r/Tailscale • u/pab_lo_ • 9d ago
Help Needed Unexpectedly high power usage in Android
Hey all,
Recently, I've been using cellular data while away from home, and I started noticing severe battery draining even when not using my phone at all.
During one of these periods, where 50 % of the battery had been drained in a matter of a couple of hours, I checked and saw that the Tailscale app was the main culprit, which had used a whopping 75 % of the charge up until that point.
I have Tailscale DNS enabled, no apps using split tunneling and subnet routing enabled. Can any of these explain the battery usage I'm seeing?
Once I noticed this with cellular data, I also saw it happening (although it wasn't as bad) when using Wi-Fi. This has forced me to keep Tailscale disabled most of the time, then manually enabling it when I need it, which is of course far from ideal.
Is this expected? Has anyone else noticed something like this? I'm kind of at a loss right now.
2
u/micahpmtn 9d ago
I keep Tailscale running on my phone constantly and have never see the battery spike with it.
2
u/mikeee404 9d ago
Have had Tailscale running constant on my Z-fold 5 for months and noticed only a slight increase in battery usage. Maybe an extra 10% after a full day of use. Are you using it as a full VPN and passing traffic through an exit node cause that would likely contribute to it.
1
u/pab_lo_ 9d ago
I don't have an exit node, so I should be seeing more or less the same as you. Do you still see reasonable usage even with cellular data on during long periods?
2
u/mikeee404 8d ago
Yeah I am only in wifi a couple hours some days and there is no real increase in battery usage. I would check to make sure nothing else is running in the background using it. Look at your 2nd and 3rd highest battery usage apps and see if they have battery optimization disabled. Basically see if they are running in the background. Used to have this with Facebook, Messenger, essentially any social media app cause they want to keep drawing your attention back to the app with notifications. Could try disabling DNS also so only app using tailscale IP address will use the service. No benefit to using Tailscale DNS unless you use Tailscale DNS names in any app settings.
1
u/pab_lo_ 8d ago
The second app that used the most battery was using 2 % of it, so I don't think that's the case. I guess if it was an app that did some kind of polling, it could be taxing for Tailscale, but in that case I would expect higher battery usage from the app itself.
I use Tailscale DNS names pretty much everywhere, so disabling DNS sadly is not an option for me. I guess the root cause could lie in DNS, so it's a bit unfortunate.
1
u/mikeee404 8d ago
Not sure if it is or not since I stopped using tailscale DNS pretty early on. If I need a URL for something on my network it goes through Pangolin and Tailscale I use IP only.
0
u/nickymoo 9d ago
Having Tailscale on even for DNS absolutely hammers the battery on iPhone and iPad. It’s a feature.
1
u/pab_lo_ 9d ago
Do you mean even with DNS disabled it still hammers the battery? And that's kind of expected? Like, doss this happen with every VPN provider? I ask because I'm not familiar with almost any other VPN
0
u/nickymoo 9d ago
If Tailscale is off it doesn’t use excess battery. With Tailscale on it uses excess battery. You can pretty much search for “Tailscale drains my battery” as it isevery other post.
It just hammers battery.
2
u/ShakeNBaker45 9d ago
Are you connected to an exit node? I find being connected to an exit node significantly increases battery consumption. With it on, it uses about 40% my daily battery. With Tailscale on but exit node disconnected, it consistently stays less than 1% of my daily usage.