iOS 15 Home app and HomeKit have excessive battery drain

I added my HomePod minis back yesterday and now today the home app is draining my iPad battery again… Not sure if it’s related. Could be a coincidence. This is crazy. I have to put my iPad in airplane mode every night that it’s not plugged in.

At least for me, it seems to be related to Wifi. If I'm on a guest Wifi or if Wifi is off, I don't see any battery drain related to the Home app or the Find My app.

I'm using Nest Wifi. Does anyone know a way to debug or analyze wifi data for Nest/Google Wifi units? I'm thinking an accessory or wifi device is constantly pinging my iPhone/iPad (or vice versa) asking for Home/Find My data and its leading to drain.

Same issue here.

battery drained by HomeKit/home app.

it is an iPhone 13 pro.

i have HomePods (classic and minis), Phillips hue and some eve sockets.

it is *****beep*****.

In my Pi-holes log I see this top #1 domain

{Apple Device Name}.openthread.thread.home.arpa which sends 18.000+ requests the last 24 hours. In my case an TV 4K is listed as the responsible device. Curious: it’s not the base station for HomeKit.

well I am still at the beginning of investigation. But, good to know, that I am not the only one with this bug.

Simply too much in my opinion.

There definitely seems to be something funny going on with Apple's implementation of the new Thread standard. Which router/access points do others use?

I use Ubiquiti access points and UniFi app shows a very low WiFi experience score (60%) but only for Apple devices. UniFi thinks my Apple devices are having DNS timeouts. I saw this on UniFi community, which mentions that [something].openthread.thread.home.arpa as well.

I have the Apple TV 4K (2021) as my hub as well - it does seem that openthread.arpa would be related to that and is the most likely issue here.

I do also have a HomePod mini on the network though it’s not part of the same “home” where this is happening

So, lost almost 50% battery last night as Home shows about 22 minutes of background usage every hour.

Decided to double check that it was not set as a Home hub and...this is interesting. I flipped on the switch to see what it would do and there's a message that I "currently do not have any homes". Not true of course, and in fact I can use the Home app from the iPad just fine.

Anyone else having this battery issue see this?

I have the same issues on an iPad 9.7, an iPhone 13 and an iPhone SE (current version)

I own an homeport mini, Apple TV and only other connected bridge is velux active.

Today, there was a drop in battery of 82% within 2,5 hours on the iPhone 13. It was pretty warm, so there is sth strange happening.

it was in flight mode until 6:20, then the drain of battery started. While working out of my home, there is no issue. is related to wifi. Are all the others on UI (Unifi) products? Maybe there is a relation....?

I can confirm the [HomePodName].openthread.thread.home.arpa connections, there are a lot of...

Ipad not the home hub, this is my appleTV. disabled location things.

As many of users that has already replied, I am also affected by this issue.

Mainly on iPhone SE (also on an iPad Pro 12,9’’ 3rd), latest iOS at time of writing. No issue with my main iPhone 8 with still iOS 14.8.1 (decided to not update it due to that issue).

I am also an owner of an Apple TV 4K 2nd Gen and HomePod mini.

I am in contact with Apple Support for 2 weeks by now. They collected all sort of logs and they are still investigating. I strongly advice who are having the same issue to contact Apple Support. More we are to contact them, maybe faster they will fix the issue (it has been there for too long…)

P.S: also noticed many requests from iOS 15 devices to the Thread domain mentioned in other posts.

Hopefully.

In my case, after I separated the WiFi into two vlan I merged it again yesterday after all HomePods (classic and mini) are complaining they are in a different network compared to the iPhone.

Currently there is no draining battery. All is fine. The only difference is that I am using a new access point.

before: AVM FRITZ!Repeater 3000

after: Zyxel NWA90AX

I don’t think that anybody having the issue uses German manufactured access points. But maybe there is something common under the hood - a chip or something else?

i remember an earlier issue that occurs specifically with that hardware.

Maybe it could be the same here?

[Edited by Moderator]

i am currently under 15.3.1. my problem seems to be solved, too.

all smart home devices are in one network again. i only separated my home office hardware and the guest network.

BUT: i changed my wifi hardware from avm fritz... to Zyxel.

Good job!!

My issue is gone to. But I did not install IOS16 on my iPhone.

I cannot be sure anymore but I guess it is still related to IOS16 as I did install it on my iPad. I’m sure my iPad battery life got better in ways I can’t express. Was really happy with it. But come to think of it, I think it also fixed my issue on the iPhone.

it seems your steps use IOS16 to fix something in the HomeKit database (iCloud).

In my case the same happened, only via another way, and the fixed database got synced to other devices and BOEM, it’s fixed everywhere!!

Maybe my steps (or way) is less of a hassle for people if the have an iPad.

Have an update: (I don’t even have the app downloaded or ever used it) try turning off the optimize battery charging. I had this off for a while & turned it on very recently & in a very short period of time battery drain & noticed this:

on iOS 16.0.2

This is still a problem on iOS 16.02. I have an iPhone 14 Plus that I've had for 3 days now. I'm using the Google Home app because we (only) have a Nest Camera with Floodlight and a Nest Doorbell (battery). Background app refresh is not turned on. and I have location for the Google Home app set to "while I'm using the app". Just looked at my phone and the Google Home app has used 85% of my battery, really drained that battery down quickly. No notifications from the Nest cameras during the period of time that the Home app was draining my battery.

At this rate, I'll either have to dump the iPhone, or the Nest cameras...this never happened in several months using a Google Pixel 6 phone. I don't have any other home automation going on, no use of HomeKit, no Google Home appliances, just the two Nest cameras.

I also reported this in "Feedback" on the Google Home app, so I'm pursuing all avenues that I can think of. This is really stupendous battery usage by a single app, no reason for it, it's someone's bug. But I'm sure that it will destroy my phone battery before too long if this continues. When I saw the battery drain, and Google Home app owning 85% of it, I immediately uninstalled and re-installed the Google Home App. It has not recurred since then, that was a couple of hours ago.

Has anyone encountered this that has a workaround? I've tried turning off Location for the app now, and will try to remember to exit the app from the main menu only, which should turn off any streaming video. But again, this didn't happen on a Pixel phone over quite a period of time with no need for thinking about how I'm exiting from the app or worrying about Location setting. And occurred within 3 days when I got a new iPhone.

Made a tentative decision here...going to get a Google Hub on sale, and use that to monitor the cameras at home. And uninstall the Google Home app. I can re-install the app when I need to away from home. Awkward, and I'm sorry that Apple/Google are making me do this, but I don't want my battery dying prematurely. Apparently this has not been fixed for some time, so I have to reason to believe that it will ever be fixed. Not high on the tech companies bug list, apparently.

Got a brand new iPhone 13 yesterday. This morning I see home used 75% of the battery. 11h 53minutes in the background.

i am on the latest 15.1.1 iOS release.

something seriously wrong with the OS