iOS 15 Home app and HomeKit have excessive battery drain

My iPad is almost always unplugged. Seems like the iPad is checking in excessively when UNplugged and not when being charged. Did an Apple developer tick the wrong box???? Shouldn’t it be check-in more often when charging and way less often when not.???

I’ve filed a big report. I encourage others to do so as well or add feedback. It seems like Apple has screwed up the implementation of the Thread protocol which is resulting in iPads and iPhones continuously sending out pings which are never resolved.

I don’t even use this app and it drains my battery. The worst is that it starts as soon as I plug the battery in for charging at night and i have an external battery too. As soon as i get it to stop it starts charging again.

Same issue has been happening on my iPhone XS for a few months. Excessive battery drain while idling with Home/Accessories usually on top. I went as far as getting a new battery installed in my phone, assuming that had to be the problem, but no, the problem persists.

@craraque: Do you have a HomePod mini or Apple TV 4K (latest gen)? If you look at page 4 of this thread people have found that devices are continuously pinging openthread.arpa and it’s probable that this is causing battery drain. Suggest logging feedback for Apple about HomePod or Apple TV as its probably an issue with TVOS or HomepodOS and Apple’s Thread implementation.

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

Same here, problem still existing. It is annoying... For me it affects iPhone 12 Pro Max, iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 8, iPad Pro (2018). Regular iPad 10.2 from 2020 does not have the issue despite also having access to the whole home...

Yeah, this is what I'm seeing. I was wondering why my iPad battery was draining faster than usual and I finally checked the battery usage stats today. About 28 minutes of Home background activity every hour when unplugged, accounting for almost 90% of battery usage during those hours. If I fully charge it, then unplug it. It will lose at least 25% battery overnight.

Over the past 10 days the Home app has had 44 hours of background usage (only 3m of on screen use), accounting for a full 35% of battery usage for those 10 days.

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.

Hello to all,

for quite a few months now I've also been having the problem of my iPad Pro's battery draining overnight. I have several HomePods and one AppleTV 4K in my network, too. Hue lamps and several other devices complete the package.

I have started to activate flight mode at night, before going to sleep. Without a network connection, the battery behaves normally and no longer discharges. Coincidentally, I have enabled Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in addition to flight mode.

With this constellation (activated flight mode, activated wifi and activated Bluetooth) I can use the iPad again for several days without charging. Have you already tried this? For me, the workaround works.

Best regards, CarlMcCoy

Hello CarlMcCoy,

I already tried your workaround in the past, with no success. The iPhone SE that I use is always in flight mode with WiFi and Bluetooth enabled.

The battery drain is also happening during the day, not only at night in my case.

As suggested by MG51015BB we should wait for a definitive fix as that issue didn’t appear with iOS 14.

After I’ve recognized that my wife’s iPhone is affected more than my one by this issue I tried to separate IoT-Devices from my home WiFi.

Just left the IoT in the existing SSID and create a new one. (My access point is able to create 8 different SSIDs)

Then set the new SSID into a separate vlan, where the WiFi clients are allowed to access the “old network”, but IoT can’t access the new vlan.

homepods and Apple TV’s don’t stop flooding the network. But due to the separate vlan the queries don’t reach out iDevices. Battery drain on iPhones and iPads stopped. Never had such a high battery percentage in the morning when battery was charged the evening the day before.

Streaming to TV and HomePods works great. Only home app is a bit slower than before. I think, due to separate network the home queries are lead over the internet.

when asking Siri on the HomePods to do something there is no lack in time. All normal.

So, this is my working workaround.

maybe it helps others, too.

This is an interesting setup. Will test VLAN and separate wifi, too.

One additional remark: I pulled the plug of my appleTV, the battery drain stopped immediately.

the homkit centrals seems to be causing the issue.

opened a feedback for apple, hopefully they are able to hunt this bug down

In addition to the above, are folks also seeing impacted network behavior? I saw this drain earlier, but after 15.2.1 (and is still present with 15.3.1) I'm also seeing degradation of performance of apple devices on the same network as the HomeKit. If I put my iPad (or iPhone) on the guest network they work fine. If they're on the same network as my Home, the iPad, Apple TV, iPhone and HomePod mini's can be laggy at times. Apps will feel like they temporarily freeze, or Siri will take 10s to tell you what time is it.

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]