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Photos (Background Activity) using all of my battery

I've had this problem for about a month where my Photos app is using 20% to 30% of my battery daily and 25% to 35% weekly with "Background Activity". I've contacted Apple Genuis twice about it and they have no clue what the problem is and I've sent full diagnostic tests in and still have no clue. I've restored my phone and always quit Photos app in multitasking even though I don't use it that much, I use other apps more than I use Photos but it still uses twice the battery as my main apps. I turned off most of my apps to have access to my photos and don't have iCloud Photo Share or Stream on. I can't find the Photos app in the background app refresh settings to turn off background activity so how do I stop it from using all of my battery? Please help!User uploaded fileUser uploaded file

iPhone 6 Plus, iOS 8.1.2, 64GB, AT&T

Posted on Feb 19, 2015 2:52 PM

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Posted on Mar 8, 2015 7:00 PM

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.

26 replies

Jun 13, 2015 10:19 PM in response to MikeLee777

Update - Have been trying to delete the thousand of photo's that are still showing on phone, EVEN with ICloud turned off.


Some of the picture are just white blacks BUT they having blinking cloud deal in corner, obviously they are trying to sync.


I have rebooted phone, but can't kill background progress that is eating up battery at all, I have actually made it worse, now I can see battery ticking down a percentage point every 10 min or so, this is totally crazy.


I have work provided AirWatch (mobile device mgmt) on phone that uses certs, so it's a REAL pain to reset to factory and rebuild phone as new.


I can't believe that this would be so broken, and per this thread, this has been going on for months.


How can Google new photo's app be so good, and this such a piece I paid how much for this IPhone 6+? for it to just work, really I did.

Oct 15, 2015 2:56 PM in response to bibbetson

I have had this problem pretty much continuously since starting to use iCloud photo syncing. I recently upgraded to a new iPhone Plus, and for about a week the problem seemed to have disappeared. It's back now, and with a massive library of photos (about 150K), I am reluctant to wait through the long, long sync that would be inevitable after turning of and re-enabling iCloud photo sync.

Sep 24, 2016 1:09 PM in response to lijahg

Ok, I have the same problem too. What I found out was photos just simply don't like my old backups. So the best way to fix this problem or minimize this issue is:

1. Turn off the icloud photo library then it will ask you delete those photos but don't worry it will be still stored in the icloud.

1.1 In case you worry about deleting those photos you could always back it up first by connecting to a computer. Everything would be really easy if you have a Mac and use the image capture app come with the OS X. So you could delete all after imported every single one of it.

2. Then, remove single one of the remain photos in the photos app.

3. Reboot, turn icloud photo library back on. You photos should be restoring rightaway.


This way you can still keep everything and don't have to set up as a new phone.

Photos (Background Activity) using all of my battery

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