Unusual Find My background battery drain after setting up AirTag

[Cruncher]

Do you guys also use Family Sharing? Just asking if that could maybe an issue.
I never had Issues with Find My Background Activity until the last few days or mayebe weeks.
The only thin I changed was adding two people to my Family Sharing but all Location Sharings are disabled.

 

[coso]

I don't and still had Find My background activity

 

[537635]

this makes me really angry. if it was 3rd party — ok, but this is a native product that they've been working on for like 2 years. it shouldn't f—k up the ecosystem...

This!

 

[mg51015bb]

Do you guys also use Family Sharing? Just asking if that could maybe an issue.
I never had Issues with Find My Background Activity until the last few days or mayebe weeks.
The only thin I changed was adding two people to my Family Sharing but all Location Sharings are disabled.

Yep, I use Family Sharing. But I’ve been doing Family Sharing for a good deal longer than the issues I’ve had with Find My battery drain. Maybe something changed with one of my family member devices and its causing my devices to constantly ping (or be pinged) with location requests.

 

[alexandr]

So... Over the course of last 3 nights I noticed a decrease in the amount of battery life that is taken up by this background activity. 1 night my phone remained at 100% overnight. Second night it went down to 99%. And last night it went from 89% to 86%. This is much better than losing on average 10% overnight. I feel like this didn't happen right away after 15.3, but not sure... Has anyone else noticed this?

 

[alexandr]

Bueller?..

 

[mg51015bb]

Still happening for me. Appears to be a HomePod / Thread bug and might be getting fixed in 15.4 HomePod release.

 

[alexandr]

Still happening for me. Appears to be a HomePod / Thread bug and might be getting fixed in 15.4 HomePod release.

Interesting. I don't have a HomePod, yet was experiencing this...

 

[SaguaroSeven]

Still happening for me. Appears to be a HomePod / Thread bug and might be getting fixed in 15.4 HomePod release.

What makes you say this? [ref?]

 

[Jalilboy]

Happened to me as well on my SE 2020. Without this issue, the battery lifetime is already bad. After pairing with AirTag it's even worse lol.

Phone: iPhone SE 2020
iOS version: 15.3.1
AirTag FW: 1.0.291

Spoiler: Consumption

It's in Indonesian, I hope you're able to guess the content.
Notes:
A: Unpair -> Pair -> Reboot iPhone (not much differences as before)
B: Unpaired the AirTag (back to normal idle consumption)
C: Paired the AirTag again (even worse than A LMAO)

Update: I managed to fix the battery consumption rate from C to A by disabling the bluetooth from settings instead of control center for several minutes and turn it back on.

I managed to test the power consumption on a newly setup iPhone 13 Pro. The idle power consumption is still increased when paired with an AirTag although it's not as noticeable as the SE 2020 due to the bigger battery capacity.

Spoiler: iPhone 13 Pro Consumption

AirTag Power Consumption

Paired With AirTag

No AirTag

Already submitted the feedback to Apple. For now the AirTags stays in my drawer I guess.

 

[contacos]

I am about to toss out my 3 AirTags. My iPad has lost 30 % of battery since Monday (I did not even touch the iPad) and it is showing "Find My" as the culprit even though I have location settings and "Find my network" turned off???

"Find my" is also draining over 10% on my iPhone over night.

 

[great_vc]

15.4 is out. Has same privacy new thingy's for airtag. If anyone try again airtags please post if you see any problem resolved.

 

[PixieTink]

I honestly don’t mean any disrespect to anyone in this thread but as I’m reading all I can think is- this is ********. Why are any of us trying to figure out how to fix this defective bug? We all know Apple overcharges for their products they need to fix this ****— CALL—NONSTOP until this is fixed. I don’t know about you but I didn’t pay almost $2000 for an IPad with a battery drain. It’s crap. So while it’s possible someone on this forum may figure it out…. I’m going to make myself a pain in Apple’s ass.

 

[Jalilboy]

I honestly don’t mean any disrespect to anyone in this thread but as I’m reading all I can think is- this is ********. Why are any of us trying to figure out how to fix this defective bug? We all know Apple overcharges for their products they need to fix this ****— CALL—NONSTOP until this is fixed. I don’t know about you but I didn’t pay almost $2000 for an IPad with a battery drain. It’s crap. So while it’s possible someone on this forum may figure it out…. I’m going to make myself a pain in Apple’s ass.

I can almost taste the salt coming out of my monitor, but yeah I agree that the AirTag shouldn't affect battery life too much. Even an Apple Watch doesn't really have noticeable impact to my iPhone SE, there should be no reason for a small Bluetooth LE device like an AirTag consumes battery more than an Apple Watch which have significantly more features than an AirTag.

Anyway, I've updated my iPhone SE 2020 to 15.4 and the battery consumption is more or less the same as 15.3.1 (line A in this post)

 

[Wils_sliW]

Just to share my experience. 3 AirTags paired. iPhone 11 + iPad Pro 5th 12.9


I had battery draining visible on the iphone only. Unpaired the tags and then paired again.
Now the iphone is like the iPad always was.

Hour by hour nighttime you can see how the percentage is 100% sometimes but there is no actual draining. Then from 8:00 - 9:00 you see the percentage falls to 2% only by having used other apps for 6 minutes.
Similar/same thing on the iPhone.

 

[Wils_sliW]

In the privacy settings > location services > Find my is set to ”While using”
And system services (at the bottom of the location services page) is set like in the screenshot

 

[SaguaroSeven]

This is only one of about six issues I have with Apple products. There are threads for all of them with people reporting these problems and not really finding solutions.

I’m not excusing this problem on Apple’s part, but it is complicated. The problem is clearly not existing for all customers or even most. If you are familiar with software development at all you will understand that it’s in a terrible state wrt quality. Software is crap today. Business pressure is to add features over quality and fixes. Look at Windows releases over the past 2-3 yrs and you’ll see “fixes” that break things, and even many that don’t actually fix security bugs. iOS 15.4/Monterey 12.3 seems to have degraded Airplay reliability on my home network!

These problems frustrate me for sure. But expecting perfection in any tech/software is a prescription for disappointment.

 

[iMattically]

I've been concerned about my battery life so I read a little bit and came across this thread. I remember my phone being great at night while not using it. But a few months ago I got 2 airtags (and there are also 2 other connected to another device at my home). Now during the 6 hours at night I lose 20% of my battery. I remember the line being flat during the night when I got this phone.

This morning I removed both AirTags from my Find My and I'll see if it gets better.

 

[Jalilboy]

Happened to me as well on my SE 2020. Without this issue, the battery lifetime is already bad. After pairing with AirTag it's even worse lol.

Phone: iPhone SE 2020
iOS version: 15.3.1
AirTag FW: 1.0.291

Spoiler: Consumption

View attachment 1962536
It's in Indonesian, I hope you're able to guess the content.
Notes:
A: Unpair -> Pair -> Reboot iPhone (not much differences as before)
B: Unpaired the AirTag (back to normal idle consumption)
C: Paired the AirTag again (even worse than A LMAO)

Update: I managed to fix the battery consumption rate from C to A by disabling the bluetooth from settings instead of control center for several minutes and turn it back on.

I managed to test the power consumption on a newly setup iPhone 13 Pro. The idle power consumption is still increased when paired with an AirTag although it's not as noticeable as the SE 2020 due to the bigger battery capacity.

Spoiler: iPhone 13 Pro Consumption

AirTag Power Consumption
View attachment 1965102

Paired With AirTag
View attachment 1965099

No AirTag
View attachment 1965100

Already submitted the feedback to Apple. For now the AirTags stays in my drawer I guess.

The battery consumption is much better with the following software:

• iPhone SE 2020 with iOS 15.5
• Two AirTag with firmware 1.0.301

Spoiler: Battery consumption

I guess the feedbacks works.

 

[Novius89]

Bought an AirTag yesterday, mounted it on my bike, that’s 3 stories down in the basement.

my phone was empty after the night it went from 82% to 0% from 00:00 till 03:00. Phone slide 1mm of the ikea charging pad so it was dead when I woke up.

100% battery usage from find me app.

 

[osplo]

Bought an AirTag yesterday, mounted it on my bike, that’s 3 stories down in the basement.

my phone was empty after the night it went from 82% to 0% from 00:00 till 03:00. Phone slide 1mm of the ikea charging pad so it was dead when I woke up.

100% battery usage from find me app.

Not good.

Which iOS version are you running?

As the AirTag is new, might it need a firmware update that is not yet installed?

 

[Novius89]

All my devices are always updated to the latest.

It didn’t occur anymore after this one night.
Yesterday I rode a lot on the bike (so near the AirTag) probably it updated itself. I will check the firmware next time when I am near the AirTag.

Thank you for your reply 😊

Edit: forgot to mention that I checked the battery usage from the previous nights, find me isn’t showing up any more, only 2-5% during the day.

 

[Turribeach]

So I haven't read this whole thread but I wanted to give people my findings in case it helps you too. Like most in this thread my iPad Pro started to have a battery drain issue where I will loose as much as 15% of battery per day and the culrpit was Find My. I don't use my iPad every day and was really annoyed to find the iPad at less than half the charge if I left it iddle for more than a couple of days.

I saw this Apple post which suggested that it was due to AirTags and that turning off BlueTooth did "solve" the problem but I wanted to know the root cause of the problem. Then one of my friends, who knows I have a dog and that the dog destroyed lots of Apple cables, said it could be my dog. And he was right! Well my dog is not a sorcerer that can destroy batteries with black magic, he just has an Apple AirTag fitted to him because he got lost a few times and we have been able to find him thanks to the AirTag. So after my friend's suggestion I took the AirTag off my dog and left it on a quiet place for 24hs. Bingo! My iPad's battery did not drain. As soon as I fitted the AirTag back to my dog again the battery drain issue started back.

So here is what I think is happening. AirTags don't have a GPS nor have wifi so they don't know the location and when the location changes, nor can they send that information back to Apple. That's way AirTags rely on iOS devices around them to communicate their position. The AirTag will say "Hi I am here and here is my ID" via Bluetooth. Then the iOS device will pick up this Bluetooth transmission and check it's GPS and send the location data back to Apple. Using the GPS and wifi to transfer data to Apple's servers is not a "cheap" activity, this explains why my iPad's battery is being drained. I presume this issue is also affecting my other iOS devices like iPhones but since there are getting used throughout the day the additional battery usage is being hidden away. And in any case iPhone's get recharged every night so it's not a big deal if some battery was used for Find My.

AirTags probably have an accelerometer to detect when they are being moved so they can send another Bluetooth ping. If the AirTag is still and not moving it can save battery and don't send any updates since it can assume to be in the same place. But the fact is that my dog moves all the time (even at night dogs move from time to time) means his AirTag is sending updates very frequently.

Now is this a bug? Could Apple do anything to "fix" this problem? I doubt it. How could an AirTag know that is being moved around in the house rather than going out to prevent sending updates? Could Apple prioritise AirTag updates for devices that are charging rather than on battery? Maybe but that will reduce the effectiveness of the Apple tracking network.

So in my case I have 3 possible wprk arounds:

1. Remove the AirTag from my dog (not acceptable)
2. Turn off the iPad's Bluetooth (not acceptable)
3. Keep my iPad charging while not in use (acceptable)

So I hope this post helps someone else. Please share your experiences, do you have a battery drain issue due to AirTags? Do you have an AirTag placed in a place that may cause it to move a lot and send lots of updates?

Thanks!

 

[SaguaroSeven]

… So here is what I think is happening.

I think you have a pretty good (but long) description of how AirTags work, and have identified a solution. However, many people have power issues without a “tagged” dog or other moving object. It’s not clear why this is happening; there must be other causes of the drain as well? Maybe it’s another nearby person’s AirTags? Good work though!

 

[Turribeach]

I think you have a pretty good (but long) description of how AirTags work, and have identified a solution. However, many people have power issues without a “tagged” dog or other moving object. It’s not clear why this is happening; there must be other causes of the drain as well? Maybe it’s another nearby person’s AirTags? Good work though!

Yes, excellent point! It doesn't have to be YOUR AirTag causing the problem. Don't forget that Bluetooth can usually traverse walls so maybe it's your neighbour's dog that has the AirTag. Or maybe you live in a Ney York ground level appartment and lots of people walk by your window all day and night with their AirTags in their keys and bags. My wife's iMac is on the room that has the bay window to the street and one time the MacOS Bluetooth applet went crazy and started to throw popups every time a Bluetooth device was found. We were very surprised at how often this was, pretty much every time someone walked by the street...