This is going to be a bit of a complicated explanation because I did some of my own trouble shooting before getting to this point. I recently noticed that my battery life on my phone was draining surprisingly quick. I suspected that this was due to the phone simply getting older (it's a Galaxy S21 that I got in summer of 2021). However, while digging into the battery settings, I found a surprising amount being consumed by Pandora when the app is closed. At first I thought this was due to the window for the app being open in the background, but I found no difference when I closed it. Here are some sample runs I did with to record Pandora batter usage.
This first one is a test run with the app open at idle in the background:
This second one is with the app closed so that it isn't even visible as a window:
And this third one is with the app closed and the phone switched to power saver mode:
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If I force-stop the app, there ceases to be any battery draw from Pandora, but I would like to avoid making a habit of force-stopping apps because I know that can sometimes cause further problems down the line. Also, all of these experiments were done without me using the phone for anything. I had the phone plugged in for a bit to reset the data for "Since Last Charge," set the phone settings to where I wanted them for the test, and then simply unplugged the phone and kept it in my pocket for a bit.
Note the minuscule screen on time for all apps. In the case of Pandora, although it says "Less than One Minute" it is actually 0 for all of these tests since for one of them I simply had the app idling in the background without being put on screen and for two of them the app was not even open in the background. For all three tests, Pandora had no screen time and played no music.
I have the same issue. I could go all day without using Pandora, but 30% of my battery is used by Pandora in the background.
@Crayshack @Derrrrrek Thank you for sharing your experience with the community.
If you haven't already done so, I recommend running through the following troubleshooting steps: Troubleshooting for Android Devices
If that does not resolve the issue, I'd like to report your feedback to our engineering team. Can you send over a bit more info about your device?
Have you identified any other patterns or notable information?
Let me know what you can find out.
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I'm not OP, but I've experienced and noticed this for months. I mostly use Pandora while driving and wonder if it could be related to playing via Android Auto. The pattern is that everything is fine, then I drive, and when I stop driving, Pandora seems to continue running in the background with constant battery drain. Restarting my phone or force-stopping the app fixes the drain. It could also be unrelated to Android Auto, though, and this is just the way the app is started for me.
I have Pixel 6 Pro, Verizon, latest patches. (I'll skip specific builds & versions because, as I have noted, this has happened for months!) Pandora v2408.1
Based on my experience, this has been a long-standing problem for years now. I am currently experiencing this behavior on a Pixel 8 with the latest app version. Simply put, Pandora does not need to operate in the background in perpetuity if I'm not playing music or downloading playlists. I hope the Devs finally fix this behavior because manually forcing the app after usage is a major nuisance.