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Since updating to iOS 14 (now 14.0.1) Health is draining my battery even though I don't use it much. For example, just one minute of use

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results in 37% of battery use

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and I need to recharge 2-4 times (iPhone XS) to get through a day, rendering my phone pretty much useless.

What causes this and how do I fix it. Is it another bug with iOS 14?

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  • Do you have apps other than the Apple Watch feeding data into your Health.app database?
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Sep 26, 2020 at 14:33
  • @bmike: Yes. I've started disabling those. I have a few suspects. A few apps have had recent buggy updates (Welltory) and I'm just deleting those altogether to see what happens.
    – orome
    Commented Sep 26, 2020 at 14:36
  • This used to be so infuriating since we didn’t have easy access to the power metrics. Now Apple tattles on apps like Fi (dog collar) that abusively ping location constantly as well as CPU hogs. Make sure you post your answer once you nail this - no need to accept my “triage” steps answer if you prefer to nail down the true cause here.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Sep 26, 2020 at 15:45
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    @bmike It's looking like it is indeed Welltory. I'll sleuth a bit more but disabling Health connectivity in Welltory seems to have dealt with the problem.
    – orome
    Commented Sep 26, 2020 at 19:25

1 Answer 1

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If you have any third-party apps with entitlements for integration, check it’s not stuck in a loop. In your case, from the comments, Welltory was the item causing a sync or data update loop responsible for the battery drain.

You can disable their access without deleting the data they put in and then measure / reboot the phone and only re-enable them when you know the battery usage is under control.

Past that, here are some general ideas if you can’t pinpoint a specific app integration that is over active.

Consider ruling out a temporary backlog of data processing if you updated iOS in the last 36 hours. If for some reason you think it’s stuck or taking too long, one force quit of the device and then a normal restart and observe things for 24 hours worked for me. Also, be sure any app writing data or reading data are disabled / up to date. Health could just be the abusee if other apps are poking it too much or wrongly.

You can also always back up and restore if you think your device needs that.

I do not do this lightly, but there are cases when the saved application state for things like Photo processing, health app processing and others can get stuck.

  1. Back up your device - you need to be ready to erase and reinstall, so be sure you have a solid backup or save important app data to the cloud and verify it.
  2. One time - power down the phone cleanly. (Slide to power off)
  3. Verify that the issue of high battery usage continues. Consider deleting other apps that interact with health / photos (you have a backup - this is a short term deletion).
  4. Then force power off the device - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201412 - this discards all saved application state.
  5. The device will start all the processes again - expect high CPU / high heat, high battery drain until the processes complete.
  6. If you can’t wait any longer - erase the device entirely and do not restore the backup.

Now - be sure the energy is low / the OS is good, and it idles properly - now do the erase / restore to get your apps and data back. Also, be sure to get any updates - X.0 releases are tested very well, but often without lots of live data - so it’s almost always the data we bring to the update that reveals bugs - not that an empty phone on X.0 release is buggy.

The only solution is to not update the first 2 weeks of a new release and let others find / report / triage / isolate these situations.

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  • It's been a week. Is there any chance an app that has Health permissions could be tallied under Health in battery use? I have a one or two Health-linked apps that have had recent buggy updates (e.g. Welltory).
    – orome
    Commented Sep 26, 2020 at 14:22
  • @orome I had one device where photos needed the power down and a night on charge to get caught up. A friend had health. - it’s rare, but neither of us saw these in the beta testing with our data. All our issues were sorted in 36 hours with the force reset stage - no need to erase, but we were prepared to finish the steps I’ve used in the past and know to work now on 14.0 / 14.0.1 don’t solve yours.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Sep 26, 2020 at 14:32
  • "The only solution is to not update the first 2 weeks of a new release and let others find / report / triage / isolate these situations." QFT. My bad really. Since around iOS 9 Apple hasn't released an update that was stable. I should have waited (I usually do.)
    – orome
    Commented Sep 26, 2020 at 14:35
  • Nah - there’s no guarantee people will find your edge case. Good news - we have so much better tools to sleuth it out now that apple reports on its apps like it does third party ones. So sorry your battery is taking a beating. 10.4 has some prodigious power bursts when it decides to process data IMO. I've not had a bad update since well before iOS 9 - so fingers crossed my lucky streak continues.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Sep 26, 2020 at 15:46

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