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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

Top-ranking reply

mr_woodpecker Author

Level 1

29 points

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?

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182 replies

dman7646

Level 1

4 points

Jul 8, 2020 7:23 AM in response to mr_woodpecker

Another user here with the same problem. iPhone 11 Pro running 13.5.1. My battery issue is definitely linking to Apple Music. Can’t download songs from iTunes Match or Apple Music at this time. Download just endlessly spin. I look forward to them fixing this as it’s a huge problem. My solution at this time was to delete Apple Music and wait for the next update. In the meantime, I’m taking advantage of the free 30 day trial of Tidal Hi-Fi and am really impressed by the sound so far. However, offline downloads are HUGE! Downloaded one 60 minute album and it was over a GB! Sounds great though. Priorities...

Jul 8, 2020 7:57 AM in response to mr_woodpecker

I am having the exact same problem since I updated to iOS 13.5.1. I'm on an iPhone 11 Pro. Battery drains quickly during the day due to this background activity. Never had to charge my phone during the day before, but I do now. Very frustrating!

I am replying just so that Apple can see the magnitude of the problem...

Tmj2020

Level 1

4 points

Jul 8, 2020 9:31 AM in response to Milnesjam

Thanks- actually I posted the same article here this morning.

it just would have been nice if Apple said “yeah, we know it’s an issue and we are addressing it” instead of leaving it to users to sleuth this out.

cheers

Jul 8, 2020 9:37 AM in response to mr_woodpecker

Yes, I’m having exactly these issues over the last couple of days with iPhone7 and Apple Watch 3. Have turned off Music background refresh on both devices and rebooted but the battery health monitor continues to show many hours of background activity for Music. It appears that it’s not actually switching off. Any fixes helpful.

Hill7117

Level 1

4 points

Jul 8, 2020 10:19 AM in response to mr_woodpecker

My phone is doing the same. I have hard reset my phone. shut everything down regarding the music app and have my phone charging and the battery drain is still happening while charging. The charger cannot keep up with the drain! This started when I did the IOS 13.5.1 update. This needs to get taken care of ASAP! Was on hold with Apple support for an hour today to get a guy to tell me to do all of the things I've already done. He told me sorry nothing he can do, this is not a current problem they know about.

andyf

Level 1

16 points

Jul 8, 2020 11:03 AM in response to mr_woodpecker

A little less than a week ago, I too saw this problem on my iPhone X. I found my battery down unexpectedly at 30%. When I looked at the battery usage in settings, it showed Music (in background) as the culprit. I closed the music app, shut down and then restarted the iPhone. I guess I have been lucky. The problem has not returned.

Jul 8, 2020 11:06 AM in response to andyf

I tried that Andyf... glad it worked for you, but it has not for me. Do you have an Apple Watch? Mine did an unexpected restart mid afternoon yesterday....don’t know why....didn’t fix the issue though.

Jul 8, 2020 11:23 AM in response to mr_woodpecker

I have an XR running 13.5.1. I have similar issues with Music but it goes beyond that. Other Apps do the same thing; e.g., News, Washington Post, Dropbox to name a few. This occurs with Background Refresh off and the apps closed, and goes on throughout the day. It started about 2 weeks ago.

Apple... this is super irritating.

jz_az_cz

Level 1

4 points

Jul 8, 2020 11:25 AM in response to mr_woodpecker

i actually deleted the music app from my phone altogether to see if it would help. i deleted it last night before going to bed and it still is showing running in the background for 40-55 minutes every hour since deleting it!!!!! WTF!!! (except it's now showing up as "recently deleted app"

roody102

Level 1

8 points

Jul 8, 2020 12:18 PM in response to Frostipops

I'be tried, but the issue persisted.

For now, I've deleted the app. My music library was not affected.

And since I have work phone with Android, I've downloaded Apple Music app there (yes, there is official Apple Music app for Android) and I'm listening from that device.

Jul 8, 2020 12:23 PM in response to mr_woodpecker

This is terrible. Apple music is running for 18+ hours a day in the background. My phone is also staying hot a good portion of the day. Apple, how about you step up and fix this or buy me a new phone when the battery burns up?!

canon.tk

Level 1

8 points

Jul 8, 2020 1:03 PM in response to mr_woodpecker

It does it on both my iPhone and iPad. I've been having issues downloading songs on iOS and iPadOS for days now. Reset my iPad multiple times trying to figure out what was going on, then I noticed my phone had the same issue. Then finally other people started speaking up and then this battery problem started, yesterday for me.

RDeeJ

Level 1

4 points

Jul 8, 2020 1:09 PM in response to mr_woodpecker

I started having the same issue a few days ago except it was on my IPad Air 2. Tablet started getting hot when I was using it and the battery would drop like a rock! I closed all apps, turned off all background app refresh, restarted, even did a hard reset but nothing helped. Music was still running in the background and I hadn’t used music in a very long time on the IPad. However, I do use music occasionally on my IPhone 11. About the time I was playing music with Pandora on my IPhone (not using the music app that comes on the phone) is when the IPad started getting hot and battery going down. Just like you, music was showing the most battery use even while I was sleeping and not using IPad. Finally today after reading all of the posts in this thread I shut down all automatic downloads for the IPad and this has fixed my issue. I had not downloaded any songs in the music app on my IPhone or with any other music app in months. Not sure what set the wheels in motion to cause this problem but stopping the automatic downloads seems to have corrected the issue.

jdanke

Level 1

4 points

Jul 8, 2020 1:49 PM in response to mr_woodpecker

Phone X with the same problem on 13.5.1, started last week: Apple Music runs in the background and drains the battery. No Apple Watch. Battery drain continues with Music app deleted from iPhone!

Also was getting errors on Apple Music on my MacBook - unable to download music.

Saw another thread here (can't find now) suggesting to reinstall iOS/restore phone from finder in Catalina, delete app, reinstall app, change iCloud password, all that jazz. Did all the things but it did not fix the problem.

Right now, I've reinstalled the app so that I can control the settings. This seems to help because the battery usage by app is dropping for Apple Music as it exits the 24-hour window. In the Apple Music settings everything is off. Show Apple Music- off; Sync Library - off; cellular data - off. Under iCloud/iTunes no automatic downloads for Music, Apps, Books. No Automatic Cellular downloads, no Cellular App Downloads.

I'm using a 90 day free Amazon Music Unlimited, so the clock is ticking Apple! Unless there's a fix I'll have to cancel my family subscription to Apple Music and switch to something else.

Gizmodo picked up this story today: https://gizmodo.com/apple-music-sucking-up-your-iphone-battery-life-youre-1844307203

9 to 5 Mac: https://9to5mac.com/2020/07/08/apple-music-battery-drain/

MacRumors: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/08/iphone-users-report-music-app-battery-drain/

AppleInsider: https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/07/08/apple-music-app-bug-reportedly-causing-sporadic-battery-drain

Warped

Level 1

11 points

Jul 8, 2020 6:51 PM in response to dislover

Think I got it fixed. I turned everything off (auto downloads, iTunes/App Store, background refresh) and then restarted my phone. Once my phone was back on, I kept all of those settings off for several hours. Then turned iTunes/App Store back on in my iCloud Settings. I launched Music and waited for it to sync. It took a little time for the Grey progress bar to start filling up Blue. Let it finish! It’s been several hours and my battery usage has returned to normal.

Apple Music draining battery