Audiobus: Use your music apps together.

What is Audiobus?Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.

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Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

iOS11 Battery and Other Survival Tips

I may be really lucky, because I have four devices running iOS11 and on all of them I get exactly the same battery life as pre-updating. Whether you believe excessive battery-drain is real or imagined can be discussed elsewhere... here I just want to share 10 favorite tips that may help bring your batterylife back to how it was before you hit the "update" button.

1: Don't panic right away
There's lots of stuff going on in the background even after the installation has completed. The local system is resyncing a load of data with iCloud. Some file databases need to be re-indexed, etc. Let it settle down for a bit before whipping out the timer to clock your new batterylife.

2: Kill them zombies
First thing I tend to do after installing a new system is try out a bunch of music apps. Invariably, some of those will turn into IAA zombies and suck your battery dry. After your first run through the system, don't forget to do a soft/hard reset to kill 'em all.

3: Set your screen brightness back to the level you had it on before the update

Next up - Settings! New iOS releases tend to introduce new features that need to be switched off. They also re-enable settings you thought you had disabled.

4: Hey Siri - Stop listening!
Settings -> Siri & Search -> Listen for "Hey Siri". Switch this one off. It keeps the microphone on at all times, so Siri can hear your commands. Which you most likely don't care for.

5: Enable Wifi Assist for Mobile Data
Data connections are the second most energy consuming feature in your iDevice (after the screen). And poor connections are even worse than good connections. In Settings->Mobile Data is a switch called "Wifi Assist" which will let the device switch to 4G whenever Wifi is really bad. This will help a bit.

6: Disable Automatic Downloads
This one is really crucial: go to Settings -> iTunes & App Stores and disable all "Automatic Downloads". These cause battery drain and slow down your device while pumping 100s of megabytes through the network and installing in the background.

7: Wifi / Bluetooth (and Airdrop)
You need to disable these from the settings menu, as the Command Centre just disconnects them instead of fully switching them off. Every iOS update also re-enables Bluetooth, even if you had it switched off before.

8: Disable location services
If you don't need these, switch them off.

9: Check for worst offenders
If you go into Settings -> Battery you can see which apps have been consuming the most energy. Try avoiding that app for a while (or be conscious of how much you're using it) and see if that has an influence on battery drain. Around iOS update time lots of apps release updates and it could be one of these updates for a particular app that is causing grief.

10: Auto off
Go through all other settings (also app-settings) and investigate anything that has the words "Auto", "Sync", "iCloud" or "Smart" in it. Those are immediately suspect. Be extra critical of anything that involves network access.

Also: how old is your device? Could it be that the battery was already degrading prior to updating? Are you comparing to a measurement you did over a year ago or does it just 'feel' like battery is draining faster because you're looking at that battery icon more than before. It's easy to get paranoid about batterylife because it seems so many other people are also complaining...

Hope this helps some people!

:)

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Comments

  • Thanks!

    How do you do a hard and soft reset again?

  • Also, fun feature in the new IOS. Bluetooth and Wifi can only be switched off from settings. You think you're switching them off when you swipe up on the home screen, but you're not. Bluetooth in particular is a battery killer.

  • I wish any of this worked for me :( I'm just used to finding my devices totally drained now, and I have no idea why. Bluetooth keeps turning itself back on every time. Might be that. Went to the beach this morning, had groovebox on my phone and ate through 60% battery in about 20 minutes. Ridiculous. But I'll work through this list and see if I can't get a few extra minutes out of it.

  • edited October 2017

    11 Background refresh is automatically on for all apps. Most apps don’t need it. Many will use it. Turn it off for anything that you don’t need.
    12 General -> Accessibility -> Display Accomodations is where the auto brightness toggle hides.

  • Really hoping iOS 11.1 fixes these issues. The battery problem was the main reason I downgraded back to 10.3.3 on my iPhone and iPad

  • @YZJustDatGuy said:
    Really hoping iOS 11.1 fixes these issues. The battery problem was the main reason I downgraded back to 10.3.3 on my iPhone and iPad

    I'm not convinced there is a problem, though, just some unfortunate default settings. As I said, battery life on all my devices is virtually unchanged after going through my system settings and resetting every option back to their pre-update state.

  • Mine was poor for the first week or so, and now it’s just fine. Whenever I checked the battery shaming section, it showed me that Photos was active in the background quite a bit.

    Make sure to leave your device pluggind in and charging overnight, too, at the beginning, so it can do all this battery intensive stuff.

  • @mistercharlie said:
    Mine was poor for the first week or so, and now it’s just fine. Whenever I checked the battery shaming section, it showed me that Photos was active in the background quite a bit.

    Yes, it's doing lots and lots of syncing with iCloud. And I suspect even with iCloud disabled it's going through your photos for face recognition and auto-album sorting, and other smart nonsense. :D

  • Brambos, these tips are so awesome! Thanks for your invaluable input to the community.

    A lot of these tweaks also help with restoring your lost CPU cycles especially on an iPad Air 1.

    Brambos, do you think the issue with the stuttering, and high cpu spikes is due to the apps not yet being optimized for IOS 11 or an IOS 11 issue?

    I noticed that with Ruismaker i get no CPU spikes in AUM, solid rock solid performance and low CPU usage. However, as soon as i introduce say Poison 202, or AB3 or other apps, but i hate to name them cause it might not be their fault at all.

    @brambos said:
    I may be really lucky, because I have four devices running iOS11 and on all of them I get exactly the same battery life as pre-updating. Whether you believe excessive battery-drain is real or imagined can be discussed elsewhere... here I just want to share 10 favorite tips that may help bring your batterylife back to how it was before you hit the "update" button.

    1: Don't panic right away
    There's lots of stuff going on in the background even after the installation has completed. The local system is resyncing a load of data with iCloud. Some file databases need to be re-indexed, etc. Let it settle down for a bit before whipping out the timer to clock your new batterylife.

    2: Kill them zombies
    First thing I tend to do after installing a new system is try out a bunch of music apps. Invariably, some of those will turn into IAA zombies and suck your battery dry. After your first run through the system, don't forget to do a soft/hard reset to kill 'em all.

    3: Set your screen brightness back to the level you had it on before the update

    Next up - Settings! New iOS releases tend to introduce new features that need to be switched off. They also re-enable settings you thought you had disabled.

    4: Hey Siri - Stop listening!
    Settings -> Siri & Search -> Listen for "Hey Siri". Switch this one off. It keeps the microphone on at all times, so Siri can hear your commands. Which you most likely don't care for.

    5: Enable Wifi Assist for Mobile Data
    Data connections are the second most energy consuming feature in your iDevice (after the screen). And poor connections are even worse than good connections. In Settings->Mobile Data is a switch called "Wifi Assist" which will let the device switch to 4G whenever Wifi is really bad. This will help a bit.

    6: Disable Automatic Downloads
    This one is really crucial: go to Settings -> iTunes & App Stores and disable all "Automatic Downloads". These cause battery drain and slow down your device while pumping 100s of megabytes through the network and installing in the background.

    7: Wifi / Bluetooth (and Airdrop)
    You need to disable these from the settings menu, as the Command Centre just disconnects them instead of fully switching them off. Every iOS update also re-enables Bluetooth, even if you had it switched off before.

    8: Disable location services
    If you don't need these, switch them off.

    9: Check for worst offenders
    If you go into Settings -> Battery you can see which apps have been consuming the most energy. Try avoiding that app for a while (or be conscious of how much you're using it) and see if that has an influence on battery drain. Around iOS update time lots of apps release updates and it could be one of these updates for a particular app that is causing grief.

    10: Auto off
    Go through all other settings (also app-settings) and investigate anything that has the words "Auto", "Sync", "iCloud" or "Smart" in it. Those are immediately suspect. Be extra critical of anything that involves network access.

    Also: how old is your device? Could it be that the battery was already degrading prior to updating? Are you comparing to a measurement you did over a year ago or does it just 'feel' like battery is draining faster because you're looking at that battery icon more than before. It's easy to get paranoid about batterylife because it seems so many other people are also complaining...

    Hope this helps some people!

    :)

  • Regarding battery issues, ever since i disabled all Siri stuff in everything and every single app by app, in settings, battery has remained as good as before.

  • Not being able to switch off bluetooth from the control panel was what was hammering my phone. Switching that off made a big difference. Also screen brightness is another one to check. Full brightness is very battery intensive.

  • Great stuff. My phone doesn’t have mobile data in the settings, is this the same as the cellular option?

    Not only is my battery draining like mad on my iPhone 7, everything is moving crazy slow. Even the most simple functions seem to be delayed. Is this because of the indexing you mentioned? Makes me even more nervous about updating my iPad 9.7.

  • @DCJ said:
    Great stuff. My phone doesn’t have mobile data in the settings, is this the same as the cellular option?

    Not only is my battery draining like mad on my iPhone 7, everything is moving crazy slow. Even the most simple functions seem to be delayed. Is this because of the indexing you mentioned?

    If so, it should be done at some point. My iPhone 7 (which is my daily beater) is zippy as before, so surely there is something going on in the background on your phone. Difficult to say what it is, since there is no taskmanager (to my knowledge) to check what's using your CPU. Do you have a lot of photos on that phone? Photos is notorious; the Photo app always goes through your entire collection, analyzing every photo to try and recognize who is in your pictures, etc.

  • @brambos Thank you, really. And my 15 year old thanks you too, although he won't actually of course, because 15 year old, unless you accept Dick Cheney grunting etc.

  • @cian said:
    Also, fun feature in the new IOS. Bluetooth and Wifi can only be switched off from settings. You think you're switching them off when you swipe up on the home screen, but you're not. Bluetooth in particular is a battery killer.

    You can still use Airplane Mode from Control Center if you are planning on properly shutting down all wireless (e.g. for your music session). It's only the individual Bluetooth/WiFi toggles that leave certain services open when toggled off.

  • Every time you update an app some reenable the Siri suggests thing so gotta disable it especially on iPad.

  • @brambos said:

    @YZJustDatGuy said:
    Really hoping iOS 11.1 fixes these issues. The battery problem was the main reason I downgraded back to 10.3.3 on my iPhone and iPad

    I'm not convinced there is a problem, though, just some unfortunate default settings. As I said, battery life on all my devices is virtually unchanged after going through my system settings and resetting every option back to their pre-update state.

    I watch my settings very closely and it was something eating away my battery. I even started fresh wiping everything. I'll upgrade to iOS 11.1 when it releases in a few weeks

  • @YZJustDatGuy said:

    @brambos said:

    @YZJustDatGuy said:
    Really hoping iOS 11.1 fixes these issues. The battery problem was the main reason I downgraded back to 10.3.3 on my iPhone and iPad

    I'm not convinced there is a problem, though, just some unfortunate default settings. As I said, battery life on all my devices is virtually unchanged after going through my system settings and resetting every option back to their pre-update state.

    I watch my settings very closely and it was something eating away my battery. I even started fresh wiping everything. I'll upgrade to iOS 11.1 when it releases in a few weeks

    Interesting that you could go back to 10.x by the way.. How did you do that?

  • Before Apple stopped signing the firmware allowing you to revert back, I just downloaded the IPSW and held Option while pressing restore in iTunes. Selected the file and downgraded. You can't use any backups that were made on a newer firmware tho

  • Sorry had to repost on this thread:

    Guys for anyone on an Air 1 or whichever, i followed Brambos advice on his thread re battery optimization and not only did it work but my Air1 is running like a brand new iPad!!

    Seriously, disabling all background refresh, anything Siri, disabling so much in Settings literally did the job!

    But you must and I mean must go into restrictions and lock those settings so no new apps or updates will mess with the changes.

    Wow I’m so blown away!
    I hit Auria, AB3, AUM, Zeeon, Ruismaker Stan’s alone, Quantum and get this Fabfilter timeless 2, Pro-MB running all at the same time!!! Zero hiccups or cpu spikes! Even when changing to other apps!!!

    Gosh, this is a miracle!

  • @brambos said:

    @YZJustDatGuy said:
    Really hoping iOS 11.1 fixes these issues. The battery problem was the main reason I downgraded back to 10.3.3 on my iPhone and iPad

    I'm not convinced there is a problem, though, just some unfortunate default settings. As I said, battery life on all my devices is virtually unchanged after going through my system settings and resetting every option back to their pre-update state.

    Thanks for your effort in posting this, I’m sure it’ll help a lot of members.

    However, for me - I already did all of the above, and my battery life is most definitely worse than it was a few weeks ago. And that’s after disabling a whole bunch of energy sapping features that were turned ON, before the update.

    I’d say battery life is a third less than before - any less and I probably wouldn’t have noticed the difference.

  • I tried to record a video but sound didn’t record on the whole video. I think it’s an iOS bug on screen recording option.

  • edited October 2017

    @cian said:
    Thanks!

    How do you do a hard and soft reset again?

    Soft reset: hold power button until slide to off comes up then hold home button until it takes you back to home screen.

    Hard reset: hold the power button until the device turns off.

    Not 100% sure about the second one. Might be confusing it with Android.

    Edit: to hard reset hold home and power button together until device restarts.

  • @brambos said:

    @DCJ said:
    Great stuff. My phone doesn’t have mobile data in the settings, is this the same as the cellular option?

    Not only is my battery draining like mad on my iPhone 7, everything is moving crazy slow. Even the most simple functions seem to be delayed. Is this because of the indexing you mentioned?

    If so, it should be done at some point. My iPhone 7 (which is my daily beater) is zippy as before, so surely there is something going on in the background on your phone. Difficult to say what it is, since there is no taskmanager (to my knowledge) to check what's using your CPU. Do you have a lot of photos on that phone? Photos is notorious; the Photo app always goes through your entire collection, analyzing every photo to try and recognize who is in your pictures, etc.

    Hmmmm. I don't take to many photos, but I have all of them since my first iPhone around 2011. That could definitely be it. :D

    Why oh why would it need to do that all over again? Seems like a lot.

  • @DCJ said:
    Why oh why would it need to do that all over again? Seems like a lot.

    It's a consequence of Apple's commitment to privacy. Where other companies will run their analysis/AI on your cloud-stored photos and keep the results in the cloud (typically in order to better profile the users for targeted advertising), Apple do all the AI stuff on-device and don't transfer or store the results to/on their servers.

  • @TheMediocritist said:

    @DCJ said:
    Why oh why would it need to do that all over again? Seems like a lot.

    It's a consequence of Apple's commitment to privacy. Where other companies will run their analysis/AI on your cloud-stored photos and keep the results in the cloud (typically in order to better profile the users for targeted advertising), Apple do all the AI stuff on-device and don't transfer or store the results to/on their servers.

    Intersting. So this is the cost of privacy is what you’re saying. If this is true I could live with that.

  • This thread really helped me recover use ability for my Air 1. Brambos would you consider renaming it to something like IOS 11 General Survival Tips? This way others might miss all the great advice and tips available not just for battery alone but for restoring lost cpu power.

    For me, I’m really grateful for your advice!

  • @MusicMan4Christ said:
    This thread really helped me recover use ability for my Air 1. Brambos would you consider renaming it to something like IOS 11 General Survival Tips? This way others might miss all the great advice and tips available not just for battery alone but for restoring lost cpu power.

    For me, I’m really grateful for your advice!

    I’m happy it helped!

  • edited October 2017

    Good job by Brambos!!

    I have some other advices:

    (13) Look for the free space on your iPad (and iOS device): 10 percent, better 15 percent should stay free. For an 64 GB device 6 to 10 GB free is a good minimum value, which helps your apps run smoother and - surprise - improves (a bit) battery live.

    (14) Getting a better life span for your batteries: Charge them early!! LiPos don't like stress. Charge them before they go below 20 percent remaining battery life. It is possible to get more than 2000 cycles from an Apple LiPo.

    (15) https://www.apple.com/lae/batteries/maximizing-performance/

    (16) When your device gets hot, battery life gets down. It is a good idea to let it cool down for some minutes and it can be a good idea to remove cases if your device gets hot while use or while charging.

    (17) In some (really rare) circumstances a clean re-install from iCloud backup can be really helpful (after backupping into the iCloud - not: iTunes, and please do an iTunes backup additionally to prevent app user data loss) after following: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201263. If your internet is slow then you should do this twice! Recovery mode is the key for success here.

    (18) Cellular network can be a battery eater (if your cellular network has not enough strength - poor cell coverage): In opposition to rule 5. disable Wifi Assist for Mobile Data then. Or disable LTE if appropriate.

    (19) Disable display animations. Settings->General->Accessibility->Reduce Motion.

    (20) Reduce background activity and notifications of social media and mail. So, go to Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh. If you don't use "social" media (you are the product!) while making music, then you should turn out localisation services and background app refresh for them.

    (21) In case you have an iPhone > model 6s or SE or an iPad > iPad Air 2: Let bluetooth set on. It does not reduce your battery life. Sometimes (maybe paradox) it even helps battery life, because your localisation services don't need to have to contact GPS or such. Activated Bluetooth on your iPhone also helps your Apple watch to have better battery life.

    (22) Turn off personal hotspot if you don't need it.

    (23) Turn off fitness tracking (via privacy etc.) - maybe even completely delete the health app.

    (24) Quitting Apps doesn't save battery - quite the opposite is true.

    (25) Turn out your device completely, at least every second day.

    (26) Remove the apps like Compass, Find my Friends, Home, Podcast, Stocks, Weather, iBooks, Watch App: if you don't use them at all.

  • Thanks Brambos you’re the man!

    Great suggestions guys!

    @brambos said:

    @MusicMan4Christ said:
    This thread really helped me recover use ability for my Air 1. Brambos would you consider renaming it to something like IOS 11 General Survival Tips? This way others might miss all the great advice and tips available not just for battery alone but for restoring lost cpu power.

    For me, I’m really grateful for your advice!

    I’m happy it helped!

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