Facebook iOS App Background Activity

duffers20

duffers20

duffers20

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I have recently noticed that my iPhone 5S (running the latest iOS version) has been eating through battery life at quite a pace.

After a quick check in the Battery Usage section, I noticed that the Facebook app was the culprit and has a large percentage of use (over 30%) marked as Background Activity.

I have the the global Background App Refresh switched on but have had it turned off for Facebook for quite sometime now. Also, the Facebook app is kept up to date.

My question is: how can the Facebook app be using battery life with 'background activity' if the app hasn't been allowed to use Background App Refresh? Am I missing the point of Background App Refresh?

Thanks :)
 
Mine was doing this too and I also had background activity turned off, I deleted the facebook app for a couple of days and re-installed, seems to have been better since.

Just checked my usage, oddly it says music has used 15% and low signal, yet I haven't used the Music app in days and today I've been home all day with good signal and wifi.
 
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I had the same a while back. I left my ipad air 2 fully charged. Came back home after work to find the battery totally drained. When I plugged it back in and powered it up I looked in the battery usage section and found that the facebook app had used the entire battery. I make sure I double press the home button and totally close it now. Seems to prevent it doing anything
 
Glad to hear its not just me.

I still don't understand how the app can actually perform background activities when its been explicitly set to not do so.

I might ask a friend who has an Apple Developer subscription to see if we can perform any diagnostics to see if the device is doing anything 'in the background' and if so, what its actually doing as I'm curious!
 
No-One said:
It was open in the background. Background activity was turned off. Fully closing it solves the problem. I shouldn't have to do that though
Click to expand...

Direct from Apple's support site. I'd say with Facebook's iOS app history as being a hog on resources its not a massive surprise.

Screenshot%202015-09-06%2016.46.49.png
 
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allosunshine said:
Direct from Apple's support site. I'd say with Facebook's iOS app history as being a hog on resources its not a massive surprise.

Screenshot%202015-09-06%2016.46.49.png
Click to expand...

Yes, the background activity you see in the usage is related to when the app is still running before it goes in to suspended state. That's what will be causing Facebook to declare background activity in the usage stats. I am running iOS 9 and have Background App Refresh turned off globally, but quite a few apps still take up background activity as they can still run until iOS suspends them. The time will vary depending on the nature of the app. This article here gives a good overview of all of iOS program states: http://www.speirs.org/blog/2012/1/2/misconceptions-about-ios-multitasking.html
 
allosunshine said:
Direct from Apple's support site. I'd say with Facebook's iOS app history as being a hog on resources its not a massive surprise.

Screenshot%202015-09-06%2016.46.49.png
Click to expand...

I still can't believe that Apple actually allow this!

What is the point of having such a fine-grained selection process for allowing apps to run in the background if they are going to allow 'some background activity' to continue.

Slightly frustrated with Apple. The whole point of the restrictions they place on apps running on their devices is to protect the user from apps (regardless of the developer) to do things like use excessive battery life, or use cellular data when they have been restricted not to.
 
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