Significant increase in battery consumption in recent days

[shadewood_mole]

I'm not sure what has changed but my phone battery life has dropped significantly recently.

I have a Moto G8 plus running Android 10 with the latest Macrodroid and helper version 13 (I did update from an earlier version of the helper recently)

In the past Macrodroid has hardly registered in the battery usage list but it's now at the top with over 10% listed which is more that goggle play services!!

Prior to the change I was getting over 2 days battery life. Recently I was getting less than a single day.
I've not made any changes to the macros.

So the diagnostic steps I've taken
1. removed the helper app. result still appeared to be high usage.
2. reinstalled helper app and re-booted phone. result still high usage.
3. force stopped Macrodroid and reopened it.
This appeared to help for a while (back to roughly 2 days life) but now the graph is tilting down again and Macrodroid is at the top of the list again.

I have another Moto phone (G13 with Android 13) and even after some time Macrodroid doesn't even appear in the usage list.
I have a Samsung tablet (running Android 13) which also shows no battery usage.

So my question is-

What has changed to make Macrodroid use so much battery and more importantly what can I do to fix this to how it was before?
I think I updated from version 10 of the helper app but as step 1 above seems to discount the helper being the cause.
What other diagnostic steps can I take short of re-installing Macrodroid and starting again?

TIA
Mark

 

[Endercraft]

If you haven't done anything in the app it could simply mean that other apps are using less battery than MacroDroid. (The 10% doesn't mean 10% of the battery itself, it means 10% of the battery used)
I often see this behavior when the screen is off for a long time. MacroDroid goes in the 30% but it's just using as much battery as before while other apps are using less.

 

[shadewood_mole]

If you haven't done anything in the app it could simply mean that other apps are using less battery than MacroDroid. (The 10% doesn't mean 10% of the battery itself, it means 10% of the battery used)
I often see this behavior when the screen is off for a long time. MacroDroid goes in the 30% but it's just using as much battery as before while other apps are using less.

Thanks for that but something has changed. I understand Macrodroid has only used 10% of the usage but the fact that it is at the top of the list is different to how it was under similar usage before (the screen has not been off for a long time) when it wasn't even showing.

Do you have any other diagnostic ideas? I suppose I could disable Macrodroid to check that it is the source of the quicker discharge of the battery first before un-installing it, but it is so useful.

 

[hsurB]

Maybe disabling accesibility/permissions, forcing stop(what you have already done) and reenabling them all again will help.
I think thats what solved it here:

huge MD battery drain

Hey there. I've been using MD for years and now since one of the last updates I'm facing a huge battery drain due to MD (never faced before): I've checked my macros and I don't see anything new. I've quite a few of them depending on cell towers, but also if I remain in the same area all day...

www.macrodroidforum.com

 

[shadewood_mole]

Maybe disabling accesibility/permissions, forcing stop(what you have already done) and reenabling them all again will help.
I think thats what solved it here:

huge MD battery drain

Hey there. I've been using MD for years and now since one of the last updates I'm facing a huge battery drain due to MD (never faced before): I've checked my macros and I don't see anything new. I've quite a few of them depending on cell towers, but also if I remain in the same area all day...

www.macrodroidforum.com

Thanks. I think that was the thread I found which mentioned the forced stop, which I did and that did seem to improve matters to begin with but it didn't last.

 

[MacroDroidDev]

There are no recent changes that I can think of that could cause this. Are you using any Geofence based triggers?

 

[shadewood_mole]

Thanks. No I'm not using geofencing triggers. I'm only using network connect, screen swipe, sunrise sunset, weather and time based triggers.

Do you think this could be related to Android 10 as my other devices are on Android 13 and are behaving themselves?

I think the next step is to uninstall and re-install to see if that helps.

Can I ask in passing, how much of the configuration is backed up to the cloud?
For instance are the weather locations saved there?
Perhaps a shorter list is what is not backed u up?

TIA

 

[shadewood_mole]

To aid diagnosis I charged the phone 100% and disabled Macrodroid (within app). To my surprise it is still the top battery drain. So is the background service still running?
I guess the next step is to uninstall the app

 

[Endercraft]

To aid diagnosis I charged the phone 100% and disabled Macrodroid (within app). To my surprise it is still the top battery drain. So is the background service still running?
I guess the next step is to uninstall the app

Have you waited at least 1 day ?
After disabling MacroDroid you should also force-stop it.
Note that if your system is killing MacroDroid and then restarts it in an infinite loop that leads to enormous battery drains.

 

[Mike Eden]

Mine has done this recently. I found MD was using large amounts of Location time.

The only fix for me was to turn off MD Location permission in Apps>Permissions then rebooting the phone and re enabling MD Location permission.

I powered the phone off then back on, not just a restart.

I tried all other suggestions and none worked for me.

 

[johnskydraw]

Mine has done this recently. I found MD was using large amounts of Location time.

The only fix for me was to turn off MD Location permission in Apps>Permissions then rebooting the phone and re enabling MD Location permission.

I powered the phone off then back on, not just a restart.

I tried all other suggestions and none worked for me.

My device also shows abnormal battery consumption in the latest betas. I didn't understand it very well, due to not having any location or even screen reading triggers.

 

[Endercraft]

My device also shows abnormal battery consumption in the latest betas. I didn't understand it very well, due to not having any location or even screen reading triggers.

Try restarting and waiting a few days. It goes away eventually

 

[Mike Eden]

My device also shows abnormal battery consumption in the latest betas. I didn't understand it very well, due to not having any location or even screen reading triggers.

I had disabled all my macros that used location and it still persisted. Turning off location permission and rebooting was the only thing that worked.

I suspect MD had caused (started) some sort of loop in android.

 

[Timbo]

I use GSAM Battery Monitor app with adb hacks and had over 8500 wakelocks a day which were caused by a macro with interval trigger.
I just found it because the MD protocol shows, that the interval trigger is counting, even if the constraint is not true, but it's not triggering.

But also 3000 of them where called *location*:GnssLocation Provider.
After deactivating MD for a day I only had 300 wakelocks.

Since the battery usage and wakelocks in this case are logged under "android system" it should be something related to MDHelper.

 

[shadewood_mole]

To further diagnose what is happening I started from scratch. I uninstalled the helper, followed by Macrodroid itself. Then I re-installed latest Macrodroid and version 10 of the helper. After restoring from the cloud backup and sorting out all the permissions for both apps. I restarted the phone, fully charged it and looked at the battery consumption again. The drain was not quite as bad as it had been but sadly Macrodroid is way out in front again with over 20% vs Google play services (usually my highest) at 13%

I have the following triggers in use:
Connect to network, disconnect from network
Call incoming
Weather
Three time triggers (morning and evening times, not using alarm)
Swipe screen
Sunrise, sunset
Webhook.

I do not have geolocation or cell tower triggers.

If I disable location permission which macros will fail?

Thanks.

 

[Dm114]

To further diagnose what is happening I started from scratch. I uninstalled the helper, followed by Macrodroid itself. Then I re-installed latest Macrodroid and version 10 of the helper. After restoring from the cloud backup and sorting out all the permissions for both apps. I restarted the phone, fully charged it and looked at the battery consumption again. The drain was not quite as bad as it had been but sadly Macrodroid is way out in front again with over 20% vs Google play services (usually my highest) at 13%

I have the following triggers in use:
Connect to network, disconnect from network
Call incoming
Weather
Three time triggers (morning and evening times, not using alarm)
Swipe screen
Sunrise, sunset
Webhook.

I do not have geolocation or cell tower triggers.

If I disable location permission which macros will fail?

Thanks.

For sure Weather increases consumption. Other triggers shouldn't so it's a bit strange...

 

[Endercraft]

You can also see the wakelocks from MacroDroid with dump permission :
dumpsys power | grep -i wake_lock
I also have MacroDroid on top of my battery usage list but considering it has pretty much all the worst triggers for battery saving I don't mind. If I let my phone off for a while the battery doesn't really go down that much anyway.

 

[MacroDroidDev]

If anyones manages to extract the wakelocks when such crazy battery assumption occurs, then please do share to support@macrodroid.com. This is a very hard problem to reproduce and I am yet to notice this happening to my devices, so any info I can gather is very valuable.

 

[shadewood_mole]

@Endercraft I'm afraid I'm not technical enough to run the wake-lock command you gave without more information.

Thanks @MacroDroidDev for looking at this.

If it's relevant the phone I'm having problems with is Android 10 Moto G8 Plus. I have another Moto G13 running Android 13 and that has the same macros but is not even showing on the battery usage list. I'm not aware of anything else that's significantly different.

 

[Endercraft]

I'm afraid I'm not technical enough to run the wake-lock command you gave without more information.

Add a shell script action and put the command inside it (save result to a variable).
You may need to use adb to run this command if you haven't already : adb shell pm grant com.arlosoft.macrodroid android.permission.DUMP