Photos (Background Activity) using all of my battery

I am having exactly the same issue as you! The battery life is draining at a percent every few minutes and this has occurred almost over night. I have been very impressed with the iPhone 6 battery life until today.

I travelled abroad at the weekend and signed up to a data roaming package until midnight with my provider. At midnight this switched off. I left my phone on charge after midnight, but failed to turn off Data Roaming. When I work up, I had a text message that I had been charged $260 for data roaming, while I was sleeping. I have now noticed back in my home country that my data plan is almost used up! And in addition the battery is draining rapidly.

How can this happen literally overnight? The Photos App seems to be culprit using up 30% of battery, which I cannot seem to reduce. I have tried all the battery saving suggestions from multiple websites and nothing. Any help would be appreciated. I am using iCloud syncing, but before the weekend this wasn't a problem.

I Am having the exact same problem, only started last week when I upgraded to iOS 8.3 mine is using 50%+ and its draining my battery, having to charge 2+ times a day. It's a joke! Can anyone help? Please?

Do you have iCloud Photo Library enabled (Settings > Photos & Camera > iCloud Photo Library)?

iCloud could be uploading all of your photos and videos in the background, draining your battery.

My background photo usage is 65%. I have no idea why, this is since I did the last update

And, I can't find a way of deleting any blank images in Photos library on my iPhone. When I plug it in to iMac (tried 2 different computers), then open Image Capture - it shows me that the phone contains 0 pictures.

And, it constantly crashes whenever I try to take a photo or video...

NOT HAPPY!

Please help if you can...

I have had this issue a number of times over the past several months. My iPhone 5s would rapidly drain my battery due to Photos background activity. I was able to find the issue each time. For me it was video files listed in the iCloud that were somehow corrupted. When viewing those video files via my MBPro they would have the empty cloud icon. The battery was draining because iPhone was continuously trying to download unsuccessfully those corrupted files. I was able to get the info on those files to track them down. The solution: delete those files from the cloud library. This solved my problem immediately each time.

You stated you've restored your phone...did you use a backup or did you restore it as new?

If you used a backup, there could be an errant setting/glitch/etc contained within that backup.

If you have not yet done so, restore the phone but do NOT use a backup...set it up as a new device. After this, test the phone again (don't install a ton of apps yet, leave it in the "as new" state) for the Photos app battery usage. If the issue clears, you'll have to re-build the phone from this "as new" state (it won't be pleasant nor easy) since the issue is likely contained within the backup you are restoring from...restoring from that backup will also restore the glitch.

I'm having the same issue. When I turn off "iCloud Photo Library" it does fix the issue, but I would like to use iCloud Photo Library so that I can save space on my phone and have access to all of my photos. This is using 66% of my battery usage! I guess the next fix would be to restore as new phone, but I really don't want to spend the time "rebuilding" my phone with all the settings and apps and folders that I have set up. Any other fixes?

So my phone is having the exact same issue except my problem lies with Notes.

This has literally happened since the 8.3 update a few days ago. I'm on 2+ full charges a day on my iPhone 6 that used to last me 9-10 hours!! I've been to the Genius Bar as well been on the phone with AppleCare & they have no clue. I've done 2 full restores from my old backup with no change & diagnostics show the battery-life is at 100% with no faults. It does show a steady drain however, and I've even wiped iCloud from my phone & added it as new!!

Anyone have a solution!?!? Literally about to throw my phone at a wall!

Mid July now.

My iPhone 6+ is nearly unusable due to this. Today Photos accounted for 71% - !!! - of my battery usage.

I Got run out of the Photos forum for daring complaining. I don't know, I don't see Google Photos being crushed under the weight of my 20k photo library. My phone's battery life has gone down from 2 days to a handful of hours. I'm livid.

IF any others have had success, please share your methods. In the meantime, I am seriously considering why I am still in defense of iOS. Too many similar failures of late.

What I found was that iCloud was stuck trying to upload photos from the phone. It kept trying over and over again seemingly forever. This can be seen in Settings->Photos & Camera -> iCloud Photo Library section. At the bottom of that section was a status showing "Uploading 29 photos". This status would update, trying to upload those 29 photos every few seconds. By watching this screen I could see the phone try and upload the photos, seemingly with some sort of error, then wait and try again. This happened over and over again chewing up data and battery.

As @keribeal stated, turning off iCloud Photo Library, then enabling it, corrected the problem. After the long re-sync, the phone now properly states "Last updated N minutes ago" in settings.

I would be happy with 25+%. Mine is using 58+%! Every update of iOS8 makes it die faster. With 8.2, my battery would die about 4 pm after minimal usage starting at 6am. Now with 8.3, my photo background activity kills my battery by 11am and I'm using it even less than before. If they can't figure it out, they should replace them - my phone is only 3 months old and I'm ready to toss it.

I was hoping updating to iOS 8.3 would help me with this issue. I'm on 8.1.3, and since switching on iCloud Photo Library (beta) on my iMac, I've had huge issues.

Not only was Photos using 50%+ background activity (as described here), but it made my photos app completely unusable on my iPhone. I have a large photo library (40k+ pictures), which are all safe on my mac. I loved the idea of being able to view any of them from my iPhone. This simply doesn't work. In spite of having correct settings on my iPhone (keep mobile optimised versions on iPhone), turning this feature on has turned my phone into a hot brick (literally - the battery is working serious overtime, and is making the phone HOT).

When I try and sync with iTunes, it tells me that my device content is 118GB over capacity, the majority of which is photos. Space on my iPhone is being constantly eaten up. If i make more space by deleting music, podcasts or apps, it isn't long before all space is used up again, presumably by photo data (it can't be anything else).

When I look at my photos, it tells me I have 42K+ images - the vast vast majority of which are just black or white empty images. In other words the photos are not there.

It has also prevented me using any pictures from my library in Instagram, a massive annoyance.

So, I switched off iCloud Photo Library, and it has made no difference. I am stuck with a corrupted Photos library, and an iPhone that I can't back up in iTunes, so can't update either. Photos is still eating battery life (now averaging 35% background activity)...

Very disappointed with Apple, who like Podcasts, have released another truly awful app to its users. Boy, when they use the word "Beta", do they mean it. I didn't sign up for being a guinea pig at risk of damaging my iPhone and my Photo Library.

Has anyone found a way to solve this issue? Preferably one that doesn't involve resetting my iPhone (because I haven't been able to back it up since this began).

Thanks!

😟

Wow, it's now June 13th and Apple has still NOT solved this problem, last week my IPhone Photo's app just all of a sudden started using 30-38% of battery, and drains is by early afternoon every day.

I turned off Photo's ICloud, NOTHING

I turned off ALL ICloud on phone, NOTHING

Apple will not allow me to delete Photo's app, so what now?