Since iOS 11 was released, the YouTube customer support account on Twitter has been inundated with reports from users stating that their battery is being drained by the YouTube app. It’s not known yet what is causing the issue, but YouTube has said that they are “actively working to fix this”.
Any time Apple release a new firmware version, most apps will create their own update to ensure their app works as it should on the new firmware version. But, it seems that the YouTube app has some bugs on iOS 11. This issue affects all devices running iOS 11, it’s not just limited to the iPhone. If you have a device on iOS 11, you may have noticed your device starting to get very warm when you’re watching videos on the YouTube app.
It’s normal for your phone to run a little warmer if you’re running a number of demanding apps, but it should not be running hot while doing something as simple as playing a video. There’s no clear indication right now as to wether the problem is with iOS 11, or with the YouTube app – we don’t know who’s to blame, but there is certainly an issue here which needs to be addressed.
Not only does the bug cause your device to heat up, it also has a significant impact on your battery life too. The battery life isn’t great on these devices as it is, so the fact that you could be losing precious battery power for the sake of the YouTube app might not appeal to many people. If you’re worried about the app using up your battery, you might want to uninstall the app and simply use the YouTube mobile website in safari or chrome instead.
YouTube did release an update this morning, but nothing is specified in the release notes to say what was changed.
One YouTube app user who is running iOS 11 stated that they had seen more than an hours worth of background activity from the YouTube app, even though they had played a maximum of 5 minutes video during the day. Without a YouTube Red subscription, you can’t run background playback. There is no reason why 5 minutes of video streaming should report back as over an hours worth of background activity.
People are reporting losing as much as 20% of their battery power within 10 minutes of videos. That means that you could deplete your entire 100% fully charged battery with less than an hour of video watching on the YouTube App.
Hopefully YouTube is working away on this now, and we’ll see an update in the coming days which will put an end to this problem.
