Facebook just fixed the battery draining issue in its iPhone app
After complaints that its app was causing significant battery drain for iPhone users, Facebook has released an update that it says fixes the issue.
The social network also explained the issues that led to excessive battery usage.
"We recently heard reports of some people experiencing battery issues with the Facebook iOS app and have been looking into the causes of these problems," Facebook engineering manager Ari Grant said in a post on Facebook Thursday. "We found a few key issues and have identified additional improvements, some of which are in the version of the app that was released today."
Grant cited two reasons the Facebook app was causing unusual battery drain on iPhones. He said code in the app caused "CPU spin" that required too much of the phone's processor power. He also affirmed suspicions that the Facebook app was playing silent audio even when running in the background and called the behavior "unintentional."
"The app isn't actually doing anything while awake in the background, but it does use more battery simply by being awake," he said. "Our fixes will solve this audio issue and remove background audio completely."
Grant wrote that the battery drain issues had nothing to do with how the Facebook app tracks a phone's location. If you haven't enabled the "Location History" setting in the app, Facebook will not track you in the background.
An update to the Facebook app with bug fixes is available now in the App Store.