The Facebook app is a notorious battery hog, but that doesn’t stop millions of us from using it constantly to stay in touch with our social network.
I’ve given up on it for the most part. Instead, I use Facebook through Safari on the iPhone. Facebook looks and acts differently in a web browser than it does in the app, but Safari is much better behaved than the Facebook app.
Having said that, I understand why you might want to use the app instead. If you are using the app, I’d recommend turning off Background App Refresh to keep it from wasting too much juice.
To turn off Background App Refresh:
- Tap the Home button to return to the home screen.
- Tap Settings.
- Find Facebook’s settings. It’s grouped with other social media networks whose apps you may have installed, like Twitter, Flickr and Vimeo.
- Tap Settings.
- Set Background App Refresh to off.
- Tap the Home button to exit settings.
Unfortunately this just doesn’t seem to work. While FB have closed the audio channel they were keeping open (even with BR turned off), they now have some kind of other channel open and are still sucking data and battery – all despite Background Refresh being turned off. And the really sad thing is, is that Apple seems to be allowing this!
An example of my device a few days ago (Background Refresh is completely off, by the way): https://www.instagram.com/p/BCUtdYmR7-3/?taken-by=sr_penny