I'm not WhatsApp user and I'm no longer iPhone user, but I learned not to trust battery health statistic on iPhone. I had SE back in the day and while the phone told me that battery health is 85%, it drained pretty fast and sometimes the phone died before it drained to zero (at say 30%).
While WhatsApp clearly does some shenanigans in the background there, I would think about changing the battery. I believe it may help.
The behavior you describe usually starts when battery capacity drop below 80%. Remember the BatteryGate? Apple tried to avoid the sudden dies by reducing speed, which works, but did an awful job in introducing this feature that it only reinforced its infamous planned obsolescence strategy.
Replacing the battery probably would help, but I have no issues with the current one, such as abrupt drains or shutdowns. So I guess I'll carry on with this one for a little longer.
I haven't checked battery use, but both the WhatsApp iOS app and the desktop app are painfully slow and unreliable for me, to the point that I've given up trying to communicate on them, and only occasionally check my messages. WhatsApp is popular with internationals, so I can't just abandon it completely, but I've told people that they can't expect a timely reply from me over WhatsApp. On desktop, it has about 500ms keyboard lag whenever I type something, if it even manages to start up. I imagine that an app that is so heavy and inefficiently is also a battery hog.
I checked my iPhone (16 Pro) and I'm not seeing high usage via WhatsApp. The only day last week where it was high was when I was talking on the phone, via WhatsApp, to a friend. Which makes sense. But otherwise, most days, it's not even in the Top 10 or even Top 15. I don't think I've adjusted any settings on WhatsApp to make it less "talkative" or battery-hungry either.
I don't. I used to have one of my computers synced, but it's been awhile. So only my phone gets WhatsApp messages/calls.
I will say, being an American, I don't use WhatsApp that much. There're only two or three people who I use WhatsApp with. And we might exchange a handful of texts each week, even in our group chat. Like I use Signal and Discord way more. Idk if that has anything to do with things.
Hopefully you can figure this out. I'm genuinely curious why it's eating up so much of your battery.
Even when I was living abroad and used WhatsApp exclusively (including audio calls), it never used more than a marginal part of my battery. I don't know if we have different settings or something else, but it's not a problem for me.
I remember the Facebook app growing and growing in size when I'd use it. The thing would include so much bloat that it bogged down my memory and wore out the battery quicker. Maybe it's that given that they have the same parents?
For what it's worth, Whatsapp sits at 1% battery usage on my cheap to mid Android 14. Telegram is at 0.25%, Discord 4%, Firefox at 2.55%, Harmonic (an app for the HN) at 1.9%.
Chiming in as someone who's from a part of the world where Whatsapp is, sadly, also the de facto primary method of messaging.
FWIW battery usage seems pretty normal to me on Android. Currently sitting at about 8.2% of battery usage with 44m on screen. This is similar to firefox, which is using 8.8% at 46m.
Something seems pretty wrong on your device! Though I truly wish we could be off this platform... I remember reading your post on not using Whatsapp and all I could think about is what a drag that would be. No one would even bother messaging me I think!
I'm not a WhatsApp user but I am an iPhone user. I don't think iOS is super accurate with its background power calculations. Sometimes I see apps on there that I know do not do much background processing showing up for more time than I even use them. I also know that Apple has its own tricks to make its apps look a bit better here.
I know that for iMessage at least, iOS doesn't count its background processing time the same as it does for third party apps (like WhatsApp) since iMessage is built on Apple's push notification service which is a constantly running system service. iMessage's background processing doesn't show up under "iMessage" but under a generic "System Services" label. Since Apple also separates out video calls into Facetime (also under a separate service), video call processing also shows up separately.
WhatsApp here can then look worse since all of its background processing for messages (like E2EE processing), processes for voice and video calls, location services, etc. are all counted under one big WhatsApp label. So WhatsApp's battery usage here can vary wildly on how you use it. I don't really use WhatsApp much beyond the odd call here and there with family elsewhere in the world and very limited messaging with them. I never see WhatsApp in my battery usage despite my battery health being down to 83-84% as well. I can imagine if you take a lot of calls through WhatsApp, it can show up here under background processing since it has to actively use system resources in the background while you're in a call.
I know Meta is a company not to be trusted but with an app as mature as WhatsApp, I'm not sure how much trickery they can really do for background processing. iOS is both really strict with its background processing allotments (so I imagine WA have optimized the shit out of things) and a bit enthusiastic with how it calculates battery usage. I'm sure there are engineers at Meta who's job is solely dedicated to finding little loopholes for background processing and performance but there's only so much cat-and-mouse hunting/chasing that can be done for an app used by half the world.
I'm not sure WhatsApp should be so taxing with encryption/decryption, although I recognize I'm in a bunch of groups that send a ton of messages I never bother to open.
Important to notice that Meta collects a bunch of data unrelated to the core WhatsApp service to share with its other properties to “personalize” whatever they want to, and it's expanding the business services and the scope of the app — “Status” feature consumes a staggering amount of data, even if you never open the tab.
I think those group chats could be a culprit as well. The app has to process those incoming messages in the background. It doesn't just do a bulk pull on app launch.
I should've clarified sorry, I think it still pulls notification content in the background with background processing disabled. I think if you completely disabled notifications from those group chats, that processing would stop.
Pretty sure push notifications are handled by the OS and pulled from Apple servers. This is why if you are on a network that blocks certain apps such as WhatsApp, you still receive notifications.
If I remember correctly, the OS does pull the notification from Apple's servers but then WhatsApp decrypts the notification content to show you the details like contact name, message content, profile photo, etc.
The thing is, even with background activity and notifications turned off, WhatsApp still drains the battery. I suspect that WhatsApp leverage being on the memory (as in: appearing in the multitasking view) to contact Meta's servers, thus draining battery.
If you actually use it frequently (mainly for getting messages), it’s because the power usage page on iOS is attributing the network usage of the app as part of its battery draw. So if you’re getting messages all day, that means the cellular antenna is receiving data all day, which then is being attributed the app in power usage.
In the end, power usage % is a made up number. It has to be. It’s like if a football team wins a game, can you attribute the victory to each player as a percentage? You can try based on things like assists and goals, but it’s ultimately some arbitrary number you’re putting on everyone. Similarly, iOS is trying to pick up stats correlated to battery usage like cpu usage %, on screen time, modem usage time, and turn that into a semi-meaningful number.
As an anecdote, I have WhatsApp installed and like a whopping 5 people I message on there, currently it shows as below 1% battery usage on iOS battery settings.
It can be made up (what number isn't?), but there is at least some correspondence, right? I mean, WhatsApp battery draining drop significantly when I started force-quitting it.
I can imagine that 5 active chats doesn't demand too much from the phone or its battery. My main suspect, after reading lots of comments, is just this: messages in heavily active group chats.
The correspondence is modem usage. The modem is a large part of a modern phones battery drain. As an experiment, notice how much further your phone will go with cellular disabled in airplane mode.
If you have 5 group chats constantly firing, WhatsApp will constantly require the modem to be receiving data, which will constantly cause battery drain.
For my two cents, I’m on an iPhone 17 and WhatsApp seems to have a normal battery impact i.e. if I compare it to any other app which I spend a similar amount of time using on any given day, the battery usage is comparable (about 5-8% for me, with on average 20-30 minutes screen on time and about an hour of background activity).
I do think there is no normal explanation for why WhatsApp has such high background activity however, it’s very odd.
FWIW I have three linked devices (an iPad and two Macs). I also disagree with some other comments about poor app performance, the apps seem to work pretty well thanks to native implementations across each Apple OS.
Now I still hate WhatsApp for their weird UI changes, aggressively pushing Meta AI, and now this stupid subscription where they are taking basic features and putting them behind a paywall. You have to pay to be able to pin more than three chats! Insane!
I also have definitely noticed weird WhatsApp battery drain in the past however. I think on my old iPhone 12 I sometimes experienced comparable battery drain to what you describe, but I have not observed it in some time.
You have to pay to be able to pin more than three chats!
Seems pretty logical for them.
It's so much easier to lock basic QoL functions behind paywall then to provide added value someone would want to pay for. And without paywalling enough to threaten their network effect.
App downloaded from the devil does nefarious things? Who would have figured?
WhatsApp and all the other meta products are things that I would rather lose friends over than download. Meta is one of the major players that have made the society as shit as it is today. They spy on you and manipulate politics. Calling them the devil might have been an understatement.
Yeah, I'm aware of that. Unfortunately, giving up WhatsApp in places like Brazil means cutting off communications with not only friends and family, but a whole lot of business, doctors, even government services. I've tried. It's feasible, but really cumbersome.
Yeah in the UK it's non-optional. It's default. When I lived in Spain it was the same. It'd be like opting out of phone communication altogether.
It does seem like an unusually passionate stance to lose friends over something like this. Could you elaborate a bit further? Do you mean literally lose old friends? Or more like eschew potential new relationships? Are you thinking of specific historical scenarios, or more hypothetically? I'm not sure I'm imagining exactly what you mean.
The first time I visited Malaysia my in-laws asked me if I texted and I said yeah. They then realized I didn't have WhatsApp when they tried to add me to a group chat and went "I thought you said you texted?". After living here it is the only way I get info from a lot of places, and my phone plan actually lets you use WhatsApp even if they cut your data since you wouldn't be able to reach them without it (only found out when we didn't have auto-pay on my line and I needed to get a hold of them).
Fundamentally, someone has to say "enough" and get crushed in the wash for things to get better. In certain places it might mean losing friends, in others, careers. But if it isn't someone doing it for principles early it'll be the disenfranchised, or we'll surrender our communications to intelligence organizations who want us alienated and reactive to ads. Oh, too late?
This path is an individual effort for a systemic problem. WhatsApp has a lot of advantages that explain its dominance, as the one @pekt said — unlimited usage even without data; the same happens here in Brazil. Cutting this off would help to level the battlefield for other messaging apps.
Yeah, that's the excuse people have made since long before 99%. It's true, we need non-individual solutions, yet nobody in power wants to do anything. So some of us are going into the gears, whether we want to or not.
The comment I replied to asked why one might do so. I explained the stance. The more annoying I am about this, the less likely it is that those who around me are tricked into the monoculture, and the less likely it is for a business owner to think that going WhatsApp-first is a good idea.
I'm not doing anything to make the world better. But using WhatsApp makes it worse.
I don’t have any old friends on it but if I did and they refused to communicate with me any other way I wouldn’t want to be friends with them. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to say that if someone makes an ethical decision that people who don’t respect that decision aren’t good friends! I would call that outright hostile.
WhatsApp has a chokehold in the majority of the world with like 90% market penetration in most parts. Even with the rise of Signal and the existence of Telegram, WhatsApp was just at the right place at the right time and now both people you interact with daily and businesses you interact with all exist on it. They do a really good job of keeping you locked in.
I was able to bring family and my partner to Signal, but it's an alien app for everyone else. WhatsApp is used by ~99% of Brazilians with smartphones, plus it's exempt from data limits by the carriers themselves. Hard to compete against all of that.
Pavouk106 | a day ago
I'm not WhatsApp user and I'm no longer iPhone user, but I learned not to trust battery health statistic on iPhone. I had SE back in the day and while the phone told me that battery health is 85%, it drained pretty fast and sometimes the phone died before it drained to zero (at say 30%).
While WhatsApp clearly does some shenanigans in the background there, I would think about changing the battery. I believe it may help.
[OP] rodrigo | a day ago
The behavior you describe usually starts when battery capacity drop below 80%. Remember the BatteryGate? Apple tried to avoid the sudden dies by reducing speed, which works, but did an awful job in introducing this feature that it only reinforced its infamous planned obsolescence strategy.
Replacing the battery probably would help, but I have no issues with the current one, such as abrupt drains or shutdowns. So I guess I'll carry on with this one for a little longer.
[OP] rodrigo | a day ago
I'm curious if this issue is widespread or something wrong only with me, my phone and/or my WhatsApp.
ilyag | 22 hours ago
I haven't checked battery use, but both the WhatsApp iOS app and the desktop app are painfully slow and unreliable for me, to the point that I've given up trying to communicate on them, and only occasionally check my messages. WhatsApp is popular with internationals, so I can't just abandon it completely, but I've told people that they can't expect a timely reply from me over WhatsApp. On desktop, it has about 500ms keyboard lag whenever I type something, if it even manages to start up. I imagine that an app that is so heavy and inefficiently is also a battery hog.
[OP] rodrigo | 21 hours ago
Yes, it's. Another Electron monstrosity made by a company that really doesn't care.
donn | 21 hours ago
WhatsApp on Mac is a Catalyst port of the iPad version FWIW, so it's surprisingly pretty solid
It's why I kind of hated the complaints about Catalyst, compared to Electron apps they are a strict upgrade
[OP] rodrigo | 19 hours ago
Oh, I wasn't aware a company could make such a shitty app without Electron. Meta always surprising us!
stu2b50 | 21 hours ago
WhatsApp is a native UIKit app on iOS and a catalyst app on macOS (catalyst allows developer to port UIKit apps to macOS). Neither are electron.
JCPhoenix | a day ago
I checked my iPhone (16 Pro) and I'm not seeing high usage via WhatsApp. The only day last week where it was high was when I was talking on the phone, via WhatsApp, to a friend. Which makes sense. But otherwise, most days, it's not even in the Top 10 or even Top 15. I don't think I've adjusted any settings on WhatsApp to make it less "talkative" or battery-hungry either.
[OP] rodrigo | 21 hours ago
Out of curiosity, do you have any other device synced with you phone's WhatsApp?
JCPhoenix | 18 hours ago
I don't. I used to have one of my computers synced, but it's been awhile. So only my phone gets WhatsApp messages/calls.
I will say, being an American, I don't use WhatsApp that much. There're only two or three people who I use WhatsApp with. And we might exchange a handful of texts each week, even in our group chat. Like I use Signal and Discord way more. Idk if that has anything to do with things.
Hopefully you can figure this out. I'm genuinely curious why it's eating up so much of your battery.
xethos | 14 hours ago
If it's not immediately duplicable on others' iPhones, I wonder if it's related to how many (and how acive) group chats you're included in
Weldawadyathink | 17 hours ago
Even when I was living abroad and used WhatsApp exclusively (including audio calls), it never used more than a marginal part of my battery. I don't know if we have different settings or something else, but it's not a problem for me.
kingofsnake | 14 hours ago
I remember the Facebook app growing and growing in size when I'd use it. The thing would include so much bloat that it bogged down my memory and wore out the battery quicker. Maybe it's that given that they have the same parents?
PetitPrince | 11 hours ago
For what it's worth, Whatsapp sits at 1% battery usage on my cheap to mid Android 14. Telegram is at 0.25%, Discord 4%, Firefox at 2.55%, Harmonic (an app for the HN) at 1.9%.
immaterial | 6 hours ago
Chiming in as someone who's from a part of the world where Whatsapp is, sadly, also the de facto primary method of messaging.
FWIW battery usage seems pretty normal to me on Android. Currently sitting at about 8.2% of battery usage with 44m on screen. This is similar to firefox, which is using 8.8% at 46m.
Something seems pretty wrong on your device! Though I truly wish we could be off this platform... I remember reading your post on not using Whatsapp and all I could think about is what a drag that would be. No one would even bother messaging me I think!
[OP] rodrigo | 5 hours ago
Based on feedback so far, battery draining seems more common on iPhones.
artvandelay | a day ago
I'm not a WhatsApp user but I am an iPhone user. I don't think iOS is super accurate with its background power calculations. Sometimes I see apps on there that I know do not do much background processing showing up for more time than I even use them. I also know that Apple has its own tricks to make its apps look a bit better here.
I know that for iMessage at least, iOS doesn't count its background processing time the same as it does for third party apps (like WhatsApp) since iMessage is built on Apple's push notification service which is a constantly running system service. iMessage's background processing doesn't show up under "iMessage" but under a generic "System Services" label. Since Apple also separates out video calls into Facetime (also under a separate service), video call processing also shows up separately.
WhatsApp here can then look worse since all of its background processing for messages (like E2EE processing), processes for voice and video calls, location services, etc. are all counted under one big WhatsApp label. So WhatsApp's battery usage here can vary wildly on how you use it. I don't really use WhatsApp much beyond the odd call here and there with family elsewhere in the world and very limited messaging with them. I never see WhatsApp in my battery usage despite my battery health being down to 83-84% as well. I can imagine if you take a lot of calls through WhatsApp, it can show up here under background processing since it has to actively use system resources in the background while you're in a call.
I know Meta is a company not to be trusted but with an app as mature as WhatsApp, I'm not sure how much trickery they can really do for background processing. iOS is both really strict with its background processing allotments (so I imagine WA have optimized the shit out of things) and a bit enthusiastic with how it calculates battery usage. I'm sure there are engineers at Meta who's job is solely dedicated to finding little loopholes for background processing and performance but there's only so much cat-and-mouse hunting/chasing that can be done for an app used by half the world.
[OP] rodrigo | 21 hours ago
I'm not sure WhatsApp should be so taxing with encryption/decryption, although I recognize I'm in a bunch of groups that send a ton of messages I never bother to open.
Important to notice that Meta collects a bunch of data unrelated to the core WhatsApp service to share with its other properties to “personalize” whatever they want to, and it's expanding the business services and the scope of the app — “Status” feature consumes a staggering amount of data, even if you never open the tab.
artvandelay | 20 hours ago
I think those group chats could be a culprit as well. The app has to process those incoming messages in the background. It doesn't just do a bulk pull on app launch.
[OP] rodrigo | 19 hours ago
It does if you prevent it from background activity. It's even visible: new messages start popping in the chats list.
artvandelay | 19 hours ago
I should've clarified sorry, I think it still pulls notification content in the background with background processing disabled. I think if you completely disabled notifications from those group chats, that processing would stop.
Aldehyde | 13 hours ago
Pretty sure push notifications are handled by the OS and pulled from Apple servers. This is why if you are on a network that blocks certain apps such as WhatsApp, you still receive notifications.
artvandelay | 13 hours ago
If I remember correctly, the OS does pull the notification from Apple's servers but then WhatsApp decrypts the notification content to show you the details like contact name, message content, profile photo, etc.
Aldehyde | 12 hours ago
Ah right, hadn’t thought of that.
[OP] rodrigo | 6 hours ago
The thing is, even with background activity and notifications turned off, WhatsApp still drains the battery. I suspect that WhatsApp leverage being on the memory (as in: appearing in the multitasking view) to contact Meta's servers, thus draining battery.
stu2b50 | 21 hours ago
If you actually use it frequently (mainly for getting messages), it’s because the power usage page on iOS is attributing the network usage of the app as part of its battery draw. So if you’re getting messages all day, that means the cellular antenna is receiving data all day, which then is being attributed the app in power usage.
In the end, power usage % is a made up number. It has to be. It’s like if a football team wins a game, can you attribute the victory to each player as a percentage? You can try based on things like assists and goals, but it’s ultimately some arbitrary number you’re putting on everyone. Similarly, iOS is trying to pick up stats correlated to battery usage like cpu usage %, on screen time, modem usage time, and turn that into a semi-meaningful number.
As an anecdote, I have WhatsApp installed and like a whopping 5 people I message on there, currently it shows as below 1% battery usage on iOS battery settings.
[OP] rodrigo | 19 hours ago
It can be made up (what number isn't?), but there is at least some correspondence, right? I mean, WhatsApp battery draining drop significantly when I started force-quitting it.
I can imagine that 5 active chats doesn't demand too much from the phone or its battery. My main suspect, after reading lots of comments, is just this: messages in heavily active group chats.
stu2b50 | 16 hours ago
The correspondence is modem usage. The modem is a large part of a modern phones battery drain. As an experiment, notice how much further your phone will go with cellular disabled in airplane mode.
If you have 5 group chats constantly firing, WhatsApp will constantly require the modem to be receiving data, which will constantly cause battery drain.
[OP] rodrigo | 6 hours ago
That's a possible culprit, yes. I left a few highly active groups that I didn't bother to check ever. Let's see if it helps.
LumaBop | 7 hours ago
For my two cents, I’m on an iPhone 17 and WhatsApp seems to have a normal battery impact i.e. if I compare it to any other app which I spend a similar amount of time using on any given day, the battery usage is comparable (about 5-8% for me, with on average 20-30 minutes screen on time and about an hour of background activity).
I do think there is no normal explanation for why WhatsApp has such high background activity however, it’s very odd.
FWIW I have three linked devices (an iPad and two Macs). I also disagree with some other comments about poor app performance, the apps seem to work pretty well thanks to native implementations across each Apple OS.
Now I still hate WhatsApp for their weird UI changes, aggressively pushing Meta AI, and now this stupid subscription where they are taking basic features and putting them behind a paywall. You have to pay to be able to pin more than three chats! Insane!
I also have definitely noticed weird WhatsApp battery drain in the past however. I think on my old iPhone 12 I sometimes experienced comparable battery drain to what you describe, but I have not observed it in some time.
[OP] rodrigo | 6 hours ago
Maybe the iPhone 17 horsepower and larger battery capacity hide WhatsApp's insane behavior?
Tiraon | 5 hours ago
Seems pretty logical for them.
It's so much easier to lock basic QoL functions behind paywall then to provide added value someone would want to pay for. And without paywalling enough to threaten their network effect.
Akir | 23 hours ago
App downloaded from the devil does nefarious things? Who would have figured?
WhatsApp and all the other meta products are things that I would rather lose friends over than download. Meta is one of the major players that have made the society as shit as it is today. They spy on you and manipulate politics. Calling them the devil might have been an understatement.
[OP] rodrigo | 21 hours ago
Yeah, I'm aware of that. Unfortunately, giving up WhatsApp in places like Brazil means cutting off communications with not only friends and family, but a whole lot of business, doctors, even government services. I've tried. It's feasible, but really cumbersome.
redbearsam | 18 hours ago
Yeah in the UK it's non-optional. It's default. When I lived in Spain it was the same. It'd be like opting out of phone communication altogether.
It does seem like an unusually passionate stance to lose friends over something like this. Could you elaborate a bit further? Do you mean literally lose old friends? Or more like eschew potential new relationships? Are you thinking of specific historical scenarios, or more hypothetically? I'm not sure I'm imagining exactly what you mean.
pekt | 18 hours ago
The first time I visited Malaysia my in-laws asked me if I texted and I said yeah. They then realized I didn't have WhatsApp when they tried to add me to a group chat and went "I thought you said you texted?". After living here it is the only way I get info from a lot of places, and my phone plan actually lets you use WhatsApp even if they cut your data since you wouldn't be able to reach them without it (only found out when we didn't have auto-pay on my line and I needed to get a hold of them).
wervenyt | 18 hours ago
Fundamentally, someone has to say "enough" and get crushed in the wash for things to get better. In certain places it might mean losing friends, in others, careers. But if it isn't someone doing it for principles early it'll be the disenfranchised, or we'll surrender our communications to intelligence organizations who want us alienated and reactive to ads. Oh, too late?
[OP] rodrigo | 5 hours ago
This path is an individual effort for a systemic problem. WhatsApp has a lot of advantages that explain its dominance, as the one @pekt said — unlimited usage even without data; the same happens here in Brazil. Cutting this off would help to level the battlefield for other messaging apps.
wervenyt | 3 hours ago
Yeah, that's the excuse people have made since long before 99%. It's true, we need non-individual solutions, yet nobody in power wants to do anything. So some of us are going into the gears, whether we want to or not.
The comment I replied to asked why one might do so. I explained the stance. The more annoying I am about this, the less likely it is that those who around me are tricked into the monoculture, and the less likely it is for a business owner to think that going WhatsApp-first is a good idea.
I'm not doing anything to make the world better. But using WhatsApp makes it worse.
Akir | 16 hours ago
I don’t have any old friends on it but if I did and they refused to communicate with me any other way I wouldn’t want to be friends with them. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to say that if someone makes an ethical decision that people who don’t respect that decision aren’t good friends! I would call that outright hostile.
redbearsam | 10 hours ago
Thanks for elaborating. I'd disagree I think with your final statement, but you've helped me understand your position.
kingofsnake | 14 hours ago
Has Signal not taken off over there? Enough people use it in Canada that asking a whole crew to switch over isn't a tall order where I am.
artvandelay | 14 hours ago
WhatsApp has a chokehold in the majority of the world with like 90% market penetration in most parts. Even with the rise of Signal and the existence of Telegram, WhatsApp was just at the right place at the right time and now both people you interact with daily and businesses you interact with all exist on it. They do a really good job of keeping you locked in.
[OP] rodrigo | 5 hours ago
I was able to bring family and my partner to Signal, but it's an alien app for everyone else. WhatsApp is used by ~99% of Brazilians with smartphones, plus it's exempt from data limits by the carriers themselves. Hard to compete against all of that.