Health app draining battery on iOS14

Since updating to iOS14 the health app has been draining my battery. Can anyone help?

iPhone 11

Posted on Sep 18, 2020 3:11 PM

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Posted on Sep 27, 2020 10:21 AM

I’m glad I found this thread and that I wasn’t alone. Depleting battery, hot phone, unable to delete apps, Apple Watch not syncing and any app related to health constantly crashing.


I’d already noticed that Health app was always at the top of battery usage, but I hadn’t quite clocked how much storage it claimed to be taking up.


14.2PB.


PB. Not MB. Not GB. Not TB. I had to Google what on Earth a PB was. A Petabyte.


Nothing I tried helped other than to back-up and perform a fresh install having disabled syncing of Health app. That is how I spent my Sunday morning, but it seems to have worked. No more battery drain, Apple Watch syncing and Health app behaving itself.

91 replies

Sep 21, 2020 5:02 AM in response to Ozzie4411

I can relate. Battery usage of Health app is 68% of my iPhone 11 Pro and Health data in iCloud shows more than 2 Petabyte. I cannot launch Activity app most of the time and when I can there’s zero data. My watch still reports I’m on my longest streak (nearly 1600 days) so that’s good and I hope I won’t lose that. In Health app I cannot access most data. I also cannot delete apps for some reason and while half my storage on the phone is photos, the storage overview claims 200 of my 256 GB is apps. Looks pretty bad overall.

I’ve turned off sleep tracking on my Series 5 watch - let’s see whether this will help.

Sep 21, 2020 7:51 AM in response to Ozzie4411

I got the same issue, my phone is 11 Pro Max running iOS14, few days ago my watch series2 cannot upload activities to Health App and Fitness App (these two app will crash too), and no iPhone notifications will be sent to watch. When opening the Watch App, it said Apple Watch is syncing and I cannot return to main page except restoring the watch. Moreover, I cannot uninstall any App, I cannot make a phone call. I got 60 petabytes of Health data... I tried to backup the phone and reinstall system, I got 122GB of data on iPhone and my Mac has 170GB disk space remaining, Mac said disk space is not enough... so I tried to use PC (200GB remaining) to backup, it just filled up the disk of my PC and iTunes crashed lol.

Sep 21, 2020 6:50 PM in response to Ozzie4411

Same problem!


On my iPhone 11 got a message this morning that my phone was out of storage - caused by Health app taking up nearly 77GB of my 128GB storage!! Seeing these replies, I also checked battery usage (it had drained faster than normal today but I figured it was because I was googling solutions to this problem) - nope, 71% due to Health app. I had just upgraded to iOS 14 and the new Apple Watch system over the weekend.


Also noticed that I somehow now have 2 watches synced to the Health app (I only own one watch), but it’s showing that only one actually has my historical data (and is still recording data) though says it is not paired - while the “paired” Apple Watch has no data.


Reached out to Apple via chat, they apologized for the problem but then never wrote back with a proposed solution.

Sep 22, 2020 7:45 AM in response to elmark

in addition to the same issues as others (22PB large Health app and over 80% battery drain by the Health app) I cannot backup to iTunes. The status bar just doesn't move for hours and I don't even get the window to secure the backup with a password. I tried unpairing my Apple Watch, it is stuck as well. I can't seem to be able to do anything, which involves backing up or Health app.

Sep 22, 2020 9:03 AM in response to Ammarghanim

Same issue here.

iPhone 11 Pro (iOS14), Apple watch 5 (wOS7)

Battery drain is huge (60% on iPhone) and Watch won’t hold it for 18 hours (normally ~36h).


I didn’t know I’m having a storage problem. Health takes 1,6TB on the iPhone?


It seems, I just noticed, that the battery draining stops (on the iPhone at least) when ‘fully’ closing the Health app.


hope Apple will fix this soon!

Sep 22, 2020 9:06 AM in response to Ozzie4411

Having the same issue, but having more of an issue with the storage space the app is taking up rather than the battery usage. 59.91 PB is ridiculous. I had to look up what PB even stood for. This needs to be fixed. I’ve tried deleting and refreshing data, changing setting, everything. No clue what more to do. Hate that I possibly will lose all my historical data.


Sep 22, 2020 9:56 AM in response to Ammarghanim

I have disabled Sleep Tracking her Health is still using 45% of my battery usage on my IPhone 11 Pro Max . Now disabling hand washing , to see if that makes an impact at all.


Disabling Sleep cut down my Health Battery usage from 68 to 45 . Let’s see what disabling hand washing does ! Will monitor for the next 24hrs .


Phone still draining faster on battery due to health though compared to normal use age .


i will log a case with Apple as well .

Sep 22, 2020 1:33 PM in response to kritzelecke

Same issues here. iPhone 11, watch series 5. Seems that the watch keeps on tracking but the Health app and Activity app are not importing data from it. Also, watch app becomes unresponsive if I try to change settings through it. Rebooting helps but only lasts for a short while and then it all goes out again. Battery drains and the phone overheats as well.

Sep 22, 2020 2:37 PM in response to Ozzie4411

I have the same issue. I upgraded to iOS 14 and WatchOS 7. Everything seemed fine until I realized the watch wasn't tracking Heart Rate, steps, etc... So, I unpaired the watch and re-paired it. Now, the Health app is doing what you say. I am about 80% health app utilization with PBs of data for the health app. I just turned off my watch and will try to see if it improves. Given the posts below and that it was working fine over the weekend when the watch wasn't truly working, I am guessing it is the watch connectivity.


Thoughts? Ideas? I turned off sleep and handwashing for now. Will see if things improve w/o the watch first.

Sep 22, 2020 6:21 PM in response to Kin-IOM

I've turned OFF everything that writes or reads Health data and the battery life is great now... crappy b/c it basically removes a key loved feature. Here's to hoping they figure out a real solution for this soon. Be interesting to see if this is an access control or a read/write tuning problem... anyone know of a way to see the logs here?


FYI

Settings > Privacy > Motion & Fitness > Turn off to your hearts content...


If you're a nerd like me... check out all the entries in the health data...

Settings > Health > Data Access and Devices > (scroll to bottom) select your device... I've got a LOT of single entries where it looks like my phone is trying to track my steps...

Sep 22, 2020 7:55 PM in response to Geeeeeeeeeeee

Okay, update from my side. My issues were:

1) Health app and Activity app not working properly (freezing, not opening, ...)

2) >2 PB of Health data in iCloud

3) ~68% battery usage of Health

4) this came with iPhone issues: could not restart phone easily, some apps would not launch, could not delete apps

5) I was using sleep tracking (both Apple and Sleep Watch)


So I experienced a mix of problems which formed a perfect storm (iPhone 11 Pro, Series 5 watch).

Issues became apparent 2 days ago, which was more or less 2 days after I had installed iOS 14 and watchOS 7.


My issues are solved, but it was painful and I lost Health data.

Here is what I did which is cumulative of several touch points with Apple phone support:


1) before contacting Apple in the morning I did a phone backup... after I had done this, Health data in iCloud changed to ~370 MB... all other issues remained them same, however. I am wondering whether one part of the issue is that I am always wearing my watch at night and it cannot be backed up securely while I sleep

2) first advice then from Apple was to un-pair and re-pair the Apple Watch which was said to fix the observed problems “in 99% of the cases”

3) this was not great advice: unpairing was still not done after 90 minutes and phone showed confusing messages of either that it is read to pair or in process of unpairing... the watch still showed the usual data I had before, so I manually reset it and erased all settings

4) this led to a point where I could pair the watch, but it would always crash and freeze in the process after the Apple Pay step and would then start from the beginning... in my case, the watch seem to have never fully unpaired... I tried this several times and it never worked

5) now the watch showed the pairing screen (i.e. the one where you see the I think the back of the watch on screen) and nothing worked

6) Apple Support guided me to reset the watch again: for this, you press crown and side button together until it restarts, then you wait for the Apple logo to come up and keep the side button pressed and you will get the option again to erase all data from the watch - I did that

7) now I was able to restart the process again and when I did I first had the notification of a software update being available... I installed that and hoped for the best but the process crashed and froze again after Apple Pay.

8) Apple Support suggested to delete the watch app and re-install it again and also told me I should make sure there is no Bluetooth connection between phone and watch (so turn off Bluetooth). The problem was that I could not delete the watch app and Support concluded I had to reinstall the full phone.

9) Painful. I re-installed the phone and when this was done I turned off the phone fully and reset the watch again with the trick I had learned (i.e. reset and then erase all data). I got the gist that it is important to make sure there is no connection between phone and watch whatsoever for a fresh start.

10) all of this worked – I was able to start up the phone, pair the newly reset watch and passed Apple Pay and finished pairing of the watch.

11) I waited until all data was downloaded on the phone from backup, and everything was there but Activity was still restoring activity data from backup this lasted from yesterday late afternoon until today at 10 am or so... unfortunately I lost 2 days of my activity streak (I was close to 1600 days of streak), but it looks like this is the only data I lost in the process


Now Health, Activity and the general phone works normal again. This is good and I guess I will get over losing my streak (the physical benefit is still there after all).


I hope this is helpful to someone out there. It is a painful process, but at least it fixed things for me. Some guesses I am making: there might be some watch backup issue building up if you wear your watch at night like I have done for years. Might be true or not, but will be more intentional on backups going forward.


Also, Apple Support told me it is better to reinstall the phone tethered to a computer. I did not do that, but they clearly suggested this would be a better way to handle this. I never use a computer with my phone (I am living the iPad life style), which is why this was not an option for me.


Good luck everyone and hope things work out for you!

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Health app draining battery on iOS14

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