names and let you know.