Background activity drains battery very fast

[atapin]

Telegram always keeps 1st place among all my apps as a power consumer. During the night it consumes energy exclusively (95-100%).

[AndreyAkifev]

Same issue.
Telegram 5.9.1

[hyposlasher]

Same issue. Turning off background app refresh doesn’t help. Telegram drains battery in the background like nothing else.

[ttyusupov]

Still happening with version 5.10. Also noticed that even with background app refresh disabled, telegram background activity for the last 24 hours is almost the same as foreground: fg/bg - 47/50 minutes.

[mijndert]

Also still happening on 5.11.1.

This has been a bug for ages now, and we really really need a fix. It's kind of 'amazing' that one app can eat up about 50% of my battery at the end of the day.

[VadimGaltsev]

Same issue
Any solutions?
Telegram 5.11

[mijndert]

I tweeted at Telegram but they won't respond. This issue has been going for a very long time now - but Telegram doesn't seem to care at all.

Maybe we should just open more issues - flood their GitHub project with reports of this.

Battery stats for today:

• 47 minutes in use
• 2 hours and 35 minutes of background activity
• 40% battery usage

[Ambros94]

Same here on IPhone X and iOS 12.
Have someone gathered data regarding the number of public groups / channels and this battery drain?
Meaning, would quit some channels help?

[mijndert]

In my tests, the amount of channels doesn't make a difference.

[cringeops]

I’m really speculating over here, but try to disable background download (it’s in Data and Storage).

[ttyusupov]

I’m really speculating over here, but try to disable background download (it’s in Data and Storage).

Already did that week or two ago, but the issue is still there. For example for the last 24 hours - foreground activity 1h54m, background activity 2h37m. Also turned off gif and video auto play.

[cringeops]

Too many factors to consider. It might as well be a push mechanism that drains too much, for example. Or local area chats might access geolocation services too much.
I have quite a few channels and group chats with notifications disabled for them. I do allow background activity, but my stats are 31 h on screen and 11.5 h background in last 10 days, yet the consumption is mere 28%. I’m a pretty heavy Telegram user and I don’t have issues with excess battery drain.
I’d try to disable every single permission for the app and see if it works. It surely will become practically unusable though.

[mijndert]

I don't think us coming up with different ways to possibly work around the problem are very productive. The real problem lies with the developers who seem to refuse to do anything about this problem. I mentioned it on Twitter a couple of times, only to get ignored. This issue has been open for ages now, and if you look around on the internet the issue's been going for much much longer. The only way this problem will get solved is bring it up as much as possible.

My stats in the last 24 hours:
On screen 1h44
Background 2h52
Usage 62%

[ttyusupov]

Or local area chats might access geolocation services too much.

I turned off geolocation services for telegram - this didn't help.

[mijndert]

I disabled "download in background" (or whatever it's called) in data settings within Telegram. Looks like it helps a bit, but I'll know for sure 24 hours from now.

[akaczm]

Issue seems to be ongoing, no matter if "background downloading" is on or off.
I did notice it seems to be somewhat tied to Telegram use on other devices - including PC.
Notifications go through, but don't get cleared once read on another device.

[mijndert]

Disabling 'Download in background' doesn't do anything. Battery usage is still horrible. No response from Telegram at all yet.

[mijndert]

Issue is still going. No answers from Telegram devs.

[hyposlasher]

actually we can spam their email qa@telegram.org

[LeviSchuck]

Ever since upgrading to iOS 13, my device with telegram is literally a heater in my pocket.

This terrible use of my battery stops, and my device cools down, when I kill telegram, the app.

[mijndert]

The last 10 days: 13 hours on screen, 33 hours in background. Insane.

[Neliger]

I join in. Battery usage of this app is incredible, I don't know how it manage to use so much battery in background without having background refresh enabled.

I've killed it and don't use it anymore on iOS, or occasionnaly, then kill the app right after.

[mijndert]

I join in. Battery usage of this app is incredible, I don't know how it manage to use so much battery in background without having background refresh enabled.

I've killed it and don't use it anymore on iOS, or occasionnaly, then kill the app right after.

Any alternatives we can use? The official app is a dumpster fire and the dev should be ashamed.

[ttyusupov]

An alternative could be fork a source code and turn off background tasks on a source code level. But that requires some development work to do. (I am not related to telegram team).

[iDevPro]

And now prevent turn off background mode :) (iOS 13.2.2)

[Riconec]

The same thing for me: SE, iOS13, latest Telegram. Background activities are killing my battery, two times it was too hot (the same as in benchmarks like antutu) and drained almost all battery in 30 minutes

[peterevertz]

I have turned all background activities off. After Rebooting the device has normal battery usage, up to point when telegram is first started. Then the battery is draining again.

[iDevPro]

I have turned all background activities off. After Rebooting the device has normal battery usage, up to point when telegram is first started. Then the battery is draining again.

I can't do this because background activities toggle there is inactive!
On iPhone iOS 13.2.2 :)

[Riconec]

I tried to clear cache (5.5Gb) and reinstall app after it drained my SE in only 4 hours. Will report if anything will change

[Ordauq]

I'm facing this problem too.
iOS 15.1, Telegram 8.2.2
Background app refresh is turned off.

[Jungo495]

telegram burn battery in 8 hours

ipad pro, ipadOS 15.1

deleted it

[ddnomad]

@Jungo495 Same here, during NY commute Telegram was draining my iPad Pro battery like crazy. It is roughly 54% Telegram background activity, 40% Find My and 6% the rest.

Background app refresh is turned off.

I guess I'm purging it from my tablet for now.

[npulidomateo]

Same issue.

iPadOS 15.3
Telegram 8.5.1

[apanloco]

This issue is just terrible 💀
I have WhatsApp, Signal, Google Chat, Telegram, iOS Messages.
And Telgram is there in the background sucking all my battery over night. The other ones are no-trace Ninjas.
I sent a message to qa@telegram.org aswell, why not.

[vlw]

Same issue. iOS 15.3, iphone 13 pro.
Incoming telegram call cause iphone heating and very fast battery drain... outgoing calls okay

[broomerrctr]

I also have Telegram drain battery.
May be some ideas to configure network or some else?

[theimaginationless]

Drain battery if incoming call answered on other device

[andrianyablonskyy]

The telegram drains the battery after the call was received on another device. This happens because on the iPad telegram continues ringing as the ring screen does not disappear on the iPad.

[veselcraft]

aaaand the problem comes in again

[evanre]

Try this: Settings > Privacy and Security > Disable: iOS Call integration

[vlw]

Try this: Settings > Privacy and Security > Disable: iOS Call integration

And you will get many missed calls when phone locked :/

[navid-zamani]

May I make an educated guess, that Telegram doesn’t use Google’s push service and hence has to go and stay online a lot more?

And no, it’s still not acceptable in 8.6.2.0.

I can prevent it, by setting the energy options for the app to ”manual“ and ”never“ for all sub-settings, and then force-terminating the app. That way it won’t be started again.
With Telegram started even once, it results in 40-50% instead of 70-80% battery at the end of a normal day!!
Of course with it being disabled like that, I won’t get any messages. unless I actively open it, and wait for it to sync. But then I have to remember to stop it again afterwards, or I will be angry at the end of the day whe i notice I have to recharge again.

---

That is the reason, Signal uses Google’s push service (GMS) anyway. Of course they found a way to use push but still stay anonymous, leak no info, and in the newer versions also don’t allow creating social graphs from metadata. (Essentially, anonymous tokens are sent from Signal’s servers to GMS, GMS notifies the recipient, and then the recipient can get the actual metadata and message from the Signal servers. Which is not how GMS was meant to be used, but fuck Google. :)
I wonder why Telegram doesn’t implement/copy such stuff from Signal. It’s open source, and high-quality code from actual security researchers. Even WhatsApp copied stuff from Signal. (Of course, with WA, the actual app is not trustworthy to begin with, so a secure channel between the app installs is not any more secure at all but simply more monopolization/lock-in. ;)

[NickSun]

iOS 12.5.5, the same issue. Telegram just kills the battery

[patkepa]

iOS 16.0.1 and Telegram still drains the majority of battery on my device, even though the background refresh is off.

[navid-zamani]

My current workaround is, to always go to the app properties after using Telegram, and stop it from there. (In the app switcher, I tap and hold on the app icon, to get there quickly, without going to the system settings.) I also have auto-starting, background-running and getting started by other apps disabled in the (Huawei) energy settings, so it can’t start “by itself”.
I have verified that that works. My battery doesn’t drain anymore, unless I forget to stop it after using it.
But I only check it once every other day, since I only subscribe to groups that post about once a week, so that might no be useful to you.
Telegram is not secure anyway. Normal chats are not end-to-end encrypted, and it’s not open source, which is a killer criterion. It’s only good as a social media platform. For actual privacy, I use Signal, where I can actually verify the security myself. So if you’re using it for security, another workaround would be to switch too.

[MiloLug]

Looking at the problem now, and from what I can see (it is still present since years...), maybe I should consider a replacement.
I just left my phone with Telegram opened for this night and it has consumed almost 10% on its own.

Android 12, Nothing OS

[shatulsky]

Samsung s22 ultra
Latest telegram veesion
Telegram background consumption is always the top 1 battery consumer.

[navid-zamani]

Guys, this will never change,

as long as Telegram doesn’t use a double ratchet mechanism and the phone’s built-in push service!

Because your phone’s push service already is the number one battery drainer. That fact is just hidden by the OS.
And since Telegram doesn’t want to use those (e.g. Google’s Play Services/GMS, or Huawei’s HMS Core), it has to run its own. Which of course takes a lot of battery, as there is no such thing as push services on modern smartphones. It’s all just polling internally.
This faxt can not magically be changed.

Of course, Signal managed to use GMS without actually revealing anything but the recipient. (Not the sender, not any metadata, nor the contents, as it only sends a token to use to check Signal’s own servers, so GMS only acts as a wakeup trigger and nothing more.)
But also of course, strictly, with that setup, Google can still see people receiving (meaningless) Signal tokens at specific timestamps. Which is probably Telegram’s reason not to use them.

But in the end, it is your choice:
Do you find battery usage OK, if it is to avoid using GMS: Use Telegram.
Do you want to save battery, and find GMS tokens acceptable: Use Signal.
Do you want to avoid GMS, and save battery: Get an open phone with your own OS! (E.g. a Fairphone with LineageOS.) Then you can have your own push services, and have a modified Telegram use those, and only use battery once!

But frankly, given that Telegram isn’t open source and isn’t even end-to-end encrypting by default, and E2E is IMHO quite the hassle to use with it, I don’t think using a push service can make it any less secure than it already is anyway. ;)

[sicaboy]

Because the background battery consumption is higher than that of almost all apps on the market. I just guess that they are deliberately shelving this problem, and dare to guess that the reason may be that it has to stay awake to do some "tasks" in the background. Just a guess. I didn't look at the code.

[cypok]

iPhone mini with Telegram dies in less than 16 hours.
Please make an option to limit background activity sacrificing instant notifications about new messages.

[buzzdev]

iOS 16.5, iPhone 13 Pro. Telegram drains battery overnight without using the phone.
Are the developers ignoring it? Just leave them bad review in the AppStore, as i just did.

[dionisvl]

same issue

[kuznetsss]

Yesterday evening I turned off location access for telegram app and it solved the issue for me. This night I had no background activity for telegram. Also long time ago I turned off background app refresh in settings and background updates in telegram settings.

[Casuallynoted]

Y’all this issue is four years old. Telegram has made it very clear they do not give a shit.

[Casuallynoted]

Guys, this will never change,

as long as Telegram doesn’t use a double ratchet mechanism and the phone’s built-in push service!

Because your phone’s push service already is the number one battery drainer. That fact is just hidden by the OS.

And since Telegram doesn’t want to use those (e.g. Google’s Play Services/GMS, or Huawei’s HMS Core), it has to run its own. Which of course takes a lot of battery, as there is no such thing as push services on modern smartphones. It’s all just polling internally.

This faxt can not magically be changed.

Of course, Signal managed to use GMS without actually revealing anything but the recipient. (Not the sender, not any metadata, nor the contents, as it only sends a token to use to check Signal’s own servers, so GMS only acts as a wakeup trigger and nothing more.)

But also of course, strictly, with that setup, Google can still see people receiving (meaningless) Signal tokens at specific timestamps. Which is probably Telegram’s reason not to use them.

But in the end, it is your choice:

Do you find battery usage OK, if it is to avoid using GMS: Use Telegram.

Do you want to save battery, and find GMS tokens acceptable: Use Signal.

Do you want to avoid GMS, and save battery: Get an open phone with your own OS! (E.g. a Fairphone with LineageOS.) Then you can have your own push services, and have a modified Telegram use those, and only use battery once!

But frankly, given that Telegram isn’t open source and isn’t even end-to-end encrypting by default, and E2E is IMHO quite the hassle to use with it, I don’t think using a push service can make it any less secure than it already is anyway. ;)

Also this is the GitHub repo for the iOS version of Telegram.

[k1zn]

still on 26 oct 2023

[qinyuhang]

I have the same situation here. Now 28th November 2023.

[MaciejK2]

still on 10 feb 2024, iphone 13 ios 17.2.1. forgot to turn off app for night, was in background without notifications, this is the only app that was in background at the night (except for 3% random siri between 3:00 and 4:00 xd)

its a shame that communicator this good needs to be used without notifications and always closed after use (even when im just using it drains battery asf). someone needs to see if any fix is possible, with custom version of telegram app (could be installed with trollstore or altstore), because people that created this surely dont care.