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Severe battery drain with Sonos app in iOS



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Have the exact same problem... Only after 7.0 update. Iphone 6S Plus. Never had any issues before but it is absolutely killing battery now with Background Activity. Reported to Sonos and they replied that they have tested 7.0 extensively and no such issues. Sent me a link to show me how to see what is using iPhone battery.... Like I'm some inept 10 year old.
Userlevel 7
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Hey guys, if you're seeing what looks like abnormal battery usage can you try turning off the iOS lockscreen for a few days to test? The lock screen has to trick the phone into playing a silent track in order for the app to be able to take over, which might use more background activity than it did previously. This should be the case with the last couple updates, and not specific to version 7.0, but it'd be great to try as a test.

We'd love to look into any trouble you might have with this though, so if you do have a lot of battery usage it'd recommend give us a call on our support line and working with a technician live. They'll take a look at the system and see if we can help improve things.
My iPhone 6 is the same since 7.0 update. Interestingly the iPad Pro seems OK. The phone won't now last a day from a full charge. It might be apple with 10.1.1 but why is the iPad OK?

So, I switched off background activity, removed Sonos from the lock screen, deleted Sonobit and had a cup of tea. One of these activities has solved the problem. Ooh and restarted the iPhone. So far so good.
Same drain issue for me iPhone 7 iOS 10.2 😞 I bought the Sonos to avoid my battery draining with airplay 😕
Also experiencing what seems like a large battery drain for the Sonos app used in the background. Have switched off the background activity to see if that helps. Not sure how I delete Sonos from the lock screen?

Userlevel 5
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Am also seeing this, I have not been using the Sonos App today to play any music in the background and it is reporting as using 11% of battery with 3.3hours of background use.

I did add a Sub today and re tuned my Playbar, but that would have been in the 18 mins screen time.

I have turned off the lock screen controls early in the week when I started seeing horrific battery life recently and when investigating it I realised is was the Sonos app... which totally tied in with getting my fist Sonos speaker.

Turning off the screen lock controls certainly improved things, but it is still hogging the battery.

Interestingly I spoke to a friend who also has just moved to Sonos and he is seeing no such issue on his iPhone 7. I am running a 7+
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Hey,

I using Iphone 6 iOS 10.0.1 version.
Haven't noticed any battery issue with Sonos app, all good so far
Userlevel 5
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Here is the diagnostic report as requested by Sonos

6991572

All music has been streamed from Apple Music
Userlevel 2
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iPhone 7 Plus on the latest iOS. Seeing major drain from Sonos app. Very sad 😞. I turned off the system's ability to use the microphone in hopes that helps with the issue. I would hate to have to uninstall this app as my iPhone is my primary connection to Sonos.

Diagnostic: 6996706
Same issue here, this is pretty ridiculous. I'm pretty new to Sonos and for the most part I really love it but there are a few things about how the product works and the overall stances the company takes that really make me scratch my head and wonder.
Userlevel 2
Had the same problem on iphone 6s (IOS 10.2) and Sonos app 7.0.1.
In Settings -> Sonos I disabled "Lock Screen Controls" and "On this Device" (I don't need this option) and this seems resolved an issue.
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Did an uninstall-reinstall and the issue seems to have fixed itself.
I'm seeing this as well. I'm on the iOS 10.3 Seed 3 public beta.

Here's what my screen shows (in attachments).

Diagnostic 7135684.
Userlevel 7
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Thanks for the details guys. We've been looking into iOS battery usage and so far it's all seemed pretty normal. The biggest drain on the battery that Sonos uses comes in two pieces, first off, the app is still going to try and keep alive access to your players while you're on a wireless network, which, even in background mode, will use a bit of the battery. The second piece, is that when you're using the iOS Lock Screen controls on Sonos, the app is "playing" a silent track on the phone. This is the only way to have a non-media app take control over the lock screen in iOS.

If you think your system is seeing an unusually high amount of battery usage, we're happy to take a look, and I'd encourage you to give us a call on our support line.
@Ryan S, it appears that the Sonos underestimates the issue. I have been using the controller app on my IPad and IPhone 5 and no issues there. However on my IPhone 7 there is a massive energy drain. Please look into this, because this definitely ruins the sonos experience....
I have the same problem with the battery drain with the app running in the background. I tried to re install the app which didn't help but now I got the lock screen settings which weren't available before. But still Sonos is No. 1 app using most of my battery power and I don't use this app frequently. My phone dies after 10 hours of lying around with 9.4 hours Sonos running in background and 5 minutes on screen!? From the screenshots you can see that your app is going through the roof, far off other common apps in power consumption! Any suggestions?

Sonos app V7.2, iOS 10.3.1



Userlevel 2
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Hi tafneo,

If you are concerned with the battery usage on your iPhone, I would recommend disabling the Lock Screen Controls and force quitting the Sonos app when you are not using it so that nothing is running in the background.

To disable Lock Screen Control, please go to your iPhone Settings > Sonos and you will see the Lock screen control on/off button there.
Hello tafneo, welcome to the Community and thank you for the screen captures.

The surefire but inconvenient workaround is to force quit the app when you're not using it. I updated my iPad to 10.x and even without the Sonos app opened, I could see that any sort of network activity would wear the battery charge down pretty quickly.
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Same issue here on my iPhone 7. Battery usage in background is high and has killed my battery life. I have now turned off the lock screen controls and quit the app after use but that really does question the usefulness of the Sonos app.
Userlevel 4
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Hi idparkinson, welcome to the community. Please do note that the 66% you see is the percentage of battery used so far, compared to other apps, and not of the whole battery. If you look at how much Sonos has been on (7.4 hours) compared to other apps (mostly a small number of minutes) it's not surprising that Sonos has the majority of the usage here.

If you are concerned about your phone's battery, have a look at this article I found online, which has quite a few good tips for improving the life.
This is still a big issue in the current version of the app. I can use Sonos for just an hour, on my iPad Pro 10.5 or iPhone 8 Plus, and if I don't remember to force quit the app, it will just eat through my battery in the background, while I'm not even playing music anymore.

Here's an example of my iPad. I had about 80% battery life when I last finished using Sonos and the iPad. The Sonos app ran in the background for over 24 hours and it was at 26% battery when I came back to the iPad this morning. Based on the iOS battery stats, Sonos has contributed to 74% of an approximate 64% decrease (it started at around 90% charge yesterday) in charge level in 24 hours. That's ~47% of the sizable iPad Pro battery used by Sonos in 24 hours. My iPad battery was dead the other day for seemingly no apparent reason. Now I know the reason.

This is not normal battery usage. There is no reasonable explanation for this level of battery drain. Especially if Sonos is not in use. It's highly inconvenient to pick up a device after a day or two and have the battery be dead, because I chose to listen to Sonos for a bit and forgot I need to force quit the app or disable the lock screen control. I have not encountered another music app with a lock screen control and anywhere near this level of drain when it should be idle. Please fix this!

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I always force quit after setting the music, not great.
Same problem. This is very bad. A deal-breaker level problem. SONOS please take this seriously.
Would highly recommend submitting a diagnostic if you're experiencing this issue. It might help Sonos figure out what the issue is, since it's only affecting a few people. It might be hard for them to reproduce. For instance, I'm not experiencing it on any of the three iOS devices I use. But that doesn't negate the experience you're having. Giving them additional data to base their testing on would likely be a good thing.
This is a terrible problem which is already haunting me for weeks without improvement. The only thing that "works" is force quitting the sonos app after each time you need it, which defeats its purpose and is totally not what Apple recommends. Besides that it is easily forgotten which leads to an empty battery when you need it the most.

See screenshot below: the sonos controller has been used ONCE to start an internet radio stream on the sonos player via tunein radio. Afterwards it hasn't been opened. But apparently it used up 45% of my battery whilst doing nothing in the background. Thats more then 3 apps (a game, tweetbot and safari) which have been used for over 70min on screen but only used 32% battery whilst doing so in the same 24 hours interval.

Please FIX this.

Edit: Latest iOS version, Latest Sonos App version, iPhone 7.