Facebook last October promised to fix technical issues with its iOS app that caused it to suck up tons of battery life, but despite those efforts, Facebook’s iPhone app continues to hog more power than it should. The Guardian has some anecdotal evidence indicating that it’s not just using Facebook that’s running your battery down—it’s using the Facebook iOS app specifically.
Uninstalling the app altogether and using Facebook on Safari conserves up to 15 percent of your iPhone battery life on average, and that’s including the same amount of daily usage, according to The Guardian’s research. The news organization first tested Facebook’s Android app and found that deleting it from a phone saves up to 20 percent of its battery life. The iPhone app is slightly less of a battery hog, but compared to using Facebook on Safari, it’s almost as bad as the Android version.
The Guardian’s tests encompassed just a few people, and it’s unclear if the excessive battery use is related to the problems Facebook has detailed before with its iOS app, like a CPU spin issue in its code which was fixed back in October, or a video playback problem that caused audio to play silently in the background even after leaving the app.
The impact on you at home: But if you want to conserve battery power and you open the Facebook app regularly throughout the day, pinning a shortcut to Facebook’s website on your iPhone home screen is an easy fix that might do the trick. It’ll also free up storage on your phone, especially handy if you have a 16GB device and are running low on space.