Why you should delete the Facebook app

Sad Professor

Some recent blog posts about Facebook's abuse of background services and the effect on battery life on iOS.

https://medium.com/@mg/battery-life-load-times-and-actually-giving-a-****-about-your-customers-c3738386bded

http://pxlnv.com/linklog/facebook-background-data/

https://www.macstories.net/linked/the-background-data-and-battery-usage-of-facebooks-ios-app/

It seems that even with background refresh disabled, Facebook is finding ways to circumvent it and continue to drain battery. This has been known for years, but Facebook are unwilling to do anything about it.

I can’t help but wonder if this is part of some dispute between Apple and Facebook. Maybe Facebook wants deeper integration with iOS and this is their way of holding Apple to ransom. It’s not like Apple can ban Facebook from the App Store without pissing millions of Facebook users off.

RoyalMarine

Interesting information there.

However, closing the App from the double tap home button menu would prevent this from happening right?
Not the most convenient thing, but it's a work around rather than deleting the App altogether.

Sad Professor

RoyalMarine wrote: »

Interesting information there.

However, closing the App from the double tap home button menu would prevent this from happening right?
Not the most convenient thing, but it's a work around rather than deleting the App altogether.

Perhaps but not necessarily. It’s a misconception that “closing” apps from the app switching screen is like quitting on a desktop. Certain background functionality, such as VOIP, background audio, location services, etc, may continue draining battery. For this reason I always delete VOIP apps that I’m not using.

Besides, constantly closing frequently used apps isn’t good for battery life anyway as all that data has to be reloaded to memory the next time the app is launched. I never close apps except to troubleshoot them.

iOS’s multitasking is actually very advanced when it comes to managing background activity in order to preserve battery life, but there are loopholes - which Facebook keep exploiting.

Zcott

It baffles me how Facebook, the biggest social network on the planet, can be this bad at iOS. Where are all the good engineers?

HardenendMan

Sad Professor wrote: »

Perhaps but not necessarily. It’s a misconception that “closing” apps from the app switching screen is like quitting on a desktop. Certain background functionality, such as VOIP, background audio, location services, etc, may continue draining battery. For this reason I always delete VOIP apps that I’m not using.

Besides, constantly closing frequently used apps isn’t good for battery life anyway as all that data has to be reloaded to memory the next time the app is launched. I never close apps except to troubleshoot them.

iOS’s multitasking is actually very advanced when it comes to managing background activity in order to preserve battery life, but there are loopholes - which Facebook keep exploiting.

Great info. There are so many misconceptions touted on how multitasking works in iOS.

deep1

I tested this over the week by deleting the fb app and using safari and difference was about 5-6% extra battery on 6s plus when not using facebook app. Which is not much for me as i have more than 40% left end of the day.
If you don't have background enabled for fb and close from multitasking drawer everytime then you should be fine, last24 hrs i have 1 hrs usage and 18 mins background ( also remember if you are watching embedded video inside the app that counts as background usage too).

Still i do believe fb is the worst offender and so is watsapp that's why i always have contact sync off for watsapp too, difference is huge since i started doing this.

FourFourRED

This image from my phone says it all. No background app refresh on, no location services on and no push notifications on. I always close the app from the multitasking tray.

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

jakdublin

I found it to be a space hog too. Becomes very bloated, very quickly, up to 500mb or more. I deleted it a couple of months ago and just access Facebook from Safari now. My 16gb is very precious! Never really noticed battery drain but now that it's been mentioned, I don't seem to run out at all now during the day.

Carlos Orange

Zcott wrote: »

It baffles me how Facebook, the biggest social network on the planet, can be this bad at iOS. Where are all the good engineers?

Pretty sure they aren't working on the Android Facebook app anyway.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-the-hood-dalvik-patch-for-facebook-for-android/10151345597798920

culabula

I just use Paper instead from the US AppStore.

naasrd

Just jump ship and join us over on Twitter!

podge018

deep1 wrote: »

and so is watsapp that's why i always have contact sync off for watsapp too, difference is huge since i started doing this.

what's this and how do I do it?

Eugene Norman

FourFourFM wrote: »

This image from my phone says it all. No background app refresh on, no location services on and no push notifications on. I always close the app from the multitasking tray.

That's mad. 20 hours background means they are gimping the system. They are probably using the background API designed for geofencing or audio

Bob24

Zcott wrote: »

It baffles me how Facebook, the biggest social network on the planet, can be this bad at iOS. Where are all the good engineers?

They are working on better data mining and targeted advertising technology... the things Facebook makes real money with.

#youaretheproduct ...

waynegalway

naasrd wrote: »

Just jump ship and join us over on Twitter!

I use Twitter as well as Facebook. The twitter app is a bit of a storage hog too. There needs to be an easy way to clean out the cache instead of deleting and reinstalling an app.

mad muffin

Turning background app refresh back on for Facebook has greatly reduced its battery use.

Bug? Who knows?

FourFourRED

http://wp.me/p1xtr9-1H2a

FourFourRED

Explanation / response from Facebook

https://m.facebook.com/arig/posts/10105815276466163

quad_red

Anyone recommend a third party app to view facebook on iOS?

One that would allow monitoring of multiple facebook accounts would be even better!

Creamy Goodness

not any I'd trust.

I'm pretty happy with accessing it in safari. works well

waynegalway

quad_red wrote: »

Anyone recommend a third party app to view facebook on iOS?

One that would allow monitoring of multiple facebook accounts would be even better!

I tried a few and found fault with all of them. Apart from the battery issue (which seems to be improving) and not being able to see the feed filtered by most recent, the official app is the best app for Facebook.

I've just installed the app again for the first time in about 6 months, during which time I used safari to look at Facebook. I thought that with the latest update, the official app might be worth another look now.

As for different accounts, well, I use my "work" account mostly for 3 group pages that I manage. So I installed the Pages app, and I logged in to that with my work account details. That works well for me, but as I said I really only use the second account to manage 3 pages. If you wanted to use different accounts "fully", your best bet is to have one account set up on safari and one on the app.

Another option for multiple accounts worth looking into is an app like Hootsuite. It's will show multiple feeds, but it's not as "full" an experience.

waynegalway

waynegalway wrote: »

I've just installed the app again for the first time in about 6 months, during which time I used safari to look at Facebook. I thought that with the latest update, the official app might be worth another look now.

Well, that didn't last long.

After about an hour on my phone, having turned off all the background and location and auto-play stuff, the battery stats were desperate. 1 hour installed, 7 mins on screen and 40 minutes background. In just 1 hour it had used 7% of the battery of the previous 24 hours.

So, bye bye official app, hello safari again.

Zapp Brannigan

I''m using Paper from the US store. Beautiful interface, but I think it might also be guilty of over using background activity. Not noticing any improvement on my 6S compared to my 6 running Facebook App.