ExpressVPN is draining my iPhone's battery like crazy, even when configured to use IKEv2. Any way to fix this?

VPN
1

Just recently switched to ExpressVPN, and I’m finding that connecting to their network using their iOS app is draining the battery on my phone like crazy. My phone goes from being able to last a day and a half starting at a full charge to just 10 hours. That’s garbage.

After searching around, I found several people recommend changing the VPN connection type in the app’s settings from OpenVPN to IKEv2, which I did, and at first it seemed to solve the issue. Then I updated the app to the latest version which now supports Lightway instead of OpenVPN, and now it still drains the battery even when using IKEv2.

Anyone else experience this? If so is there by any chance a fix? (I rather doubt it but I figured I’d ask anyway.)

edit: Just to make this more complicated and unusual, I think the battery drain only occurs when I’m connected to my home Wi-Fi. While my phone is connected to my office Wi-Fi everything is normal. And if I turn Wi-Fi off and just use cellular, there’s no excessive battery drain either!

edit: Uninstall and reinstalling the app seems to have fixed the issue.

2

This happens to me if I spend a large portion of my day somewhere when no wifi and poor service. That’s the only time it causes a noticeable difference. I’m testing iOS15 now and I have a few days coming up where I’ll be in an environment with no wifi and limited cellular signal so I hope to see if there is any significant change is battery use.

3

Yeah same problem on my iPhone, 14% drain with just 6hrs background
Meanwhile my s10+ only consume about 2% with similar background time

4

Travelling in an area with no WiFi & bad coverage on IOS 15. Express VPN is killing the battery. I will experiment also with VyprVPN and see what happens

5

The battery status doesn’t report ExpressVPN as using significant battery, but there’s been a night and day difference between when I’m connected to the VPN and when I’m not.

6

Did you try uninstalling and reinstalling the app, or setting its protocol to IKEv2 in its settings?

7

Are you sensing it’s draining significantly or have you tried fetching the data from the battery report in settings?

8

I’ve been looking at the graph of battery drain while the app is running, and it’s significantly steeper while connected to the VPN. Plus I timed how long a single charge lasted while connected and while disconnected.

9

But is it showing that ExpressVPN is eating up most of the pack? Would you mind including a screenshot?

10

No app is really mentioned. Here’s a screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/wNNm1ws

I’ve annotated the points where I connected to and disconnected from the VPN. For this whole period my phone was sleeping almost the entire time. It mentions Music and the home screen, but both were only active for less than a minute, with Music active in the background.

If I highlight other hours when my battery is draining rapidly, it often shows no apps being active at all. Here’s another screen shot: https://imgur.com/a/OkkuCmj

But you can clearly see that the battery drain accelerates when the VPN is connected.

11

The weird thing is, in the older version of ExpressVPN’s app, it used to show up in the battery usage. But now it doesn’t. Another user requested a screenshot where you can see what’s going on: https://imgur.com/a/wNNm1ws

Note that over the course of the last nine hours, my phone has largely been sleeping. During these periods, it lists view few if any apps as being active. In the case of this screenshot, only the home screen and Music are mentioned, and both were active for less than a minute. Here’s another screenshot where there are no active apps: https://imgur.com/a/OkkuCmj

12

I am afraid this is beyond the scope of my knowledge, but try reinstalling the app perhaps? If you’re comfortable with it, do a reset of your phone as well as that might help reset the cache of potential clutter on the phone that is causing the drain.

I have mine connected 24/7 and never had any issues with battery drain.

13

FYI uninstalling and reinstalling the app seems to have fixed the issue.

14

I haven’t tried reinstalling the app so I’ll give that a go.

I also just discovered new and unexpected information… the battery drain only seems to happen when I’m connected to my home Wi-Fi. I noticed it wasn’t happening while at my office, and as an experiment I tried turning off Wi-Fi on my phone while at home and now the battery drain is normal again. That’s very strange!

15

Is your phone up to date? Are you jailbroken?

No, and yes, so sadly reinstalling isn’t really a feasible option. There are probably hacky ways to do it and stay on the same version of iOS or update to a later but still jailbreakable version, but I’d sooner stop using ExpressVPN then give up the jailbreak or otherwise upgrade my OS, as every time I upgrade something new and annoying breaks or some important feature I rely on is removed.

In fact, it was updating that got me into this mess in the first place! ExpressVPN’s app was working flawlessly, and then I foolishly updated the app, and now it drains my battery in half a day!

edit: I also just discovered new and unexpected information… the battery drain only seems to happen when I’m connected to my home Wi-Fi. I noticed it wasn’t happening while at my office, and as an experiment I tried turning off Wi-Fi on my phone while at home and now the battery drain is normal again. That’s very strange!

16

iOS 13.3.1

Incidentally reinstalling the app may have cleared up the issue, at least for now. It’s weirdly inconsistent.

17

It’s not the jailbreak as I’ve tried running my phone with no jailbreak and the issue still occurs. But of course it could be a problem in iOS 13.3.1. But maybe this time it will remain in a state where my battery doesn’t drain. Fingers crossed!