Find My - Battery Drain Even When Not Running

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Find My - Battery Drain Even When Not Running

Like so many have reported over the last years, Find My drains battery. I have been lucky so far and it was not the case on any of my devices. Until recently. Now it appears as the ONLY app using the battery overnight on my iPhone 14 Pro. I switched Find My off in the phone settings (both in Apple Id and in Location Services) and made sure that the app itself was not running on the phone. Still, the battery drain has remained.

The other Apple devices I have is an iPad Pro 11" (not showing Find My in the battery status at all and not losing almost any charge overnight), Mac Mini M2 Pro, two Apple Watches (4 and 7 series) and AirPods Pro 2. All the devices are running the latest versions of the respective OSs.

Will appreciate any help for stopping this battery drain.

iPhone 14 Pro

Posted on Mar 15, 2023 8:38 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Lawrence Finch

Community+ 2025

Level 10

228,618 points

Mar 15, 2023 8:44 AM in response to Jerry_D

Find My Service is ALWAYS running, as long as the phone is powered on, and even for 24 hours after the phone is powered off. The Find My Service is independent of the Find My app, so killing the app does not stop the service. The ONLY way to stop the service is to sign out of Find My, which also disables Activation Lock on your phone.

But the real concern is that you are not charging overnight. The absolute best way to get maximum use on a charge, as well as slow the decline of battery capacity long term is to enable Optimized Battery Charging (Settings/Battery/Battery Health) and charge the device overnight, every night. The battery will fast charge to 80%, then pause. During the nighttime pause the phone will use mains power instead of battery power, allowing the battery to “rest”, and thus reducing the need to charge the battery quite as often. The phone will resume charging to reach 100% when you are ready to use your phone; it will “learn” your usage pattern. If you enable iCloud Backup (Settings/[your name]/iCloud - iCloud Backup) the phone will back up overnight also, assuring that you can never lose more than the current day’s updates. Here's more information→About Optimized Battery Charging on your iPhone - Apple Support

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Answer 2

Mar 15, 2023 1:09 PM in response to Jerry_D

It’s also your phone that has to be off for 24 hours, because Find My remains on that long after the phone is shut off. But your situation sounds unusual; I suggest getting in contact with Apple support:

Click on “Support” at the top or bottom of this page

or

Go to Contact Official Apple Support

Note that both of the above have options to receive a callback or chat.

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Answer 3

Mar 16, 2023 6:25 AM in response to Jerry_D

The “24 hour thing” is Find My Network. It is a crowd-sourced feature and works like AirTags, by being visible to passing iPhones, but it does not use cellular or Wi-Fi data so you won’t see it unless someone with an iPhone is near it.

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Answer 4

Mar 15, 2023 9:05 AM in response to Jerry_D

OK; you opened Settings, tapped on your name at the top, then Find My, Then turned it off, entering your Apple ID password (which is required to turn it off).

If you did that you would have to leave it off for over 24 hours before the accumulated usage would be cleared from the battery display.

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Answer 5

Jerry_D Author

Level 1

49 points

Mar 15, 2023 8:55 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

Thanks a lot for your kind answer and good advice for charging.

I was probably not clear enough in my original post, but when saying "I switched Find My off in the phone settings", I considered that to be the signing out. Or is there some other way to sign out?

The other thing that puzzles me is that the iPad shows no Find My activity although the service is running on it as well. Also, this was not happening on the iPhone either until recently.

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Answer 6

Jerry_D Author

Level 1

49 points

Mar 16, 2023 5:29 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

"Find My remains on 24 hours after the phone is shut off". Hmmm. I have disabled Find My on the iPhone (opened Settings, tapped on my name at the top, then Find My, then turned it off, entering my Apple ID password) some 15 hours ago. I did not switch off the phone; that is going to be my next testing step.

However, the phone is no longer visible in Find My even before the 24 hours:

I got curious so I enabled Find My on the phone and it immediately appeared in the Find My app together with the paired watch. Disabled it again and it immediately disappeared. The 24 hours thing does not seem to be true in my case. Except for the battery drain. That has continued without interruptions.

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Answer 7

Jerry_D Author

Level 1

49 points

Mar 16, 2023 7:14 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

Thanks again for your kind help and patience. I thought that the last known location was shown for 24 hours after disconnecting (one Apple article even states "stored for 7 days"), but not that the disconnected device continues transmitting any kind of signal for 24 more hours after switching off the option.

I do understand that Find My Network uses specific Bluetooth transmission to other Apple devices in the vicinity and that it does not use WiFi or cellular data, but I was under the impression that it only works if it's activated under Find My, i.e. once you turn Find My off, you also turn Find My Network off. Even with Find My being on, you have a choice to activate Find My Network or not to activate it.

Is this documented somewhere in a detailed manner, so that I can inform myself properly without being a nuisance to yourself and possibly others in this forum?

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Answer 8

Jerry_D Author

Level 1

49 points

Mar 15, 2023 10:04 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

Yes. Affirmative on all counts. I even made sure to shut down my Mac for over 24 hours instead of just letting it sleep as I usually do, just in case.

The situation remained the same.

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Find My - Battery Drain Even When Not Running

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