What the eff is "Safari Audio"?

[motrek]

Ever since upgrading to 11.2, my iPhone's battery life has been awful.

I keep checking my Settings/Battery screen to see if anything weird is going on, and there is one thing that is taking more and more power: Safari, with the word "Audio" written under it.

My battery charge dropped 35% while I was sleeping last night, while the phone was doing nothing, which it's never done before. I checked the Battery screen and it says "Safari (new line) Audio" is now taking up 80% of my phone's power.

I don't even really listen to anything in Safari, maybe a few seconds of the occasional YouTube clip. Is anybody else seeing this problem? I see a handful of Google hits but no real information. What gives?? Thanks in advance!

 

[MMonberg]

Found this on the web. Might be a solution to your problem.

After searching the web I found a solution. Apparently, some apps keep silent audio running in the background after video plays in the app. In my case, it was a game that rewards you if you watch a video. Turning off background app refresh for that app solved the problem with Safari audio.

 

[D.T.]

Have you looked at all your tabs in Safari? Make sure there's not some kind of infinite playback on one (that could even be an ad or something). I'd hold-tabs-close-all first, then I'd probably force close Safari ... then I'd do a reboot.

 

[motrek]

Found this on the web. Might be a solution to your problem.

After searching the web I found a solution. Apparently, some apps keep silent audio running in the background after video plays in the app. In my case, it was a game that rewards you if you watch a video. Turning off background app refresh for that app solved the problem with Safari audio.

Thanks for looking. I've had background app refresh turned off altogether for months (years?).

Looks like it might be a Safari tab playing audio (silence) in the background. I've closed all my tabs. We'll see.

I wonder if this is a new ability, for tabs to play stuff in the background. Never had this problem with iOS before, and I've been using iPhones since 2008...

 

[Painchiller]

Any news @motrek on this? I have the same unexplainable issue, cannot find anything on the whole web to solve this and Apple is not responding either.

Do you have the News widget on in the widget area? I am turning it from 4 to 1 items to see if that does any magic

 

[anubis1980]

If videos of a certain persuasion are played on my phone ( wasn’t me , I was hacked... ) safari audio pops up. Excuse the pun. Sure it’s the same for any video with audio ha

 

[TechNismo]

Had a very similar issue, but mine was camera audio taking 80% of my charge, while being in use for 1 min. Here are some of the threads i created regrading my issue. Feel free to read though some of them, and let me know if you solved it:
iPhone X iPhone X Battery Drainage Issue- Camera uses 80% of my battery!!!
Other What is Camera Audio on iPhone?
Other How do you properly restore an iPhone?

 

[FunkyTang]

You know, this stuff never happened when we were perpetually killing apps under iOS 10.

 

[ducaltoid]

Any news @motrek on this? I have the same unexplainable issue, cannot find anything on the whole web to solve this and Apple is not responding either.

Do you have the News widget on in the widget area? I am turning it from 4 to 1 items to see if that does any magic

Greetings from the future. Do you recall how/if this was resolved? I’ve tried what feels like everything at this point