Siri audio draining battery – finally a solution (sorta)

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Siri audio draining battery – finally a solution (sorta)

For six months plus now, I have been dealing with Siri audio draining my battery. Like most others this is with Siri completely disabled on my phone, and with various versions of iOS. I found this issue out the hard way when I didn't put my phone on the charger at night, my battery drained in my sleep and my phone died hence my alarm didn't go off causing me to miss something very important for work. My boss loved that. I realize that there have been other solutions out there – hooking up to your computer, reinstalling everything, blah blah; it's caused by the Facebook app so get rid of that blah blah- end up getting a new phone multiple times yada yada- along with many other suggestions. It turns out I tried pretty much everything that was suggested and it either didn't apply to me (don't have FB) or was short lived at best. FINALLY I figured it out.

Good news/bad news:

Bad news is this is an issue with Apple and no matter what iOS I am at it seems like they haven't actually created a solution for it.

Good news is I finally figured out *** Siri audio is and you can choose to work around it. At least for me, and I'm hoping for many others as well because I don't believe I've seen this in any posts.

Yes my Siri is all disabled in every way possible, so make sure to do that first. THEN Settings-General-Keyboard- and turn of Enable Dictation. This is what magically- FINALLY- solved it for me.

***NOTE: whenever you power your phone down enable dictation turns back on automatically, so keep that in mind!***

Seriously, try it and watch your battery for that 24 hours. It's shocking.

I really hope this helps someone, ANYONE, since it has taken hours of my life from me with all the issues of Siri audio. I hate that ***.

<Edited by Host>

Posted on May 21, 2017 10:29 AM

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Answer 1

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DRH255

Level 1

18 points

Dec 9, 2017 3:15 AM in response to nutt_case

There is a solution to this. The Siri drain occurred for me after using text dictation ...so something to do with the microphone...I searched the forums here and another user had posted to go into iTunes and play some songs from your library or the store. This disconnects Siri's stranglehold. I did that and the Siri drain stopped. About an hour later I checked my battery usage and Siri had dropped from 65% to about half...it takes awhile to disappear completely from the top 3 of the list as the measure is for a 24 hour period, but next day it's back to 1%.

I try not to use the microphone but sometimes it's necessary and invariably Siri latches onto the battery, however this fix has worked without fail several times.

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Answer 2

Jun 18, 2017 9:05 AM in response to Racy123

Thank you. This is very helpful in understanding how Siri Audio could even access my battery since I had Siri turned completely off. I had forgotten about that particular Siri permission. Since I voice type most of the time, Apple essentially blackmails me with "Siri Audio". If not enabled, no voice typing.

What mystifies me is how Siri Audio managed to use 57% of my battery in about 8 hours while I slept and literally never touched my phone. This is something new in June 2017 and did not follow an iOS update. I should qualify this by saying that typically I sleep with my phone charging which would prevent any app from using battery. I will now be watching my battery usage daily to see if it continues. I'm interested in knowing if this is happening to anyone else. I'm concerned that Siri still listens all the time using the voice typing permission. I have read the "about dictation and privacy" screen in Settings>General>Keyboard. It is very broad in terms of what Apple can do with what we dictate, and the language is a bit ambiguous. It does not address at all whether Siri will only listen when the microphone icon is pressed or will listen all the time.

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Answer 3

Sep 2, 2017 11:16 AM in response to Racy123

Good find!! Hopefully this helps others solve there Siri audio drain. Disabling Siri was only a partial solution for me as It would return after a few days and I would have to restart the phone. After 30 days of disabled dictation I have no more than 2 or 3 percent of Siri in my battery stats, obviously you can't 100 percent disable it, which I find a little disturbing. I really need voice type but I also need my phone to last more than 6 hours on a charge so it will be staying off for now.

I suspect way more people have this isssue than realize it. Most folks don't pay attention to their battery stats or how long their battery is lasting. If Siri is going to listen in on us all day long they need to figure out how to do it without killing the battey. 👍

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