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Battery drain with Safari + iCloud ON

LordQ

LordQ

Suspended
Original poster
Sep 22, 2012
3,582
5,653
Hey guys, not sure if this has been discussed/noticed before, but if I have the Safari toggle ON for iCloud, my battery will drain quite faster than usual. Why is this? I understand it might be constantly checking for Tabs and keeping my bookmarks in sync but man, it drains the battery like crazy!

Is this something known or just something happening to me? Do you keep this ON or OFF?

Thanks!
 
Based on various threads, it seems that some have noticed the same thing, while others aren't experiencing any differences with battery life with the option on or off.
 
As C DM said, it seems to be a user by user issue. I have had this turned on on all of my devices since iCloud launched and have never noticed a battery drain.
 
Do you by chance have a Windows computer with iCloud Control Panel installed on it?

What I've noticed is if you have iCloud Control Panel installed on Windows 8+ while Windows is syncing your bookmarks with your Microsoft account, it causes this problem.

The reason I've come up with is that iCloud creates bookmarks on Windows, which Windows will in turn upload them to your Microsoft account, which changes them in a way that iCloud doesn't like it so it pushes the changes out to your phone via iCloud, which then changes it to a format it likes, and sends that back to your Windows computer via iCloud and again starts the vicious cycle of battery drain.

Remove iCloud from your computer or turn Safari sync off on your phone and see if this fixes your battery drain issue. If you have more than one battery powered Apple device, you may want to do the same on those.

Alternatively if you use Mac more than Windows and only have 1 Windows computer, you can just turn the bookmarks/favorites sync off on your Windows computer to your Microsoft account.
 
I saw thread like this somewhere and disabled Safari in iCloud. My battery is noticeable better. Can't explain why but it just is.
 
Problem is you lose functionality. You lose bookmark syncing, iCloud tab syncing and auto-fill password syncing. I'm sure universal clipboard will be lost as well once iOS 10/Sierra launch.
 
mildocjr said:
Do you by chance have a Windows computer with iCloud Control Panel installed on it?

What I've noticed is if you have iCloud Control Panel installed on Windows 8+ while Windows is syncing your bookmarks with your Microsoft account, it causes this problem.

The reason I've come up with is that iCloud creates bookmarks on Windows, which Windows will in turn upload them to your Microsoft account, which changes them in a way that iCloud doesn't like it so it pushes the changes out to your phone via iCloud, which then changes it to a format it likes, and sends that back to your Windows computer via iCloud and again starts the vicious cycle of battery drain.

Remove iCloud from your computer or turn Safari sync off on your phone and see if this fixes your battery drain issue. If you have more than one battery powered Apple device, you may want to do the same on those.

Alternatively if you use Mac more than Windows and only have 1 Windows computer, you can just turn the bookmarks/favorites sync off on your Windows computer to your Microsoft account.
Click to expand...

This suggestion seems to have solved my problem. I had a 6s experiencing massive battery drain, clearly because of a processes running in the background. I had tried absolutely everything, long sessions with support, restoring to a spare handset, every 'battery saving tip' I could find online. Nothing worked and I was getting 20% battery loss per hour. With a clean install my phone was fine, as soon as I signed into iCloud and the problem returned. The one significant test is if your 'Battery Usage Time' is close to your Battery Standby Time', it means something is thrashing away in the background all the time.

Anyway, I run two Windows 10 machines with iCloud Control Panel - I found this post, signed out of iCloud on both, signed into iCloud on my phone and, two days on, all is looking fine.

I've no idea what caused the problem, the vicious synchronization cycle between Windows and iOS 'mildocjr' mentions seems plausible. All I know is that I can live without iCloud Control Panel on my Windows machines more than i can live without iCloud on my iPhone! Thanks for the tip.
 
I have the same issue with an iPhone XS.

iCloud ON >> battery life = 6h of usage
iCloud OFF >> battery life = 5h of usage

I have tried lots of things (reboot, reset all settings, erase the content,...)
 
The_Smarti said:
I have the same issue with an iPhone XS.

iCloud ON >> battery life = 6h of usage
iCloud OFF >> battery life = 5h of usage

I have tried lots of things (reboot, reset all settings, erase the content,...)
Click to expand...

I have this exact issue too. If I sign out of iCloud or turn off wifi, the issue goes away
 
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