PLEX mobile is eating up battery

Plex Players Mobile Devices
1

Server Version#: 1.18.5.2309
Client Version#: 6.7.2
When using PLEX in audio mode only, screen off, my phone gets hot and the battery drains in 2 hrs. Normally I get a full day from one charge when using any of my other music players or Audible. What is going on and how do I fix this?

2 Likes
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Is this with sync’ed content? Are you in airplane mode?

Is it any better if you update to the latest version, 6.7.2?

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Synced content, airplane mode or not either way. Yes on 6.7.2.

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I also have this issue. I have 40Gb of music synced to my iPhone XS Max. Data has been turned off in iOS settings for the Plex app, and I always play my music through the “Downloads & Sync” tab. The device runs hot. I listen using first generation AirPods. I have a ten hour shift, and if I listen the entire time with the screen off, the phone will be dead before the sun comes up. Reading about this issue people had in the past, they thought it might constantly be logging things. I have verbose logging turned off.

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Hello PLEX moderator’s/Ninja’s,
I am seeing other similar posts with no resolution. This is a pretty big deal for mobile users. If your battery dies in 2 hours of listening with the screen off there is not much use to PLEX mobile for audio. I mean back when I watched more videos on PLEX I used to get at least 4 hrs battery life out of watching movies on PLEX, which should use much more power than just listening? The heating up of the phone tells me there is something seriously wrong with the code for listening to music on PLEX.
Any updates would be greatly appreciated.

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Updated server to 1.18.6.2368. Since I am pretty sure this is client side I am not surprised this made no difference.

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Why can’t I edit the original post more than once? I edited it once and now when I try to click on the pencil it just takes me to a history of edits but there is no clear way to edit that post.

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2 days since last Moderator updated. can you add something please @darcilicious ?

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12 days since last moderator response? Any body out there?

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Suffering the same over here. The iOS Plex app is using an incredible amount of power regardless of what it’s doing, playing synced music or otherwise.

Recently if it’s casting something to a Sonos device (not from content local to the phone, from the server), the phone gets properly hot.

Something is really not right with the current iOS client.

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A post was split to a new topic: PLEX mobile is eating up battery

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Same problem, iPadOS 13.14.1, Plex 6.12 :frowning:

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I have the same issue on my iPhone SE/ iOS 13.
And I have it only when server is reachable by my phone. I‘m not sure, but it looks like it’s t syncing of the media position that drains the battery.
In 30min my battery dropped off by 50%, phone was hot. I put it in airplane mode, and it cool down after a while, and battery was not decreasing as rapidly as before.
I didn’t see it before because most of the time, my server is unreachable by my phone, I just sync content in the morning before leaving the house.

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I just made a test. I played only 5 min of a show on my phone, I lost 18% of battery. I switched to airplane mode, battery kept decreasing fast. Then I killed Plex, relaunched and replay while being in airplane mode, and after 5 more minutes of playback, I didn’t lose even 1% of battery.
There is seriously something wrong here


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Having the same experience with synced content and playing from a server. Battery is draining very fast and my iPhone is getting incredibly hot too!

iPhone 6S Plus, iOS 13.5.

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Still having the issue and it’s making Plex app unusable when online. I have to switch to airplane mode when I want to play some video otherwise my battery is drained really fast and my phone is getting really really hot


1 Like
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Same issues I’m having still, when playing from the server or synced content when online. Phone gets very hot, and battery is drained very fast!

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Seeing the same issue. Essentially, all 6.x versions of the iOS app have been terrible for battery life so i rolled back to 5.x and all is well again. Last night, I listened to an hour and a half of music (screen off) and my battery dropped to 98%.

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