iPad Air Mysterious “Sidecar” iPad shown in battery usage settings

[_AppleUser]

Hey everyone,

I noticed while trying to look at my battery usage in the Settings app, and I noticed this “Sidecar” background activity draining my battery, even though I’m not even using Sidecar on my iPad. This is currently happening for me on the latest iPadOS 15 Beta, but it was also happening in 14.6 and 14.7.

You can a screen recording attached that it shows ”Sidecar” as a task that is draining the battery. Most of the time it’s been happening has been on the charger, but has also been overnight not connected to power, so I wonder what is happening. It is a bit concerning as it shows 90 hours of background use in the last 10 days, and for multiple hours where I’m clearly not using and I’m sleeping during those times.

I haven’t used sidecar for my iPad at least for the past month, only been using sidecar barely on other old iPads. This has been an everyday occurrence and no restart or anything does anything to it.

Anyone know what could be the reason or why this is happening? I find it very mysterious how my battery drains and how this has been only happening overnight.

 

[Zazoh]

Is sidecar turned on on your Mac? I haven’t used it only played with a bit but I don’t see sidecar anywhere in usage. When I check on Mac the iPad is not selected in connect to. As side-card doesn’t require cable to work. I’m not on beta.

 

[_AppleUser]

Is sidecar turned on on your Mac? I haven’t used it only played with a bit but I don’t see sidecar anywhere in usage. When I check on Mac the iPad is not selected in connect to. As side-card doesn’t require cable to work. I’m not on beta.

I have sidecar on my Mac (which is actually my brother‘s mac on the same Apple ID) and I do have it turned on, but I don’t use it since I barely use his Mac Mini for Sidecar. I don’t connect to my iPad for Sidecar use, but I still don’t know why that shows up in my battery usage.

Same here, I check on the Mac and my iPad is not connected to it, but it’s still weird how it shows as background activity, and I know nobody is connecting to sidecar at like 2am in the morning to cause that background activity. Very strange that it still shows like that.

 

[Lobwedgephil]

Likely due to the beta and the new changes with connecting iPads to Macs seamlessly, etc.

 

[_AppleUser]

Likely due to the beta and the new changes with connecting iPads to Macs seamlessly, etc.

I mean, that could be a possible reason.

But I‘m not completely sure if that could be a problem, since this was also showing up before I updated to the beta in iPadOS 14.5, 14.6, and 14.7. And there is only one Mac on the Apple ID that has sidecar compatibility, which is running macOS Big Sur 11.3, so I don’t know how this is being caused.

Even today as I’m discussing in this thread, it still shows lots of background activity, 7 hours in background today alone!