As T3 reports, the extent of Facebook’s battery usage can be easily visualised in iOS 9 as it includes a new feature that lets you see how much power each app has consumed over the past 24 hours and seven days. Some users have been reporting that Facebook’s “background activity” has accounted for 46 percent of their phone’s battery usage in a day and nearly 40 percent over a week.
The cause of this excessive battery drain hasn’t yet been determined. The app continues to use vast amounts of power, even when background app refresh is disabled in settings. Some users have found Facebook ignores this choice though, instead opening its own channels to keep running processes even after the app is closed.
Various theories with possible explanations have appeared online. A popular one is that the app hijacks iOS 9 audio sessions to keep playing silent audio in the background when a video automatically plays in the app, although disabling video auto-play appears to have no effect on the issue. Others have guessed that Facebook directly ignores the “disable background refresh” option and continues to silently load news feed content even if the app is not open, using inefficient, customised background processes.
The bug is becoming a headache for users because it cannot be cured by just disabling background activity, despite background activity of some description almost certainly being the issue. MacStories described the battery usage as “user-hostile,” alleging that Facebook is actively trying to refresh the app in the background “when the user has explicitly stated that they do not want it to.”
Some users have found that there is actually less battery usage if background app refresh is turned back on, strongly suggesting that Facebook employs a badly-coded worker process to keep refreshing anyway if it can’t do it the “official” way. Facebook’s iOS app has always had a reputation for being a battery-hog but it seems to have gotten a lot worse recently.
Facebook hasn’t made any comment on what is going on but has acknowledged the issue exists. A spokesperson told TechCrunch: “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.”
It’s unclear what the “fix” will do and it’s likely that users will never get to know. In the meantime, an easy way to gain some extra battery on an iPhone with iOS 9 seems to be to uninstall the Facebook app entirely.
