4.25.10 - Heavy battery drain even with minimal usage #8217
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I am having exactly same problem on Moto Z Play (2016). Also running 8.0.0. The drain is serious (it drains about 30% of all battery, with almost no use. I hope it gets fixed asap. |
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@flipzmode Is it accurate that you actually had 30 min of active use of Signal at that time? If so, it would seem that relative to other apps its battery usage is fine. It would have been run 10x more than the next most-used app, but using less than 10x the battery as the next app. If 30 min isn't accurate then that's a problem. In general, the only good way to debug battery issues is to get something called a "bug report" from the system that can then be viewed in a tool like battery historian. However, those reports contain a full profile of all of your app usage, so I recommend against posting them on a public forum. Instead, if either of you are interested in providing a bug report to help diagnose this, you can DM me on the forum where I can give you more instructions. Thanks! |
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Hey @greyson-signal, I'll work with you on getting a bug report from battery historian. I'm doing my best to try and pinpoint the best way to replicate battery drain. Meaning where I know I'm not using Signal, but it is draining. I've spent a few days out of work and so my usage has been different than normal. I am curious if @haaveilen uses the Signal desktop app at all. I use it heavily all day on Windows and I'm just realizing I'm wondering if that's part of why battery drain seems worse than usual. It used to be that if I was using the desktop app then I wouldn't receive a notification of an inbound message on Android right away. If I was actively using the desktop app and replied to a message fairly quickly, it would never notify on my phone. At some point it changed and now I get notifications on my phone and on the desktop at the same time. I believe this could be a source of extra battery drain from Signal. I don't know if that's something related to Android 8.0, or Signal Desktop, or Signal Android. I'll get signed up on the forums soon and send you a DM. Thanks for the reply. |
So technically your phone would always receive these notifications, we'd just display them silently. However, with the new changes to notification channels, these notifications will now make a noise, which is a known bug. So my gut tells me this isn't the source of the drain, but we'll see! Looking forward to your DM. Thanks for assisting with this! |
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Hey @flipzmode, no I am not using Signal for desktop. I am regular user on Android. It seems like drain is not consistent as well (sometimes drain is more agressive, sometimes less). As of now I had actively used Signal for 25 minutes, it had drained 650mAh of battety, for instance Facebook that I used 1 hour, drained only 180mAh. Thank you for your input. |
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FWIW I just used the new energy profiler in Android Studio 3.2, and I didn't notice any oddities on the couple phones I tested (Pixel 2 and Nexus 5X). Battery drain was classified as "light" when the app was open, and was basically non-existent when the app was backgrounded. I'm also not experiencing this battery drain in my day-to-day. So at minimum this seems to be situational or device-specific. The only thing in 4.25.x that could impact energy usage IMO is the new logger that logs to a file. I imagine it's possible that some phones are really energy-inefficient when writing to files or something. Anyway, I'll need a bug report to get more details. Thanks! |
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@greyson-signal I've had a similar experience with 4.25.x, and now with 4.26.2 as well. According to the system battery settings, Signal now uses a similar amount of juice for 30-40 times less screen on time compared to Messenger (which I am a fairly heavy user of). Device: LG G7 Thinq Please tell me if I can give you any specific info to debug further.
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@gkkovacs Thank you for the report. As mentioned in my first comment, it's good to know this is happening, but there's no action for me unless I have a Bug Report. A debug log taken at the end of the day may even be helpful to see what kind of work may have been taking place, but a Bug Report is much more useful for battery stuff. Refer to my earlier comment for details. Thanks! |
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Running into this issue on Android 9. I hardly ever even use Signal but when investigating saw that Signal is constantly in use in the background according to Android 9 battery statistics. |
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@prg318 At minimum I'd need a debug log to see if anything is happening in the background. I'm also curious if you're in the beta. The beta bumped the targetsdk to 26, meaning we should have fewer opportunities to run in the background when we're not supposed to. Anyway, besides a debug log, as mentioned in an earlier comment, to do any real analysis I'd need a bugreport. |
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I'm having the same issue. Here's my debug log: https://debuglogs.org/41523615184aa9a2b9fcfe079c3b0d566be51c312d2445f7eef3678f486b01de |
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@aaroecker Thanks for submitting a log! Looking at it, it seems like you're getting tons of contact sync requests from desktop and that you're likely in poor network conditions (because those requests keep failing). Can you tell me if you have a desktop instance you're keeping open, or if you were requesting a lot of contact imports on desktop or something? |
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I don't know, but I shouldn't anymore. I deteled signal from my phone and on my PC. I'm going to try a new install to see if that helps. |
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@greyson-signal thanks for looking into this. |
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Ok, if this happens again, please send a desktop log along with your Android log. Might be some weird interaction where poor network on desktop caused a ton of contact syncs to go out. Thanks! |
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It still happens for me with Signal 4.29.7 on LG G7, Android 8.0. Signal used 22% battery with 2 minutes of screen time. Debug log: |
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@gkkovacs Huh, yeah, according to the logs Signal hasn't been used much at all. If we're doing something, there's usually some trace in the logs, so it's odd that we'd somehow be doing things in the background. Did your problem happen within the last two days? (That's the amount of time covered by the log). |
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I am pretty sure its affecting only certain chipsets, on my Moto Z Play OG (Snapdragon 630, 8.0.0 Oreo), drain issue was there, on my Moto Z OG (Snapdragon 820 8.0.0 Oreo) there is no drain issue. I unfortunally can't send you any logs from Moto Z Play, coz it broke after falling down to the ground. However my friend with Moto X4 has the same problem, and I hope I can make him send debut log. A bit offtopic but, do you maybe know why solid black background on Signal for Android was removed in dark mode? It was really nice with combination of OLED phone. Thank you. |
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@greyson-signal Yes, what you saw was yesterday, I always take the phone off the charger in the morning. According to the system battery stats Signal is by far the biggest battery hog with 22% battery used, but interestingly it only ran 2 minutes in the foreground, and 0 in background:
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@gkkovacs That's super interesting and odd. This is a case where it'd be really helpful to have a bugreport. To quote myself from earlier:
If you could hep out, that'd be great! Thanks! |
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The problem is also happening with latest Signal on Samsung Galaxy Grand with Android 4.4.4 as well as on an Iphone 8. I had that problem ever since I started to use Signal, several months ago. |
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I also experience fast battery draining on my Fairphone 2 (Fairphone OS 18.04.1, Android 6.0.1); I uninstalled the app today and fast draining disappeared, but Google Play still had version 14.30 listed for update. The issue started to appear in the night of November 8-9, just after some updates. The issue seems to be in the background services as I hardly used the app. |
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I am using Signal v4.30.8 and I just noticed this same problem as well which is why I found this thread... Check my screen shot, it says Signal has been in ACTIVE use for 5h 25m and in the background for 0m since last full charge. THIS IS NOT EVEN REMOTELY TRUE. It is in the foreground for a small portion of time and in the background most of the time. What is going on here?
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@JVanDenBergh @landry314 It's really difficult for me to say anything about what may be happening without either a debug log or a bug report. Bug reports are the most useful thing, but please read my earlier comments in this thread for my warnings about what they contain. Thanks! |
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Hi @greyson-signal , I'm having the same issue.
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@3point2 Thank you so much for the bug report screenshots! That's super interesting. Can you get me a debug log? It looks like WorkManager is holding a lock for too long, and it appears they have the Worker ID in the wakelock name, so if I had a debug log I could potentially match it up and see what job it's getting stuck on. Thanks! |
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Hello @greyson-signal. I too am experiencing this battery drain issue, and I've taken a bug report. I tried to send you a DM on the Signal Community forums to get the report to you, but I don't think I have permission to do so, since I just created my account there two seconds ago and I appear to be restricted from sending any DMs. Is there another channel by which I can privately send you my debug report? Also, to corroborate what @3point2 reported, Better Battery Stats on my device is also showing |
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@blkeller You can send the report via Signal to one of my test numbers: +1610-549-1426. Thanks! |
Glad it was useful! I've messaged the bug report that I used to generate the screenshots to your test number. I didn't experience the issue today, but when I do I can follow up with another with |
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@3point2 Thank you! Do you think you could send me a debug log? It's separate from a bug report. This is a signal-specific thing that you can get in Settings > Advanced > Submit debug log. Thanks! |
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I haven't experienced this issue since my phone upgraded from Signal v4.30.8 to v4.31.6. 81055e6 might have been the fix. |
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I still have this problem in 4.31.8 on a Huawei P20 Lite |
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I have this problem too in 4.31.8 on LG G6 (h870). |
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65% battery drain. Unregistering and deleting Signal right now. This is ridiculous! Phone: HTC One A9 |
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If you don't have Google Play Services, we have to keep a connection open to deliver push notifications in a timely manner, which will result in additional battery drain. It's not unexpected. It's hard to say how much battery drain though. Battery usage is notoriously hard to test and measure. But if you have Google Play Services, there's no reason for Signal to have crazy battery usage. It's just very difficult to figure out what can be happening. If you experience drain, at minimum please submit a debug log (Settings > Advanced > Submit a debug log) and post the link here. But what's really helpful is a bug report (I'll quote myself from earlier):
Someone submitted a bug report earlier that indicated that WorkManager may have a wakelock bug that could result in battery drain. That's been reported directly to their team, and I'm updating to new versions as they release them. |
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hi greyson, are there alternative apps for "battery historian"? For me as a "normal user" the installation seems quite complex... |
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After waiting a wile whats happend with the new Version (4.32.8) and change from the WorkManager to beta1 seems all the same: Heavy battery drain from Signal .... [bug report] -> mailed to support@signal.org Signal: 4.32.8 Stock ROM (debloated) Oreo 8.0.0, root, AFWall+ (UID1000 has internet connection) and Blokada, Signal is white-listed, No PlayStore or Google services. |
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It seems that after a restart the phone there is no excessive battery consumption anymore for me ... [edit] seems only on wifi works correct. On mobile data i have heavy Battery drain again ... |
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There's a discussion about this heavy battery drain issue on the Signal forums - https://community.signalusers.org/t/very-high-battery-drain-on-4-34-8-without-google-play-services/6536/18 theBoatman posted a test build and it seems to have fixed the battery drain issue for me when on cellular (haven't tested Wi-Fi but it doesn't appear to be an issue on Wi-Fi according to @albirs). I've only been using it a day but unplugged my phone from the charger 10 hours ago and it's only eaten 30% of my battery with signal at 2% battery usage and 6m39s radio time which is A LOT better than before. I'd be at 30% battery left in 4 hours before. Please test it out if you can and post your results here or on the forums, then ping @greyson-signal so that it can be implemented :). |
No, do not do that please. It is a waste of signal foundation money, and of Greyson's time -- surest way to lower the chances that pull#70 gets upmerged, is to pester and bother and waste the time of the person with commit-access. Do not bump issues and definitely please do not directly bother the paid signal foundation folks with pet issues. I realize that there was a smiley attached, so that was perhaps only joking, but please realize that not everybody who reads github understand emoji that well (including me), or for that matter, understand english that well (also including me).
Yes please. This can be done on real physical devices (but it is experimental so please do not risk your main chat-history and your daily-driver device unless you know how to make an encrypted backup-blob as well as restore one and are comfy with the risks). Also valuable would be tests against stock ROMs to make sure no unintended side-effects occur, including virtual SQA using the AndroidEmulator that ships with AndroidStudio for instance.
Yes please, ideally each person would
Better to post these into the thread on signalUsers though methinks, to avoid github traffic about an unofficial experimental patch that has not yet been upmerged == https://community.signalusers.org/t/very-high-battery-drain-on-4-34-8-without-google-play-services/6536/43 is currently the best place probably. |
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It really sucks that the most privacy conscious users (those that don't want Google on their phones) can't even use Signal due to this battery drain issue. I'd love to recommend this app to friends and family which is a hurdle in itself but then explaining the benefits of them using it while not being able to use it myself isn't very productive. Is this issue being treated with any priority by the Signal team? It seemed to have gotten some attention but other than theBoatman's unofficial fixes (which definitely help but still don't solve the problem entirely) it seems to have died off. Any official updates? |
These are a priority for myself and @theBoatman , but the official devs are hindered (as I myself am hindered) because I do not have any gApps-free devices, both of my handsets are incompatible with LineageOS. Thus I cannot test whether github.com/libsignal-service-java/issues/pull/70 is any good for battery-drain, nor for dangling websockets. But I can read debuglogs, if people that ARE impacted, upload them.
You on the other hand, might be able to help move pr70 towards completion, because it sounds like you do have gApps-free android capable of
We are wanting to move pr70 and then get another one (addressing additional fixes and improvements) into the review-queue, but SQA results in the form of debuglogs are needed, please, por favor, thank ye most kindly? https://community.signalusers.org/t/very-high-battery-drain-on-4-34-8-without-google-play-services/6536/52 In particular, I'm suspicious that the heavy-battery-drain scenario is somehow correlated with device-model and/or living in an urban area (lots of cell-towers exacerbating the switch-to-a-"new"-transport thing). We may need to find an enduser with a device that is impacted, and do the horrible-sounding Battery Historian thing. #8217 (comment)
Thank you for not pinging Greyson this time. But you still emailed 700+ repo watchers, that it sucks 8217 is still open. And now I'm about to do the same, for my Unofficial Update :-/
That said, there is an official-person-speaking-in-their-individual-unofficial-forum-participant-capacity update that I am aware of, related to battery-drain caused by androidWorkManager issues on devices WITH playStore+playServices+etc (certain rare ones of unspecified class/category seem to eat battlife but I don't believe anybody pinned down exactly which models/androidVersions were worst-impacted). Signalapp used to have their own jobMgr thing, before switching to workMgr, and is switching away again. https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-with-password-encryption-poc/6159/83 To the extent that the androidWorkManager wakelock thing was draining battlife, this should be an improvement. It looks like that process is still ongoing, 4.39.2 commit about a week ago was still evicting |
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I'm impacted and it's gotten worse (no g-apps) Here's a debug log |
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Hello folks, I am affected too. I don't think it's necessary to post another debug log. @greyson-signal is this going to change with the coming work manager you are working on? Because it seems this severe bug is receiving almost no attention so far so I was wondering what the reason might be. |
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@uspoma simply complaining, isn't going to change anything. It's an open-source project and a free product. Not every issue is critical to everybody. They have no obligation to respond to anybody. Add a debug.log, give the issue and its PR signalapp/libsignal-service-java#70 a thumbs up to give it a better ranking, and if you can, follow @five-c-d's instructions from his comment. It'd be great if everybody did the same. |
All true, but what's your point? Signal is competing for us, the users and it's competing against WhatsApp, Telegram, Threema, etc. And frankly Signal is getting more and more irrelevant. (It's not even mentioned anymore in many comparison-articles in 2019). Last year it took me weeks and months to convince my closest friends to get Signal. When we finally had a group together I had to uninstall it due to the battery drain issue. And there is no way I'll ever get them to get Signal again. imho it doesn't matter how much it's open-source and free and how much the devs aren't obliged to respond. At the end of the day the free market punishes those with bad products and rewards those with good products. Simple as that. |
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Everyone's no gapps solutions are different it's really hard to code for them all. For example raw AOSP or Custom Ron with Microg etc The code Google's written for GCM has no moral compass so boycotting using GCM over privacy concerns when you're using GCM to enable privacy enhancing applications such as signal seems self neutering and ideological at best. |
Besides Signal, I also use Threema and its "polling solution" for users who don't use Google Services, would be sufficient for me as an alternative or setting option. I'm not a programmer and don't know how much implementation is required, but I can imagine that this is easier than a completely custom real-time notification solution. But of course I would prefer a working real-time notification solution with "normal" battery consumption without GCM. |
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Have you tested @theBoatman's patch @albirs ? He has a thread with it over on the signal-community. It helped me and I'm sticking with it until this bug is closed or I can use an alternative client. You can also give the bug a 👍 as well as signalapp/libsignal-service-java#70 if the patched version works for you. |
Yeah, I'm using this patched version since May now. Currently I'm on its last version https://github.com/theBoatman/fixing-signal (4.42.2). For me its working. |
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Is there any progress here? Will @theBoatman 's patch being integrated in the official signal app? |
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#9170 |
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Given that most people seem to indicate that the changes by @theBoatman resolved their issue, I'll close this. |
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I have been using up to date versions of signal for years and it always drained my battery heavily (up to 60% percent) while I use it minimally. I'm using a custom ROM without gapps and that should be alright, considering that no other messenger app has a problem with it. |
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I asked my family members to move from Whatsapp to Signal. They have the latest version and good android phones. Most of them complain that with signal app installed they need to charge their phones twice a day. Without signal app, the phone goes back to last more than one day with one charge. Are there some known issues or incompatibility going on currently? |
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See #11604 for the new issue tracking this. |
and others
Bug description
Ever since upgrading to 4.25.10 about 2 weeks ago I have seen heavy battery drain. I am a longtime Signal user (around 3 years) and have never had battery drain issues like this. Even with minimal Signal use, it is listed as the app that drains the most battery every day. Nothing on my phone changed other than Signal updating.
Steps to reproduce
Actual result: Even with very low usage, Signal drains more battery than every other app on my phone.
Expected result: Battery drain should be minimal.
Screenshots
Device info
Device: LG V35 Thinq (AT&T)
Android version: 8.0.0. Security patch level July 1, 2018
Signal version: 4.25.10
Link to debug log
Debug log
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