Facebook App, Background and Battery

[/V\acpower]

Hello !

I use the last iOS 9 beta on my iPhone 5S.

I noticed that sometimes my battery seems to drain really really if I don't plug the phone overnight.

For example, this night I went from 95% battery to 20% when I woke up.

The Battery usage in the setting app tells me that Facebook have 10 hours of background activity, even though I have disabled background activité for almost every app, including facebook, long ago (and just checked and they still are disabled).

I was wondering, is this a known bug in the BETA ?

 

[penajmz]

Because background refresh is different that the app being in the background like Facebook stays. Facebook is poorly coded. I usually force quit it to stop it from draining my battery.

 

[kevo0822]

I have this happen very often... and it's infuriating! Even though background refresh is turned off, the app still has background activity that is KILLING my battery!

 

[luckydcxx]

also Facebook crashes very often when scrolling on my 6

 

[C DM]

I have this happen very often... and it's infuriating! Even though background refresh is turned off, the app still has background activity that is KILLING my battery!

The app can run in the background unrelated to background refresh. If you want to make sure it doesn't happen, close out the app when you are not using it.

 

[kevo0822]

The app can run in the background unrelated to background refresh. If you want to make sure it doesn't happen, close out the app when you are not using it.

I'm aware of how it works... I just shouldn't HAVE to close out the app every time in order to keep it from chewing through battery.

 

[C DM]

I'm aware of how it works... I just shouldn't HAVE to close out the app every time in order to keep it from chewing through battery.

Of course there's certainly that. But that's more of an app issue rather than an iOS one (although the beta aspect might have something to do with it as well).

 

[bushido]

i deleted their stupid app a while ago and replaced it with the mobile site on my home screen. another advantage is that the mobile site stays at "most recent" where the app always reverted back to that utterly useless "top news" crap

 

[LunarFalcon]

I have the same problem with the FB app. So annoying. I get much better battery life when I kill the FB app.

 

[zorinlynx]

I wonder if this might be the problem that so many people are having with iOS 9 beta.

I rarely use Facebook, and my battery life on iOS 9 has been stellar.

I wonder how Facebook can run in the background like that? iOS is supposed to kill apps that keep running in the background wasting battery.

 

[GreyOS]

I have wondered what it is doing too and how it is getting away with it when BAR is disabled

apps are given 10 minutes at most before they are suspended. could it be that if you open it frequently for just a few seconds, FB uses those full 10 minutes? a few minutes use in the day could add up to hours of background time

apps that use the following background processes can be kept alive

audio
location
voip
others?

I don't think FB has any legit reason

 

[C DM]

I have wondered what it is doing too and how it is getting away with it when BAR is disabled

apps are given 10 minutes at most before they are suspended. could it be that if you open it frequently for just a few seconds, FB uses those full 10 minutes? a few minutes use in the day could add up to hours of background time

apps that use the following background processes can be kept alive

audio
location
voip
others?

I don't think FB has any legit reason

Don't think BAR has much to do with it, at least not as much as the group of apps that can stay in the background longer than 10 minutes--perhaps Facebook registers itself as being VoIP capable or supporting background audio or something like that (whether actually correctly or not) and that allows it to run in the background indefinitely. Perhaps it's some sort of a bug, either in Facebook app and/or iOS itself that is allowing for something like that.

 

[Nikhil72]

I have wondered what it is doing too and how it is getting away with it when BAR is disabled

apps are given 10 minutes at most before they are suspended. could it be that if you open it frequently for just a few seconds, FB uses those full 10 minutes? a few minutes use in the day could add up to hours of background time

apps that use the following background processes can be kept alive

audio
location
voip
others?

I don't think FB has any legit reason

I remember reading that Facebook uses a VoIP process to keep the app active in the background

 

[adnbek]

I have wondered what it is doing too and how it is getting away with it when BAR is disabled

apps are given 10 minutes at most before they are suspended. could it be that if you open it frequently for just a few seconds, FB uses those full 10 minutes? a few minutes use in the day could add up to hours of background time

apps that use the following background processes can be kept alive

audio
location
voip
others?

I don't think FB has any legit reason

FB cheats by using location services to continue running in the background, even if background app refresh is off. Disable location services for FB and it'll stop being such a pig with resources while backgrounded.

 

[GreyOS]

FB cheats by using location services to continue running in the background, even if background app refresh is off. Disable location services for FB and it'll stop being such a pig with resources while backgrounded.

Nope, I have not enabled Facebook location services - it hasn't even requested it yet, so it's not in the Privacy > Location Services list.

I remember reading that Facebook uses a VoIP process to keep the app active in the background

So there is no legitimate reason then, as I speculated? Facebook doesn't have any VoIP, only its sister app, Messenger. Apple should not let Facebook submit their app with this.

 

[Nikhil72]

Nope, I have not enabled Facebook location services - it hasn't even requested it yet, so it's not in the Privacy > Location Services list.

So there is no legitimate reason then, as I speculated? Facebook doesn't have any VoIP, only its sister app, Messenger. Apple should not let Facebook submit their app with this.

As far as I know, no legitimate reason. And the VoIP thing may not be true now that messenger is separated. It was definitely true when they were all integrated

 

[friednoodles]

I've experienced this in iOS 8 and I have the answer to this one:

If you have push notifications enabled for Facebook, that's how it's doing it. Facebook is misusing "content-available" push notifications, which are silent push notifications designed to allow a suspended app to be woken up in the background to fetch new data.

This ability is available even if the app has background refresh turned off, as long as it was simply suspended by closing it in the normal way. Terminating the app completely by swiping it away prevents resumption of an app via "content-available" notifications (and also by background app refresh if it's enabled).

So if you simply close Facebook and don't terminate it by swiping it away, and you have push notifications enabled for Facebook, it can and will wake up in the background, even if background app refresh is off.

 

[GreyOS]

I've experienced this in iOS 8 and I have the answer to this one:

If you have push notifications enabled for Facebook, that's how it's doing it. Facebook is misusing "content-available" push notifications, which are silent push notifications designed to allow a suspended app to be woken up in the background to fetch new data.

This ability is available even if the app has background refresh turned off, as long as it was simply suspended by closing it in the normal way. Terminating the app completely by swiping it away prevents resumption of an app via "content-available" notifications (and also by background app refresh if it's enabled).

So if you simply close Facebook and don't terminate it by swiping it away, and you have push notifications enabled for Facebook, it can and will wake up in the background, even if background app refresh is off.

Thank you, very informative, and very likely gets to the bottom of it. I was aware of notifications being able to trigger fetches, as well as ability for silent notifications, but assumed this was controlled by background app refresh.

I personally believe Apple should only allow this functionality when BAR is enabled.

edit: if this is really the case when I feel this page is misleading: "[Background App Refresh] lets apps check for new content and download updates, or retrieve updated content in the background when they receive push notifications."

 

[Grayburn]

I've experienced this in iOS 8 and I have the answer to this one:

If you have push notifications enabled for Facebook, that's how it's doing it. Facebook is misusing "content-available" push notifications, which are silent push notifications designed to allow a suspended app to be woken up in the background to fetch new data.

This ability is available even if the app has background refresh turned off, as long as it was simply suspended by closing it in the normal way. Terminating the app completely by swiping it away prevents resumption of an app via "content-available" notifications (and also by background app refresh if it's enabled).

So if you simply close Facebook and don't terminate it by swiping it away, and you have push notifications enabled for Facebook, it can and will wake up in the background, even if background app refresh is off.

I disagree, i dont have FB notifications on or BAR yet i still get various hours usage in the background.

 

[friednoodles]

Sorry, I should have worded it better: I meant to say that I believe this ability is not intended behaviour from iOS.

Turning off background app refresh is supposed to stop silent "content-available" notifications as well, even if notifications are enabled, but that isn't my experience.

Even Apple's session video from this year's WWDC says that silent notifications are controlled by background app refresh, and yet, here we are: if Facebook is suspended, even if background app refresh turned off it still seems to be able to wake up. For me, disabling push notifications fixed the issue.

 

[friednoodles]

After watching the WWDC session video again (2015 What's New in Notifications session), they also say that silent "content-available" notifications are available to apps by default, even without the user giving the app permission to use notifications. However, background app refresh is supposed to disable delivery of them (according to the session, silent notifications are the mechanism behind background app refresh).

So I believe this is unintended behaviour, a bug which is allowing the app to receive "content-available" notifications (which you can receive even without giving an app permission to use notifications - that's by design according to the session video), even if background app refresh is off.

The session video isn't clear on whether granting permission to notifications and then turning them off also prevents silent notifications, but if it does that would explain why turning them off after having them enabled fixed it for me. The session seems to suggest the user facing notifications settings don't have any impact on silent "content-available" notifications and that they're controlled strictly by background app refresh.

 

[GreyOS]

Sorry, I should have worded it better: I meant to say that I believe this ability is not intended behaviour from iOS.

Turning off background app refresh is supposed to stop silent "content-available" notifications as well, even if notifications are enabled, but that isn't my experience.

Even Apple's session video from this year's WWDC says that silent notifications are controlled by background app refresh, and yet, here we are: if Facebook is suspended, even if background app refresh turned off it still seems to be able to wake up. For me, disabling push notifications fixed the issue.

Thanks for the clarification.

For a minute I wondered, perhaps 'visible' push notifications can trigger background processes without BAR being enabled (being in a slightly different category to 'silent' notifications) but I don't think I get enough visible notifications in the day for that to explain it.

I will try submitting feedback to Apple...

 

[adnbek]

The good thing is when iOS 9 is released, more and more will be aware of how much of a pig the FB app is and hopefully force them to rewrite it.

 

[Biscotti]

After a weekend (Friday - Monday) of not using my iPad I came back to this:

*see attached*

Either going to delete facebook app or turn off notifications.

 

[GreyOS]

I've submitted feedback to Apple about the Facebook app being very background hungry, with no good reason to. As friednoodles suggested it seems like an iOS bug, still present in 9.1 PB1