I have 2 x Apple TV 4k 1st Gen (the one with the black remote). I noticed that my remote started to drain much faster that normal. After a lot of testing, swapping remotes, resetting to factory defaults, I realized that when Plex is playing anything the remote drains at 3-5% per hour and needs a charge every week instead of every 6 months.
tvOS 17.1, Plex 8.28, Samsung TV, Onkyo Amp
I don’t know what could cause this so I’m looking for any ideas or solutions that other users may have. Its is not version specific, this has been happening for a long time, I never got around to figuring out what the cause is until now.
I don’t understand it either but here are some of the tests that I did, each time I charged the remote to 100% I’ve done this a few times just to be sure.
Netflix 2 hour movie battery 99%
Prime Video 2 hour movie battery 99%
Plex 2 hour movie from local media battery 91%
Infuse Pro 2 hour movie from local media battery 99%
It makes no sent to me that Plex could have this impact on a remote but this is what I see. It’s more of an inconvenience to charge the remotes so often. If no one else sees this on ATV then it must be something in my setup.
I’ve had the same remote battery issue as @Dave300k for more than 2 years, and I now consider the Plex app as the main suspect as well.
I first noticed my remote battery draining much faster in the summer of 2021: after years of charging my remote once every 3 months or so, I now had to plug it in every 10 to 12 days.
I’ve been using Plex for local playback on my Apple TV 4K 1st gen almost exclusively since I bought it in 2019 but had to switch to Infuse in September for a month after updating tvOS because of a bug Apple introduced in 17.0. I don’t fully trust the battery level the OS reports, but I was still very surprised when it showed that my remote only lost about 30% of its charge during that month! Just the fact that the remote was still alive after 35 days of use—the same remote that couldn’t even last 2 weeks on a charge for the previous 2+ years—was notable. I switched back to Plex after Apple released 17.1 at the end of October, and my remote immediately reverted to draining at a much faster rate again, going down to almost zero in 6 or 7 days. It’s not unusual for a failing battery to have these huge jumps, and I admit that it hadn’t even crossed my mind before that the sudden battery drain could have anything to do with Plex or any other app (I always attributed it to some battery chemistry factor I couldn’t account for). But it’s even more unusual for a device with a failing battery to suddenly quadruple its battery life.
Then, about 3 weeks ago, I finally decided to switch to Infuse for the foreseeable future due to unrelated reasons (I’m not even sure they’re totally unrelated, but the state of the Apple TV app is not the subject of this thread). I charged my battery to 100% since I started to suspect that the mysterious temporary battery revival may, however unlikely it may seem, have had something to do with that app switch in September. Today, 3 weeks after the switch, my remote battery is at 83% (that includes ~2 hours of Plex use during which it dropped 5%, btw). I’d have had to charge it twice already had it been draining at its usual rate. Since 2021 I’ve changed the location of my Apple TV, upgraded my TV, had a couple of different HDMI cables, and the only thing that restored the battery life was switching from Plex to Infuse. It seems so improbable, and I don’t have enough data to be 100% certain yet, but at this point I’m pretty confident it was the Plex app that had been draining my remote battery all this time. I agree with Dave that it’s a very minor inconvenience, but I find the possibility that an app could affect the remote battery to such an extent unexpected and kind of ridiculous (what could it possibly be doing?).
Update: 6 weeks since the switch to Infuse and the last charge – and the battery is only down to 70%. It’s clear Plex had been draining the battery the whole time. My only guess is that it has something to do with the new remote Apple shipped with the 2021 Apple TV model, since it seems the battery drain started right after Plex added support for it (I think scrolling through the video timeline is implemented differently on the new remote if I’m not mistaken). I also happen to be one of the few people who likes the old remote, so I’m glad there was nothing wrong with the battery after all. I hope someone from Plex looks into it at some point, though obviously there are vastly more important issues to address.
I also ended up moving to Infuse for my two ATV’s in the end. Charging the remote every 5th day was getting a bit too much. After a week of Infuse both remotes are on 99% with the same usage as Plex. I’ll check if there is any difference when Plex gets updated but for now Infuse is my solution for my ATV’s and Plex for everything else.
I think there’s zero chance it ever gets fixed, quite frankly. It clearly doesn’t affect the new remote. Almost nobody complains about it now, and there are fewer people using the old remote every day.
It’s not a deal breaker for me, either, I’d consider switching back to Plex if they ever fix 4K video playback and the broken AirPlay in the new audio engine. Infuse is a great app, though, and constantly improving, and I agree that it’s nice not having to charge the remote every week (I haven’t needed to charge it once since my initial post in November, and it’s still at ~30%).
