Apple Pencil 2 draining iPad Pro battery

@Daninabottle Since the latest iOS update last week, this issue is solved for me. I also had the draining pencil, but now it perfectly sticks to a 100% and has being doing this for the whole week. Did you already update?

I was having the exact same problem, luckily the 12.2 Beta 2 seems to have fixed the issue, now when I come back to my IPad after leaving it plugged in overnight the Apple Pencil 2 is fully charged instead of where it was before which was about 70%...

Please keep updating this thread if you see this being a consistent behavior in the beta. I have hard rebooted my iPad before and had the problem go away and seem like it was not happening anymore, and then it has always eventually started again.

I understand the iPad’s battery draining, after all it is charging the pencil constantly. But a couple of weeks ago, I started noticing that after getting to 100%,, the pencil starts losing charge slowly. I left it untouched for a few days and it will get all the way down unless I dettach it and attach it again. Took it to the Apple store and they said it was very weird and it shouldn’t do that. They restored the settings and said if it keeps on doing that, I should restore from iTunes. of course it is still doing it, but I don’t see what restoring it from iTunes will do. They ordered a replacement pencil, but I’m wondering if anyone else has had this problem.

I think people are kind of missing the point here. The iPad Pro has a nearly 37 Wh battery. The Pencil on the other hand has a 0.4 Wh battery.

We know that when disconnected from the iPad Pro, the Pencil battery drops by maybe 5-10% per day. Therefore, if attached to the iPad, why do we see such huge drops in iPad battery life, considering the standby power consumption of the pencil when detached from the iPad is so low?

In my case, the iPad battery drops 10% in 12h with the Pencil attached. This equates to 3-4 Wh of power. The equivalent of 10 full discharge-recharge cycles of the Pencil battery.

Clearly, there is something going badly wrong here. Moreover, if the Pencil really is drawing the equivalent of 10 cycles in a 12h period, this must be crucifying the battery and massively shortening its life.

As for the weird drops to 70% and lower, I too have had this happen, and I believe it is a special mode designed to protect the battery from overcharging when it has spent a lot of time up at ~100%. It’s almost like a hibernation mode for a pencil that hasn’t been used in a while. When my pencil goes into this mode, I do not get iPad battery drain. Perhaps they could make this mode initiate sooner. Either way though, the amount the pencil is drawing when attached is so high that it simply must be a bug or a flaw. The pencil should be drawing only the same amount it would need to compensate for what it loses when deattached from the iPad, which is about 5-10% per 24h period.

I too have submitted a bug report. I just hope they take note.

So. I updated to iOS 12.2 public beta 3. This has changed things. Now the overnight drops are in the region of maybe 3-5%, which is better. But I have noticed something interesting.

If I turn Bluetooth off completely, as has been pointed out by others, the drain does not occur. Pencil remains attached to the side of the iPad, and overnight there is 0-1% drain.

However, if the Pencil is at 100%, on charge, cool, to touch, no serious charging occurring, and I hit ‘forget this device’ in Bluetooth settings, the pencil begins getting very hot, as if it is charging, and the drain is maybe 10% over 6 hours.

So I wonder if at some point in the night, the iPad-Pencil Bluetooth connection drops, and the iPad respond to this by activating the charging coil.

This is definitely an ongoing issue.

And you are right.

Doesn't make sense for both not to be charged up fully.

Go back a few pages ( page 2, I think ) and look for my Apple iPad feedback link reply post.

In the posting, I have included a link to call/reach Apple directly in Cupertino, California and you can talk with a customer service /technical supoort rep about this issue.

Best of Luck to You!

Took iPad Pro off charge Monday morning. Turned Bluetooth off. Left Apple Pencil 2 attached to case.

It is now Thursday night. I have had 3h screen on time. My iPad is at 71% battery.

Turned on Bluetooth to check battery level in Pencil. 90%.

So clearly, in standby mode, the Pencil does not need to draw huge amounts of battery from the iPad. 10% over 4 days is nothing and should not have any perceivable impact on iPad Pro battery life.

There is a bug here that is causing the Pencil to constantly communicate over Bluetooth even when it is docked to the side of the iPad Pro, and this is chewing up a lot of power.

I’ve found a little hack to fix the problem until apple releases an official fix. If you put a piece of aluminum foil on the pencil between the charging connector and the pencil itself, it will prevent the pencil from drawing any power from the iPad Pro. The advantage to this approach is that you can still utilize the magnetic storage system without your battery being needlessly drained. When you need to juice up just remove the aluminum barrier temporarily.

Issue is mostly fixed for me in iOS 12.2 update from yesterday. The Apple Pencil part of the problem is gone. The Pencil stays charged at 100%, and the lightning bolt icon never goes away in the battery widget after a few hours like it did before. I did not wake up this morning to see the Pencil drained down to 85% either. The Pencil is also not warm to the touch like it used to be sometimes. So I think we can call this half of the issue solved.

The iPad half of the problem is still not fully fixed in my opinion. My iPad still went from 100% to 91% in about 17 hours while not being used and with the Pencil attached. I will say I’m not seeing a huge spike in battery drain between 3 and 6 am during the night like I was before, so they definitely changed something. The drain I’m still getting on the iPad is better than it was for sure, but I still don’t think it should take this much power away from the iPad to keep the Pencil charged. The Pencil should be able to intelligently let the iPad know when it needs charge and when it doesn’t, not just constantly draw power from the iPad. Maybe I’m expecting too much, I don’t know.

I do wonder if some of my battery drain last night was just because of my iPad settling down from the update. I’m going to let it sit today too and see if the drain is improved or not.

I literally cannot believe Apple.

On 12.1.4 they pushed the x60 firmware update to the Pencil. This totally fixed the problem.

Upon updating to 12.2, the firmware is still x60. But now the insidious ~10% per 24h drain has returned.

Can anyone else confirm what kind of standby drain they get per 24h? I am pretty much solidly on 10% now.

On 12.1.4 with the new Pencil firmware this drain was only 3-5% per 24h.

Get it together Apple!

Background tasks will always account for some battery usage whilst the iPad is idle - and the background activity will be heavily influenced by your individual setup of Apps, notifications, email configuration (such number of accounts, push/fetch intervals) etc. An attached Apple Pencil will also increase consumption.

On average, 10% battery depletion per day for an idle iPad is likely a reasonable expectation.

I could totally accept this. If detaching the pencil didn’t turn a 10% drain into a 2% drain.

The pencil has a tiny battery. And if detached loses 5-10% of its battery in 24h standby. There is no reason why it should need to draw 8% of the iPad Pro’s battery just to top up that tiny battery by 5-10%.

That all sounds great... other than the fact that if I leave my ipad idle for a few days.. say.. over the weekend.. with my pencil attached, the pencil drains to 0%.

So, I have the iPad on but "alseep" in my bag with the Pencil attached as it was meant to be, and the pencil drains power from the ipad while simultaneously loosing battery faster than it would if I just kept it unattached in a pocket somewhere in the bag.

That sounds like a problem to me. Nothing more annoying than grabbing the iPad for a meeting Monday morning just to have the pencil at 0% charge despite the fact that it was attached to the only thing that can charge it.. since Friday afternoon.

Makes no sense at all.

I believe this problem is fully resolved now from what I've observed on my 11" iPad Pro and Apple Pencil 2.

The original problem was my iPad Pro would drain like crazy with the Pencil attached--usually between the hours of 3 am and 6 am for some reason. Sometime during the night the Pencil would also start draining like crazy and I would wake up to it at 85% percent, not charging, but still attached to the iPad.

Two updates ago seemed to fix half the problem--the Pencil was now staying connected and topped off, but the iPad was draining anywhere from 15% to 25% a day with the Pencil attached. With it not attached, the iPad was draining a normal amount in standby (under 5%) overnight.

This week's iOS update seemed to have remedied both issues for me. Last night I put the iPad on my desk with the Pencil attached and went to bed--it was at 82% at the time. When I woke up this morning, it was at 80%, Pencil still attached and still topped off and connected.