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Forum Discussion
Background activity iOS from the mobile app.
Hi, Just notice that Dropbox keeps active in the background on iOS, even if i disable it in the settings from iOS. After some testing I found the problem, the integration with the files app causes...
Your iPad iOS app keeps killing my iPad’s battery! I turned the background updates off, yet, it still says it runs in the background, according to the power usage graph. I even tried turning off ALL app background updates, the same behaviour happens.
I got told to try unlinking it from the Files app, the same thing has happened again.
This has happened many many times, and soon it will likely begin having detrimental side affects for my battery’s future.
I've had my iPad turn off completely because of this many times now. For a platform that has matured a lot, you'd think this kind of issue wouldn't ever happen...
- Walter
Dropbox Staff
Hi AaronPowellDesign; thanks for joining our Community and reporting this.
Can you please clarify if you notice this happen after you've disconnected Dropbox from your Files app with our mobile app shut off on your iPad?
Could you perhaps try reinstalling the app and let me know if the power usage is the same?
Thanks!
Hi,
Yes, the same behaviour continued after unlinking it from the dropbox app, and reinstalling hasn't made a difference either....
Typically, when I've found my iPad "belly up" so to speak, after reviving it with my charger, it says that your app ran in the background for 3 - 4 hours, which was then followed by the graph showing red just before the point of battery exhaustion... There's clearly a bug that means it has complete disregard for my app background setting choice..
- Jay
Do you have any camera uploads or manual uploads running in the background of the mobile app?
Are there any other apps on your device that connect directly to the mobile app via the iOS Files app, which could be keeping the Dropbox app active? If so, could you try quitting those apps completely to see if this helps with the battery usage?
- Daphne
Thanks for your updates here!
Just to confirm, when you mentioned turning off all background updates etc, are you referring to "background app refresh"?
If you're not familiar with this, you can check it out by opening the device's Settings > General > Background app refresh.
Also, can you confirm for me the version of the Dropbox app installed, and the iOS version of your device?
Cheers!
Hi,
I would have thought that my many previous comments would've suggested that I am only referring to the only possible option available, which is of course "Background Update Refresh", at least you can feel sure that I am referring to what you thought it might be (answering the exact same questions many times in earlier comments has caused my patience to wane by the way)...
I took a long time to respond because I was convinced for a while that as long as the Dropbox App is closed when using the multi task screen, then that would stop this problem , but noo. This morning my iPad was on 5%, and the Dropbox App wasn't even open, yet, it says it ran in the background for nearly 8 HOURS!!! It feels like Dropbox are conspiring with Apple to kill off older devices, since when the battery goes bad, then the whole device becomes useless?
I'm running Dropbox 202.3 and iPadOS 13.6.1.
Please do NOT assume updating will somehow solve this (it only says new features for the latest app update anyway), I've already updated both MANY times during the time of having this problem, and unless dropbox get their act together, (and stop focusing on new features all the time and fix the problems), then MAYBE the problem will get fixed.
Here's an image that accompanies my comment reply that I just sent a moment ago..
I just found this thread and want to add my two cents to this conversation. I have an iPad Pro 10.5 circa 2017 and it's an excellent device. Recently I noticed that the battery was appearing to not hold a charge and assumed it was because of the battery. A bit of research showed that Dropbox has been running in the background: in the past 10 days, I used Dropbox for 7 minutes, but it ran for 105 hours and 33 minutes in the background. I've tried to shut off the use of the background by Dropbox, but have yet to figure it out. It's a problem I could use some help with.....
Ralph
- I was googling for this issue and was lucky to find this discussion. I have exactly same problem with iPhone 12 and iOS 14.2. Even after turning background app refresh off Dropbox continues to run in background. I have camera upload turned off and seldom I used drop box. In the end I decided to uninstall the app from iPhone until a fix is available
