iPhone users who have been suffering from worse battery life since upgrading to iOS 9 may want to try deleting Facebook’s iOS app.
The social network confirmed reports that surfaced earlier this week claiming the iOS app uses a heavy amount of resources in the background to run processes. The big problem with the battery drain is that it occurs even if iPhone owners have background app refresh disabled. It’s actually worse with the setting turned off. because Facebook is sneakily creating channels to continue refreshing its app in the background, even when users tell it not to.
Facebook’s battery-hogging ways were first spotted by Matt Gilligan, who noticed the app ate through 3.4 hours of his battery in the background, despite turning off background app refreshes. Federico Viticci noted on MacStories that this issue has been around for years but the company has refused to fix it (or circumvented new user controls that are supposed to prevent the problem).
Photo: Matt Galligan/Medium
The best way to avoid the battery drain is to just delete the Facebook iOS app altogether and access the social network through Safari. Facebook users in the United States can also try switching to the Paper app.
A Facebook rep told TechCrunch this morning that the company is working on a fix.
“We have heard reports of some people experiencing battery issues with our iOS app. We’re looking into this and hope to have a fix in place soon,” the company said in a statement.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
20 responses to “Facebook’s sneaky app is draining your iPhone battery”
This is fascinating. I’ve been wondering why my battery life on both the iPad and iPhone has been so dismal. Thanks for posting this, Buster!
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Does exactly the same on the Facebook Paper App even with background refresh turned off! Only way with paper is to close the App when you have finished using it to stop it.
What if we actually close our session before exiting the app? That would help or is it better to just delete all the app?
Whatsapp does the exact same thing, they way I solved it was by disabling Notifications.. this way the background activity was reduced a looot!
Notifications are a completely separate system to the app involving off device push notifications. Background App Refresh should be what controls the app itself.
It’s my habit to kill apps when I’m done with them. For me, Facebook only shows 1 minute of background activity. Notifications still work. The app still works. It’s the perfect solution, if you don’t mind killing it every time you done with it.
This is (almost always) counter productive – the OS suspends apps very aggressively – by closing the app you’re only shortening your battery life, as the next time you open it it will certainly have to load from scratch. Never do this. This Facebook situation is a crazy outlier (one which I haven’t seen).
I have not loaded (or used) any iOS app from social media sites. It isn’t because I think they’ll find something about me I do not want disclosed, but because I do not want to become “the product”.
Beyond that there’s something that is just creepy about someone capturing everything I do online. I’m surprised that so much angst is generated by the actions of the NSA (that doesn’t do anything with the data collected about you unless and until you are suspected of committing a crime), but no public outrage occurs when Google, Facebook, et al sell the data collected about you.
Pretty sure the FB Messenger app drained my Apple Watch battery yesterday, too.
That’s always been a battery killer
According to the picture, the background process stands at 3.4 hours and on-screen at 1.7 hours. So how does one conclude that those 3.4 hours solely accounted for a large portion of the overall 15% battery hemorrhage attributed to Facebook? I checked mine, and my on-screen was about similar – 1.2 hours and my background was a whopping 11.9! Yet my overall Facebook related battery drain was 15% just like the picture.
That would suggest, it is the Facebook browsing that inordinately drains battery not the background process. That would even explain, why turning off background process for Facebook had no impact on battery life.
Their app has always been sneaky, especially on Android. On Android, the app can update itself OUTSIDE of the play store so that it can get around Googles app store policies and do who knows what at any time. Facebook is one of the few apps I have heard people complaining about for well over a year.
Uninstalled from my iPhone – I can feel the relief already (and better battery life)…
And I guess AppStore controllers trust Facebook developers just because it’s Facebook. I hope this doesn’t happen with other apps as well.
It always has been a battery hog, but this is ridiculous. It’s like they put some of the code from the Messenger app in it.
I always thought social media apps used lots of battery. Now I know that I was right. Thanks for the information.
My results show that for the past 7 day FB only used 1%. However, my battery life is not great. Could it be draining the battery without showing significant usage in the apps list?
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“It’s actually worse with the setting turned off. because Facebook is sneakily creating channels to continue refreshing its app in the background, even when users tell it not to.”
Talk about the product exhibiting the same personality as the CEO of the company that builds it.