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Apple Music draining battery

Hi,


I have an iPhone 8 running IOS 13.4.1 everything is up to date and was performing well until this weekend. All of a sudden my battery started draining much quicker than previously. Looking at the battery usage it seems that Apple Music is causing it. I have attached two screenshots below; one for the last 24hrs and one for the last 10 days. You can see that up until Friday there was little or no background activity however this jumps massively over the weekend. I have turned background app refresh off for all app and yet Apple Music is still draining the battery when not in use; 53% of battery use in the last 24hrs without using the app.


What has changed and what can I do about it? I even tried uninstalling Apple Music and yet it continued to drain the battery!!


iPhone 8

Posted on Apr 21, 2020 5:59 AM

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Posted on Apr 23, 2020 10:03 AM

Hi Becky,


On further testing the problem appears to be being caused by Apple Music trying to sync with my Apple Watch even though I have cleared both the phone and watch of any music files.


If I disconnect my watch from my phone by switching off wifi and bluetooth on the watch, the phone then starts to behave like it used to last week with no abnormal drain on the battery. When I reconnect the watch the batteries on both the phone and watch drain much quicker than they used to. Note that this isn't just because they'll use battery syncing with each other normally as prior to last weekend they were both fine; they'd use battery life obviously but not an abnormal amount.


For example when I went bed last night both were fully charged on 100% and overnight, with no use on either device, the phone drained to 25% and the watch to 30%. All throughout the night the battery monitor shows the cause to be Apple Music and lists it as background activity. Bear in mind that only one week before I was using the watch for sleep tracking overnight which worked perfectly with no battery drain on either device.


I have tried re-pairing the watch and even resetting the watch completely but the problem remains and generic battery saving tips are not going to cure this.


Any ideas?

182 replies

Jul 6, 2020 11:25 PM in response to Bernd Lutz

I had just the same problem. Didn't know about Battery Health and ended up having the battery replaced as I thought it must be old and worn out. No! Problem persisted! When I read all these posts I discovered the Music App was draining the phone.


In the end I just deleted the Music App. Rebooted the phone and it's sorted.


Okay it cost me a new battery, but I was very closed to buying a new phone because of this.


GET IT SORTED APPLE!!!!


Jul 7, 2020 1:24 AM in response to stratus0120

Me too! So I stopped the downloads and fully charged my Iphone X, within 2 hours it had dropped to under 10% battery again... bc Apple Music again used 68% of my battery in the background. I am using it while plugged in now. I turned off cellular data for Apple Music, lets see if that works. This has been happening for at least a few days (today is 7/6/2020) but possibly a week or 2. I use Apple Music on a near daily basis and a few days ago (sometime after I installed the latest update) the app prompted me to change my cellular data settings for Apple Music. I can’t remember what I was doing when it popped up, it is possible I was adding a song or album to my library. At that time I allowed Apple Music to use cellular data. Maybe that’s the problem, I don’t know yet.

Jul 7, 2020 4:20 AM in response to testcouch

Well, it's a closest thing to actual help. In my case, I first noticed problems with downloading music from ICML. Than, after trying to resolve this one for a few days, I thought about battery usage and phone being hot.


Deleting music app and restarting phone seem to solve battery draining problem for now. As to the music app - after those steps I've managed to to download few tracks and the app is stuck again. So it is not completely helpful, but as I said - as close as it gets now.


Let's wait for 13.6.

Jul 7, 2020 5:17 AM in response to SLSheriff

> I'm having this same issue, but from what I can see, I don't have any music trying to download actively.


You may not see, but it seems, like even without any circle spinning in the app, it does try to connect with the server on and on.


> For those of you who have deleted the music app and redownloaded, did it delete all of your music?


No. Not from ICML, nor even from my phone - after reinstalling the app, You can see same stuff downloaded. But that might differ, depending od Your preferences. You should be able to access Your music and re-download it anyway, when all of this is going to be resolved. Right now - I would't bet on it.

Jul 7, 2020 5:35 AM in response to mr_woodpecker

Thank goodness its not only me! I had this exact same issue, i updated the software and all apps were up to date and my battery is draining from Apple Music. I had uninstalled all apps that were connected to it and reinstalled them without connecting again. And i could not for the life of me figure out what this “background” usage is!! My phone feels like its on fire too but only in upper right side and on back of phone. Apple engineers need to fix this ASAP. 🙏🏻

Jul 7, 2020 6:37 AM in response to mr_woodpecker

I saw this problem as well, and despite turning Background App Refresh *OFF* for the Music app, it continues to show up as the leading contributor to the device's battery drain. I then brought up the Apple Watch app, and under the Music app, I saw that a number of Apple Music playlists were set to ON, indicating that these would automatically sync to my Apple Watch. More importantly, the status looked to be IN PROGRESS (that is, a continuously animating circular arrow), suggesting that this sync process was running continuously.


Since these playlists were unfamiliar to me, I've never seen these settings previously or set them to sync, and I have no need for music sync'd to my watch, I set all playlists to OFF. This looks to have resolved the problem, though I'll continue to monitor battery usage in the coming hours to confirm.

Jul 7, 2020 10:36 AM in response to bnsmith09

What worked for me is deleting the Apple Music App, then I rebooted my iPhone. I reinstalled the Apple Music App. I then went to Settings>>Music>Mobile Data, switched it off.


I never had any spinning downloads. I took my phone of charge this morning at 8am (UK Time), at 9am I still 100% battery.


So far The Battery App is reporting 16m (Background Activity), which is substantially less than yesterday

Jul 7, 2020 11:28 AM in response to mr_woodpecker

Having exactly same issues for the last 2 days on iPhone 8. Software is up to date. I do use Apple Music so not an option to delete but evident that the battery is being drained incredibly fast for the last 2 days by the music app which I have not used for 2 days. Tried all the suggestions so now wait and see. This is clearly an issue which Apple need to deal with ASAP. Only been a problem for last 2 days

Jul 7, 2020 1:34 PM in response to mr_woodpecker

Running iOS 13.5.1 on iPhone XR and have used Apple Music and the Music app religiously for about 3 years now never with an issue. Now this battery draining issue started about a week ago out of the blue where the Music app background activity is the main culprit of battery utilization. Even when i have the music app closed and revisit battery usage in the morning its still the main culprit of utilization. Hope Apple can fix this because i'm not about to lose 3 years worth of playlists swapping and deleting apps from here and there; ridiculous!

Apple Music draining battery

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