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Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

annoying.technology

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Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#81

Post by rootusrootus »

tedunangst wrote: post #53

I must spend time near hundreds of AirTags each day, yet my battery doesn't seem to be affected. Is it possible somebody is exaggerating? Or omitting relevant info?

And we still wonder why misinformation moves so much faster than truth. It has to be some kind of emotional thing. How many people just saw the headline, immediately decided it must be true, and will now be sure to mention it any time someone mentions AirTags in the future.

I doubt this is exactly a new phenomenon, but it sure seems surprising the human race has made it as far as we have successfully.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#82

Post by [deleted] »

andrewia wrote: post #57

I've seen this issue in a slightly different context. A few years ago, my Android phone began dying much more quickly than before. Looking at the built-in battery stats, nothing was amiss and there were no apps causing excessive wakeups. It was only when I used Android Battery Historian that I saw there was a ton of bluetooth wakeups caused by Google Play Services. But why would it be waking up so much? Usually the w…

[deleted]

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#83

Post by supernova87a »

Without more detail, I find the author's observation hard to accept at face value.

The iPad battery usage being shown doesn't account for just the normal "asleep" battery drain, which, if it's not broken out specifically, could be just misleadingly assigning the Find My usage as the main part of it. (as the only thing that had active functions)

It would be better to show what the battery usage/drain is without any airtags nearby and make sure he/she isn't just measuring the normal sleeping usage and inaccurately saying that Airtags caused it.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#86

Post by lancesells »

MilaM wrote: post #7

AFAIK you don't participate in the network when Find My is disabled. Not the best solution, but maybe feasible for devices that are only used at home.

You can still find your device but only if it's turned on. So turning off the Find My network doesn't stop you from finding devices that aren't at home but it does stop you from finding ones that are turned off or run out of battery.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#87

Post by Nextgrid »

varenc wrote: post #80
Nextgrid wrote: post #4

An annoyance that is driving me away from the Apple ecosystem is the lack of choice when it comes to these new features - they are forced onto you with no way to disable them and sometimes radically modify the behavior of the device you purchased and may make it unsuitable for the original purpose you bought it for. I'm still using an iPhone and plan to get the new SE (and only because of Touch ID is back - Face ID w…

re: AirPlay speakers, if you really never want to use AirPlay you can apply a configuration profile that disables it entirely. These are the profiles that allow IT departments to enforce all sorts of policies on employee computers. You could use ProfileCreator to make one: https://github.com/ProfileCreator/ProfileCreator Increasingly it feels like powerful configuration settings are only available via IT management p…

Oh thanks, I'll definitely do that. I use profiles on iOS and am fairly familiar with them but didn't bother checking as I assumed macOS not being so locked down wouldn't have "profile-only" settings.

I'll also use the opportunity to disable Apple News, TV+, widgets and similar bloat I'm not using.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#88

Post by squeaky-clean »

stavros wrote: post #67
tedunangst wrote: post #53

I must spend time near hundreds of AirTags each day, yet my battery doesn't seem to be affected. Is it possible somebody is exaggerating? Or omitting relevant info?

Maybe the author is talking about devices that are asleep/off? They mention "weeks" at one point, making me think that the AirTags wake the devices from sleep often, which you'll notice in an iPad that dies after one week instead of a month while sleeping, but not in a phone that you charge every day.

I've actually had exactly this problem with a really old iPad recently. It would last 2-3 months if I never touched it, now it's always dead when I go to reach for it, which is maybe every 2 weeks-ish.

Just assumed the battery hit some sort of cliff but now this article has me wondering if my neighbors got an airtag.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#89

Post by pugworthy »

redleader55 wrote: post #35
picture wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a neat demo. Out of curiosity, what software/hardware did you use to see and ping nearby BLE devices?

You can do this easily with an Android phone. These are the apps I use: Lightblue nRFConnect BLE Scanner

Yes many of those are available for the iPhone too.

It's crazy how many devices you can find with those apps.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#90

Post by ec109685 »

barkerja wrote: post #15
duxup wrote: post #10

Curious, none of my devices seem to be suffering like this with my air tags all over the house. I even have some very rarely used devices where “find my” doesn't show that much usage. Is this tied to a setting or bug?

I believe it was a bug that was resolved in one of the latest iOS 15 point releases.

I saw this before and some combination of turning it off and on and updating os fixed the issue. For me it’s 2% of battery.
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