App on the background runs out iPhone's battery

[TempestFire]

I have used Fitbit app for years on various iPhone with various trackers, always had background app refresh on and all day sync and not had any problems. Moved from a Charge 2 to a Versa in last couple of weeks and now Fitbit app has a massive impact on my iPhone battery life, 2.6 hrs of background use in the last 24 hrs, what the..... what can it possibly be doing. I have tried disabling background app refresh and all day sync and it’s still 1 hr of background use in 24hrs. For comparison the next app is the Apple mail app and that has 6 minutes of background use in 24hrs. 

Anyone suggest anything to try? I have not  been using connected GPS so can’t blame that.

Moderator edit: updated subject for clarity

[dlucas7]

MyFitbit app chewed up $35 worth of data in 1 week by doing something overnight for TWO HOURS every night between midnight-2am. I’ve tried deleting the app, making sure I have the latest IOS release and then re-installing the app. I’ll monitor it and see what happens next. I may have to resort to denying it data usage overnight if it continues. 

[thenameless1]

@dlucas7 I deleted my app and reinstalled it.  Immediately after reinstalling  i set the track back up again.   I turned off all day sync and set my location to only while using the app, background app refresh  was "left on"

According to apple i spent 20 min in the app, which is about right  i went through every setting. I also managed to log 2 hours and 58 min of background usage!

My all day sync was turned off!  What is the Fitbit app syncing on the background? How is it syncing when i turned off all day sync? Why is it syncing?

[ultravista]

My all day sync was turned off! What is the Fitbit app syncing on the background? How is it syncing when i turned off all day sync? Why is it syncing?

Samsung Note 8 for me and having the same problems. On the Android, I can see the drain attributed to 'bluesleep' wakelocks. With the Fitbit app installed, my phone never goes to sleep because bluetooth is keeping it awake. 

I've gone through extensive testing and wihtout question, it is the Fitbit app causing the drain. 

Like others, everything is turned off yet the Fitbit app is using bluetooth to keep my device awake.

[Mistydrucker]

I've been having this same problem but only for the last few weeks.  Maybe I've never noticed how much battery fitbit was using because I always had a charger case.  Since removing that I put my phone in my purse in the morning before work and when I come out at 4 the phone is completely dead.  I have all notifications and background refresh off.  When it's charged again the battery setting tells me fitbit used 99%! Why is this happening? I do force quit all apps in the morning before putting my phone away.  This doesn't make any sense to me and I'm surprised more people aren't reporting the issue.  I have a ChargeHR and iphone 6S which both are up to date.  Today I will try deleting the app and reinstalling to see if that helps at all.  Last night I removed it from bluetooth.  

[dlucas7]

Hi Misty, 

I tried all that, deleting the app and re-installing to no avail, my battery still runs down. Iv3 also had to dent my Fitbit app access to mobile data as it was using up my data allowance. It never used to do this for the first y months or so that I had it, it’s only since the app update and ionic firmware update that I’ve had these problems. 

Fitbit, can you refer this issue to support please?

[ultravista]

As another user suggested, just log out of the application - it will stop
using battery.

It doesn't solve the problem but does stop the battery drain.

[Mistydrucker]

This morning I deleted the app before work. Obviously this is not ideal but my phone was at 76% instead of dead at the end of the day. About 5 hours ago I downloaded it again to log my activity for the day. I just checked and Fitbit only used 1% of my battery. I’m hoping this one time delete and reinstall corrected the issue for good but I’ll keep you posted. 

[Mark8193]

When will fitbit ever solve this iPhone battery drain?  My wife has had to kill her fitbit app on her iPhone 6s+ to stop the battery drain forever (kill by swiping up).  I am now having to do the same thing on my iPhone X.  Clearly the fitbit app is trying to do things in the background when the fitbit app has not been killed even though we have background disabled.  I.e., the fitbit app is not honoring the background disabled setting.

We wonder if the fact that our cell phones and fitbits are often at different ends of the house, especially at night, is a factor.  All-Day Sync is disabled

The bottom line continues to be that the fitbit app is not honoring the background disabled setting.

[dufte0]

I've exactly the same issue. Its an app bug. App is constantly running in background, if you dont remove it from recent apps list.I've this since i've switched to charge 4. 24 sync is disabled, background sync is disabled, too. Only removing it from recent apps list, solves it for me. I'm the latest iOS version.

[gkbdvm]

I am also having this problem.  bought the versa 2 in March.  I am using an Iphone 5s and have the latest firmware on the Versa 2.  I only turn on background when I am going for a walk to use the gps to track my walk.  No other apps are open on my Iphone.  After 47 minutes, my phone battery went from 100%. to 58%.  Screen time on battery was 11 minutes, background was 53 minutes.  Not sure I will keep this Fitbit.  I have tried the reinstall as suggested as well as all the other suggestions up to writing this message.

Has got to be a software glitch!

[Almaviva]

I think there’s a lot of confusion about what disabling background refresh does on an iPhone. Basically, not much. I don’t have a link to hand at the moment, but I believe it only prevents an app doing a very occasional check in to some base site to check for updated information. You feel it should prevent an app like Fitbit from continually talking to its device, but I don’t believe it does. I did find that turning off All-Day sync for the device helped. I now never look at the Fitbit app other than once in the morning when I open it up and let it sync with the device to show me yesterday’s stats, and that seems to work for me. But it does seem that others have different experiences.

[dufte0]

I'm using a pihole in my network, so i can see which devices requesting which domain on a specific time frame. When i'm let fitbit runnning in the background, where background sync is disabled, it requests several fitbit domains for every 15 minutes or so. So its basically do internet requests in background. Could be, because charge 4 have a weather app, where the weather data need to be fetched from the there. There where reportings that other apps also can hang in the background and kill battery in latest iOS versions. I think, apple need to be more restrictive. Notification alerts still work, even when the app is closed. So there is ne need to be active all the time.

[RicMus]

Hi - I managed to resolve the issue only by turning off the Bluetooth connection between my Iconic and iPhone XR. However, the new generation of Alta Inspire HR does not generate the same issue - my partner has Alta Inspire HR with Bluetooth-enabled notification on and it does not drain her battery. Therefore, I guess this is a defect of previous fitbit smart watch. Iconic cost me a lot, more than GBP 200, whilst Alta Inspire HR is less than half of that. Either you send a software upgrade or I might be returning the watch because it's faulty.