Is anyone else experiencing idle battery drain on Android when Arc is in the background but not in use. Unless I kill the app it absolutely destroys my battery when idle. I’m on a Pixel 6 Pro running Android 13 stable. I’ve reinstalled and tried setting the battery optimization to restricted which actually works but causes Arc to randomly crash during playback.
It’s been happening for a while, so long that the issue may not be isolated to early access and may be an issue in stable. I only put it here since I use early access but if the mods agree that this belongs in support feel free to move it.
Maybe it is device independent. I have a very old and cheapest Samsung, and before arc I haven’t really thought of ever upgrading. Even with ARC, for my 3 hours/week of using the phone upgrading comes after other upgrades.
That, or OS versions or both together. There are always tweaks to battery-related stuff in every Android version, and I suppose it might sometimes affect different apps differently. And there are always reports and articles like this (which includes reports of some phones behaving worse with 12 than 11)
Now I never looked at that as besides using my phone for music playing when on the road looks like I use my phone for 30-40 minutes per week. There are some new notifications reports showing that. I never knew.
I’ll take a look at battery tweaks when I’ll be touching the little “devil”
Just as another data point from my Android 11 Fairphone 4:
I didn’t use ARC in the past 24 hours after my last post above, but did not kill the app either, just left it in background. I have even removed ARC from Battery Optimization to allow it background downloading.
The ARC power usage in Battery Usage during these 24 hours was zero. It shows exactly the overall usage time and battery percentage that it showed 24 hours ago.
It could be an issue with Android 13 or something to do specifically with my Pixel 6 Pro. It would be interesting if someone from the Roon team could look into the logs on our two devices to see what differences their may be.
For now, please make sure you’re installing the latest version of ARC and doing so from the Play Store directly. We’ve noticed that installs from APKs tend to make ARC not appear in head units.
I wonder if there is an issue with my Roon install or database causing this? Perhaps someone from Roon can look into my core’s logs and let me know if I need to change anything.
Hello @mackid1993!
Could you please tell me about your preconditions for your problem? I mean, what actions did you take with the app before stopping playback and putting the app on standby in the background?
Generally I listen to music over bluetooth in the car. When I exit my car the music stops playing and Arc is still usually open but not playing anything. This is when I experience the battery drain. If I kill Arc either by swiping it away in the app switcher or force stopping it I don’t run into this issue.
In my own testing I went into Settings → Apps → Special App Access and disabled Turn screen on for Roon ARC. I also went into Unrestricted data and disabled background data. I’m going to test and see if either of these permissions makes a difference. Perhaps if there is a change this will help diagnose what is causing this drain.
I tested further. I re-enabled the Turn screen on permission but left background data disabled. With background data disabled I see a big difference in battery life. Perhaps the issue has to due with persistent data use while the app is idle. Perhaps this can be looked into as I think I’ve stumbled upon the issue.
This is a full day of battery usage from 9 am to 4 PM with ARC idle in the background the whole day. With background data disabled in Special App Access ARC hardly used any battery. I think that a connection is staying open when it doesn’t need to be and this is likely draining battery.