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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

Tmj2020

Level 1

4 points

Jul 11, 2020 12:23 PM in response to cyborcom

I think most of us have had the issue resolved. Can’t say if it was steps we did (there were multiple things folks tried. I did some, not others) or something on the Apple servers. It’s been crickets from Apple.

So far my 11 Pro Max has been fine. The problem never developed on my 2018 iPad Pro or 2020 SE business phone. All running latest iOS.

DeeKay13

Level 1

4 points

Jul 12, 2020 7:27 AM in response to MatuaS

Sounds like most promising suggestion, thank you. Tried it, and after giving some time to see effect, unfortunately is still a no go for me. Apple Music still burning a huge hole with running in the background even when not in use. Outstanding for those that have got their issue resolved 👍🏽

andyf

Level 1

16 points

Jul 12, 2020 8:30 PM in response to Frostipops

I don't have an Apple watch. I was surprised that my problem did not return given the experience of others. I have no explanation. I thought I would mention my experience in case it helped Apple figure out what is going on.

Menlo123

Level 1

4 points

Jul 13, 2020 10:23 PM in response to mr_woodpecker

This is also happening with the Washington Post app. When I first noticed it, there was 45 hours of background activity despite the app not being permitted to run in the background by my Settings choices.

I have uninstalled Washington Post and now cannot see any identifiable culprit, but my battery rapidly drains from only half an hour of on-screen activity.

Jul 15, 2020 5:42 AM in response to DeeKay13

I tried several different things. What seems to have worked was logging out of iCloud, then logging back in. Downside was it removed any downloaded music I had in my phone, so had to start over, but my battery is no longer getting hit and draining rapidly, even though I started downloading songs back to my phone.

DeeKay13

Level 1

4 points

Jul 17, 2020 9:21 PM in response to darian263

Okay folks soooo.... having updated iPhone XS this morning to 13.6 seems to have eliminated Apple Music as a culprit with battery drain... phew!! Thank you Apple!! Up to this point in time, no other tactic has worked, so if you’ve yet to update OS, I’d recommend doing so asap

Jul 26, 2020 1:35 PM in response to DeeKay13

I updated to iOS 13.6 on my iPhone X over a week ago and it did not fix the problem. The battery still drains quickly, although now the culprits seem to be "Home & Lock Screen" and "Siri" in addition the "Music" app running in the background. The crazy thing is that I haven't used the Music app in years so there is no reason why it should be doing anything in the background.

May 26, 2020 5:51 AM in response to mr_woodpecker

I am having same issue with music background draining battery. What do you do to correct it.

May 29, 2020 2:53 AM in response to raina_b22

This is only due to Apple Music app. And Apple does nothing to fix that. The app drains battery.

Jul 5, 2020 9:45 AM in response to ldcroberts

I have the same issue since a couple of days. Music App is draining my battery at an incredible level!

It drained 64% of my battery due to background activity during 14h23m!?

How to fix this?

sfkatya

Level 1

4 points

Jul 5, 2020 8:38 PM in response to sfkatya

Jul 6, 2020 9:01 AM in response to CJBEggers

Update:

after cancelling downloads and turning off background activity, there has been no improvement. The app has been closed for an hour. Still draining my battery.