Tailscale running at full force during the night?

Sunny' 🌻@slrpnk.net to Android@lemdro.id – 107 points –

I keep having my phone completely drained of battery over night, and im not sure why.. Each night the phone will easy chew through 30-40% battery. Only thing that helps is putting it in battery saving mode. But feels like a temporary solution.

The second most used app is at 7% percent usage.

Am running GrapheneOS, anyone else struggling with this?

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It's a known issue with tailscale. It drains my battery pretty bad as well. I had to opt for wireguard for remote access instead.

I've seen these kinds of issues over the years with different tools on a variety of phones. It's so hard to know what the root cause is.

Some phones are just fine,others eat batteries, even when on the same versions of Android and the app.

Sometimes it's just so hard to figure out.

I'm on Graphene too and I once read that the modems used in Pixel phones are pretty trashy and drain a ton of battery. If I filter my battery usage by system, it shows that network standby almost consumes half of my battery charge (~46%).

Maybe the other guy here is right and it's a VPN issue (too)? idk. Anyway, I didn't really found a solution for this except leaving my phone on airplane mode at night.

Ah thanks for pointing that out, I did the same and see that my Mobile Network usage stands for 68% of my battery usage... Yikes!

Well, it has to run in the background. That said I haven't noticed a significant uptick in battery consumption. The battery consumption you see might be from something else.

I wonder what causes it really, didn't use to happen, but seem to be a common problem for many.

Could be anything. What I do to reduce the possibility of some app going haywire in the background, I restrict background usage to all apps that I'm sure I don't need to run in the background. Obviously Tailscale isn't one of them because I need it. 😅 Also I started using Shelter to put untrusted apps like WhatsApp into a work profile and completely disable them when not in use. I haven't had many battery drain incidents since then.

I'm on Graphene. Mullvad is only 1% for me with 16h30min since last on a charge. I'm at 56% with 1h30m screen time.

I used GPS as I did some driving with maps and my music app accounting for 29% of my battery usage.

I throw my phone on the charger at night figuring battery tech and software management is good enough.

Are you WiFi or mobile? I get shitty mobile service so if I'm off WiFi my battery tends to go to shit. The VPN usually accounts for more as I assume it keeps reconnecting.

Wasn't a big issue with Graphene that it doesn't support any form of smart battery charging?

And before the responses pour in, yes, I've read https://akc3n.page/posts/battery-management/. And no, there is not a quoted source for a device skipping maintenance mode at 80%, or to refute the many studies showing the benefit to lithium cells, or to cover wireless or non-PD charging. When a "solution" is using a smart plug with HA to stop charging, it's still an issue.

Edit: I do like GrapheneOS. This is just a decision I don't agree with.

This is news to me. That said, I'm usually one generation behind but upgrade every 2 years as my phone is usually EOL for software updates by the end of the period. I try to time it so I can get a replacement paid outright at mid-range prices.

With the Pixel 8 introducing extended software support, I'll have to dig more into this.

Indeed, I think ur right my mobile network usage is 68%... So I'll avoid using that over night.

I wonder why I never had this issue. I just checked my Samsung phone and it barely used anything. I turn it on almost always.

First, find a good battery stats app. The factory stuff often isn't granular enough. I use GSAM, because I'm lazy, my phone isn't rooted, and it's good enough.

Second, make sure whatever apps your using across TS aren't doing something during this time. I have to carefully configure sync apps (Syncthing, FolderSync) to be sure they don't use TS unintentionally.

After checking on tailscale privacy policy, I also suggest to drop tailscale and use mullvadvpn if you live in EU or US (it is great) or protonvpn. You can install WG Tunnel from F-Droid and add wireguard configuration from your VPN provider as well. It is consume only 1-3% during the day on my device.

It's not comparable. Tailscale creates a virtual network between your devices allowing to reach your server outside your home while other mentioned services create a virtual network to someone else's server

If you want to preserve privacy while utilizing Tailscale's functions beyond a VPN, one can deploy Headscale on their own infra and be free from any spying.

This seems to be a normal issue with VPN apps on Android, they drain battery like crazy

Both protonvpn and mullvad are at 1% for a day. Y'all stop using crappy vpns.

Same with WireGuard, 1% all day every day.

I'll look into using just WG then! Thanks

Problem is that setting wg is nowhere as user friendly as just the single click of tailscale

PiVPN is the easiest way to use WireGuard imo. Even has QR code generation right in your terminal emulator. It’s nothing more than a few simple scripts that wrap the server functionality but I’ve been using it for years.

Yeah thats why I love Tailscale so much, its so simple :)

Tailscale isn't a classic vpn such as Proton and Mullvad. Tailscale crates a network between your own devices, but has Mullvad as an integration for those who want to run Mullvad as an exit node. I don't need a vpn to mask my location, I need it to connect my devices together. I'll look into using just wire guard instead though.

No idea about those, but wireguard and openvpn were terrible for battery life, only ever used if I needed to access something at home

As the apps or as the VPN service?

I run both via VPN app and i have similar results to @astrsk

I had openvpn server on pfsense couple years ago, and now wireguard on Mikrotik

ohh i see. i was walking phone.

aint router CPU super underpowered? and it would manage a lot of move traffic?

Nah don't see that being factor, the small Mikrotik is handling it very well for my small homelab, and pfsense was running on stupidly overkill 8c16t / 32gb memory because didn't have any more fitting hardware at that point

Edit: the huge battery drain was on phone, with VPN client