You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

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?

View in context

Similar questions

182 replies

RobertZD

Level 1

4 points

Jul 8, 2020 3:10 AM in response to mr_woodpecker

So this is how bad the background activity is on my music app. Background activity for pretty much 24 hours a day since about 3 July. I subscribe to Apple Music so deleting it isn't really an option. They really need to fix this.

Jul 8, 2020 6:14 AM in response to mr_woodpecker

Just been on the phone to apple support with the exact same issue. Was also struggling to download songs to the iPhone from my iTunes Music Match account

Turned off Music in the Settings > General > Background app refresh > Music. And restarted iPhone.

Songs now downloading from iCloud music match as before, hopefully will resolve the background activity issue too (67h 49m in the last 10 days!)

Warped

Level 1

11 points

Jul 8, 2020 6:23 AM in response to Ijustwanttolookattheforums

Turned off Apple Music in my iCloud settings. Hard restart of my phone and then I plugged it in and went to bed. The Background activity from Music kept my battery from reaching full charge for several hours. This is ridiculous

Warped

Level 1

11 points

Jul 8, 2020 7:35 AM in response to dman7646

Update: auto download has always been off, just turning off iTunes in my iCloud settings seems to have fixed the battery drain without uninstalling Music.

after going through my usage history for the past couple days, it looks like the battery drain began when I streamed music from my phone to my AppleTV. I remember picking my phone up after about 20 minutes and the battery was really warm. Could be a coincidence, but it might shed some light.

Jul 8, 2020 1:12 PM in response to milkman001

to my previous early comment Apple music seems still runs when its turn OFF what gives. I guess the one minute on screen was me checking if it was on ??!?!

see below.

Bring on update 13.6 this last update is a shocker

DeeKay13

Level 1

4 points

Jul 10, 2020 1:11 PM in response to mr_woodpecker

Over the last 10 days, significantly more than safari - and all that usage cannot be the case whilst at work, and definitely not while asleep lol

There’s no way I’ve listened to THAT much music these past 10 days lol

Running iOS 13.5.1 and while my phone doesn’t get hot, I’ve noticed a significant battery drain than previously experienced. Hopefully a patch comes out soon, for all those affected, seeing as no solution works at this time...

cyborcom

Level 1

9 points

Jul 11, 2020 12:00 PM in response to mr_woodpecker

I’ve had a similar issue with my iPad Pro (iPad OS 13.5.1). It was fully charged and unplugged overnight with all apps closed and zero usage. Apple Music took 42% of my battery drain overnight. Siri took 20% but that is probably due to listening for the, ‘hey siri’, wake word.

I came across this article because I’d noticed recently my battery was draining quickly and did some research today.

Jul 15, 2020 3:26 PM in response to MrFrenchFrie

Just want to throw in another case of this happening on an iPad Pro 2020. I have only tried turning off background updates for now, and that didn't make any difference. I'm going to start working through the other steps now...

May 26, 2020 9:38 AM in response to Antmark56

On the advice of Apple Support I restored my phone using iTunes as this reinstalls a clean version of the IOS software. Apparently if you factory reset from your phone it wipes the data but doesn't reinstall the software. It worked perfectly and I haven't had any issues since.

Jul 4, 2020 9:08 PM in response to Anyone4tea

I just used Apple Music app probably for the first time in ages a few days ago, and have had huge battery drain these last few days. Help my phone is wearing out really fast! I only tried rebooting it so far. I see over 50% battery being used by music just like others above. IPhone 8. Latest iOS version.

Jul 5, 2020 10:13 AM in response to Sunny_side_up

I had family share and my children were using my apple ID for apple music. They had to stop using my id and use their own. But apple first had me reload apple music after saving my file info to an external drive, that had my music I had loaded to apple music years ago.

sfkatya

Level 1

4 points

Jul 5, 2020 8:36 PM in response to ldcroberts

This is what’s happening to my iPhone X. I use Music once a month at most and haven’t opened it in weeks, and yet it’s draining my battery so fast and my phone is always hot. Incidentally, I paid off my phone this week. Is this Apple trying to get me to buy a new phone?

anish01

Level 1

4 points

Jul 6, 2020 12:51 AM in response to горбатовfromмосква

Hi, I have the same issue! Apple Music background activity is absolutely draining my battery! I have literally taken my phone of charge, and within 40 minutes it is down to 88%! I have an iPhone 8+ and I am running iOS 13.5.1

would uninstalling the Apple Music App and reinstalling help!

RobertZD

Level 1

4 points

Jul 6, 2020 3:42 AM in response to Bernd Lutz

I have this exact same issue - the Music App has suddenly become a battery hog. iPhone 11 showing Music using 64% of battery over the last 24 hours - 18h 54m background usage and 19minutes on screen. What is going on?

Jul 6, 2020 7:09 AM in response to CJBEggers

I have used the Music app and Apple Music service every day for years. This problem seems to have started on 7/2, and really ramped up on 7/3. For the last three days, my Music app reports more than 24 hours of background usage in a 24 hour period. The phone is really hot, an I have to charge it twice a day, when I used to get two days out of a charge. It sounds from above like there were some issues in the past, that had some fixes, but it also seems like this came out of nowhere last week for a bunch of people.

Interestingly, I've has a few instances during this time, where my phone has re-connected to a Bluetooth device that I had specifically disconnected from. In one case, my phone was paired with Bluetooth speakers upstairs, when the speakers stopped working, and the music started playing on a speaker downstairs. What is going on?

Apple Music draining battery