iPhone App background refreshing even when disabled?

[Honza1]

Hello,

I am unable to find this weird behavior discussed on line for iOS 11 yet. I have found out accidentally, that one of my applications was using ~ 15% battery (in 24 hours) on background refresh. BUT, that application had background refresh disabled. Could not stop it from doing it, so I deleted the application.
Except, next day there was another application using ~20% of battery for background refresh - again, in Settings this application had background refresh disabled. Eventually, I deleted it.
And yes, today yet another application shows ~5% of my battery used by doing Background refresh, even though it has Background refresh disabled.
I tried various common sense fixes, but nothing seems to help.
There must be some bug which lets one (first or last on some list) application do background refresh even when it is disabled.
If you have bad battery life, check if you have such application and how much battery life it uses. For me it is easy to identify - I have only 8 applications which are allowed to do background refresh, so I can find culprits easily.

 

[gobikerider]

What app?
[doublepost=1507163662][/doublepost]Also What device specifically?

 

[C DM]

Hello,

I am unable to find this weird behavior discussed on line for iOS 11 yet. I have found out accidentally, that one of my applications was using ~ 15% battery (in 24 hours) on background refresh. BUT, that application had background refresh disabled. Could not stop it from doing it, so I deleted the application.
Except, next day there was another application using ~20% of battery for background refresh - again, in Settings this application had background refresh disabled. Eventually, I deleted it.
And yes, today yet another application shows ~5% of my battery used by doing Background refresh, even though it has Background refresh disabled.
I tried various common sense fixes, but nothing seems to help.
There must be some bug which lets one (first or last on some list) application do background refresh even when it is disabled.
If you have bad battery life, check if you have such application and how much battery life it uses. For me it is easy to identify - I have only 8 applications which are allowed to do background refresh, so I can find culprits easily.

Background use isn't necessarily background refresh. Background refresh is just one aspect of background use, while there are other aspects to it as well that have been there before background refresh and aren't controlled by the user.

Usually an app is allowed to finish up some tasks in the background after you left it, so there are times when you use an app and leave it and it will still continue doing something for a few more minutes (up to about 10 as I recall), and that can happen after some or every uses of an app. Similarly there are other cases when some background activity is allowed for apps, in particular for apps that provide media playback, or VoIP services, or location services.

 

[Honza1]

Most of these offending applications were not even used during those days, so "finish use" does not apply. None were VOIP or media player... In one case it was MyRadar, then WifiScan pro, and now OneNote. After deleting MyRadar I reinstalled it few hours later and since then, NO background refresh listed at all. Does not show on the list at all.

It is always, somehow selected, semi random, one application. How selected, no idea, probably first or last on some list. Looks like one of the very basic iteration errors we do when we iterate through a list and forget to include first or last element. Have done that many times myself ;-)

Luckily, OneNote is semi reasonable - only 5% battery in the last day and I do use it sometimes, so deleting it is not really an option. But MyRadar and WifiScan Pro were 15%+ and were NOT used either of those days.

I wonder if those having dreadful battery life have a heavy background app running and have no idea...

Oh yes, I reported this to Apple. If they choose to look at those reports, may be they may be bothered to fix it.

This is Iphone 7.

 

[gobikerider]

Most of these offending applications were not even used during those days, so "finish use" does not apply. None were VOIP or media player... In one case it was MyRadar, then WifiScan pro, and now OneNote. After deleting MyRadar I reinstalled it few hours later and since then, NO background refresh listed at all. Does not show on the list at all.

It is always, somehow selected, semi random, one application. How selected, no idea, probably first or last on some list. Looks like one of the very basic iteration errors we do when we iterate through a list and forget to include first or last element. Have done that many times myself ;-)

Luckily, OneNote is semi reasonable - only 5% battery in the last day and I do use it sometimes, so deleting it is not really an option. But MyRadar and WifiScan Pro were 15%+ and were NOT used either of those days.

I wonder if those having dreadful battery life have a heavy background app running and have no idea...

Oh yes, I reported this to Apple. If they choose to look at those reports, may be they may be bothered to fix it.

This is Iphone 7.

Probably those apps had location services enabled in "when the app isn't in use". I'd go through and make sure the apps are set to "when using" allow gps

 

[atmuwben]

YouTube app. iPad Pro 10.5. Fully drained battery overnight with 9hrs of background. Deleted it.

 

[gobikerider]

YouTube app. iPad Pro 10.5. Fully drained battery overnight with 9hrs of background. Deleted it.

Youtube **** I use the website the app has always been a battery hog it's disgusting.

 

[Coupz]

Can confirm that the YouTube app has used 2.5 hours background yesterday for me. I have BAR disabled and no gps for YouTube app.

 

[cardwizard]

What is this Youtube app doing whit this kind of background activity, Tweetbot is also high imho

 

[Honza1]

Probably those apps had location services enabled in "when the app isn't in use". I'd go through and make sure the apps are set to "when using" allow gps

Nope,
That's not it...

OneNote has no location services record at all and MyRadar is set to "When using app" only. WifiScan Pro is deleted, so I am not 100% sure, but practically all of my apps have "When using" only, except the ones with a good explanation. I do not see WifiScanner Pro needing to know where I am, unless I need the info from it...

 

[gobikerider]

Nope,
That's not it...

OneNote has no location services record at all and MyRadar is set to "When using app" only. WifiScan Pro is deleted, so I am not 100% sure, but practically all of my apps have "When using" only, except the ones with a good explanation. I do not see WifiScanner Pro needing to know where I am, unless I need the info from it...

Can you use something other then one note, it a hit simply because the way it constantly syncs the notebooks. Notability is much nicer in that respect. Also when your done with with one note swipe it from multitasking. I have to do the same with my SimCity game because idk why but that game will just stay in the background doing something because it kills my battery using 50% a day. Now since I close it after using after 5 minute check ins it peaks maybe 20% use a day

 

[Honza1]

Can you use something other then one note, it a hit simply because the way it constantly syncs the notebooks. Notability is much nicer in that respect. Also when your done with with one note swipe it from multitasking. I have to do the same with my SimCity game because idk why but that game will just stay in the background doing something because it kills my battery using 50% a day. Now since I close it after using after 5 minute check ins it peaks maybe 20% use a day

You seem to have the wrong idea, that I have application problem and want to find solution to it.

I started this thread to let others know, that there is bug in iOS which causes a random application on iPhone to run background refresh even though it is disabled for that one application. The application is random among phones, but once selected, stays same for the phone - until deleted. At which point another application starts doing background refresh while it is disabled for it. If that application uses a lot of battery, your battery life drops like stone (Facebook!).

If you know about this bug, you can control which application is misbehaving by uninstalling the worse behaving ones and eventually keeping the one you can live with. After I deleted and after few hours reinstalled MyRadar, it is behaving fine - and another took its place in "you cannot prevent me from background refresh" state. Third one (OneNote) is acceptable for me to be on this list. If I remove this one, who knows how bad app will take its place?

In my case I made sure each application I list above is NOT running in the multitasking window. Actually, I killed ALL applications and started only those I really need. OneNote does not show as running or suspended, yet is performs background refresh.

And NO, I cannot get rid of OneNote - it is the application which syncs really well between our Android, Windows, OSX, and iOS devices in the group and allows us to keep common notes. And is free with enough on line storage. One rare thing Microsoft has done really well.

And I have and use Notability for my own notes on iOS and OSX.

 

[GreyOS]

As stated before background use is not necessarily background refresh. You can’t say it’s say for sure it is a bug in background refresh. It could be a bug in background processing yes.