Key Takeaways
- Google Photos is testing a new “Optimize backup for battery life” feature
- The app can currently cause significant battery drain in the background
- The feature is under development with no set release date
Your smartphone works hard when shooting photos and videos, ruining your battery life and heating up your pocket. However, if you’re suffering from Google Photos battery drain, a fix is finally on the way.
Google Photos is testing a new feature that could significantly extend your battery life by preventing the app from constantly running big, power-hungry backups in the background, while still keeping your photos safe.
Google Photos Backup: Essential But Power-Hungry
The issue is more critical now than ever before: modern smartphones shoot higher-resolution photos and videos that produce much larger files than previous generations. Features like 4K video and raw photos consume vast amounts of data that your phone has to work hard to back up, especially over weak cellphone networks. Advanced functions like the Google Pixel’s Video Boost consume even more data.
Google Photos already helps you by letting you set backups to run only when connected to Wi-Fi to save data on your mobile plan, but a less-obvious impact is the effect these huge backups have on your smartphone’s battery.
How To Tell If Google Photos Is Draining Your Battery
You don’t have to guess which apps are draining your battery; your smartphone keeps track of battery usage on an app-by-app basis and can tell you exactly what’s happening. Check now and see.
Open Settings and tap Battery.
- Tap Battery Usage (or scroll down to the list of apps on iPhone).
- Find Google Photos in the list of apps.
- Look for “Background” activity. If this value is high, your Google Photos backups are likely consuming significant power.
Google’s Fix
If you want to conserve battery power, you can switch your device to power-saving mode, but this will affect all your apps. Now, a report from Android Authority reveals that Google is testing a new “Optimize backup for battery life” setting. The feature is still under development, and we don’t know the exact strategy it will use to conserve battery power at this stage, but it will likely reduce the frequency or speed at which it runs backups without the need to turn off backup entirely.
With backup turned on, Google Photos will automatically sync your photos to the cloud the moment you take them, ensuring everything on your device is safely backed up. Adding a delay would increase the risk of losing your most recent captures if something were to happen to your phone, but it would provide a useful middle ground between draining your battery and turning off backup altogether.
The Optimize backup for battery life feature isn’t live yet, but if you’re suffering from Google Photos battery drain, keep an eye out for this update. It may yet save you from battery anxiety on your next vacation.
Follow @paul_monckton on Instagram.
