Firefox is using excessive battery charge via "Background App Refresh"--despite that setting being turned OFF.
I have Background App Refresh disabled system-wide. Yet, the Firefox app managed to get a whopping 8.6 hours of Background App Refresh activity... and eat up a significant chunk of my battery charge in the process. It even used more battery than the Safari app, even though I barely used the Firefox app. Firefox is NOT respecting (and iOS is obviously not correctly enforcing) the Background App Refresh setting.
The Firefox app earned a swift deletion from my iPhone. I may give it a second chance in the future, when Apple and Mozilla have gotten a chance to resolve this Background App Refresh issue.
Attached are two screenshots. The first is my Background App Refresh screen, which shows I have Background App Refresh disabled in its entirety, and the second, my main Battery screen, which shows the excessive amount of battery charge used by Firefox's "Background App Refresh." This is a glaring breach in battery protocol by the Firefox app... and disappointingly, iOS allowed it to happen.
Chosen solution
I'm very happy to report that the excessive background usage issue I had experienced with a previous version of Firefox for iOS is gone as of Firefox version 1.2! I have completely normal battery usage now, with little to no background activity. I'm very happy and I plan to continue using Firefox on iOS regularly.
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Thanks for your report. I have opened a bug for investigation.
Question: Did you have a Firefox Account enabled?
This might be bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1220842 which is fixed in version 1.2 which we hope to ship very shortly.
Modified by AaronMT
Question: Did you have a Firefox Account enabled? This might be bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1220842 which is fixed in version 1.2 which we hope to ship very shortly.
Yes, indeed I did. I had Firefox sync enabled (and I was properly signed into my Firefox account)--on both iOS (iPhone 6s Plus) and on my iMac. I actually posted about the iOS app seemingly not working when it came to displaying currently open tabs on my iMac, something I experienced soon after I downloaded the app:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1093664
Thanks for filing that bug report on my behalf.
I will check out v1.2 when it's released, and I will be happy to report back.
Modified by Rafagon
Just to confirm:
Sync doesn't run in the background on iOS — we start a timer when the app is foregrounded, and we stop it when we're backgrounded, syncing every fifteen minutes as that timer fires.
Only a few syncing operations will even wrap up when you background the app, and no new ones will start.
There are no push-triggered syncs, either.
The only background work we do is audio — either a site playing audio or the aural progress bar for accessibility. That does suggest that the bug Aaron pointed to is the culprit in your case.
Chosen Solution
I'm very happy to report that the excessive background usage issue I had experienced with a previous version of Firefox for iOS is gone as of Firefox version 1.2! I have completely normal battery usage now, with little to no background activity. I'm very happy and I plan to continue using Firefox on iOS regularly.
Glad to hear it!