Level 1

16 points

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!

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

Posted on Feb 19, 2015 2:52 PM

Top-ranking reply

bibbetson

Level 1

11 points

Posted on Sep 3, 2015 2:26 PM

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.

View in context

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.

keribeal

Level 1

4 points

Jul 24, 2015 12:48 PM in response to geekgirl1975

Photos is hammering my battery on my iphone 6 and also on my ipad!

All i've done recently that i can think might have triggered this is deleting the photos library on my macbook

Everything has sync'd from my phone apart from my slomo videos, they just seem to be stuck and the constant re-trying kills the battery

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.

Mar 19, 2015 3:37 PM in response to lijahg

I have the exact same problem. Have you found out a solution?

Apr 22, 2015 6:18 AM in response to lijahg

Photos app on my iPhone 5s is using 57% of battery. But I'm out of space on iCloud and iCloud syncing for photos is turned on. Can this be an issue?

mr_proud

Level 1

9 points

May 14, 2015 8:41 AM in response to mr_proud

Also worth noting that I decided to use Flickr for all my pictures, but this corrupted Photos library means that Flickr is not able to upload pictures as expected...

😢

keribeal

Level 1

4 points

Jul 26, 2015 4:18 AM in response to keribeal

Solved my problem by turning off icloud photo library off on my iphone, ipad and mac and then turning it back on. You have to do a resync of everything but it worked for me.

guihnz

Level 1

4 points

Oct 8, 2016 6:13 PM in response to HercyChang1994

I didn't have to reboot. Turning iCloud Photo Library off and then on was enough. Thanks!

Nov 21, 2016 4:33 PM in response to bibbetson

How do i teduce photos backgroung activity

Mar 5, 2017 2:39 AM in response to cmccallion

I fixed my increasing space on Icloud. This happens due to less available memory in icloud, please check your icoud and action accordingly

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Photos (Background Activity) using all of my battery