Netflix app is a huge battery hog

Just found out that the Netflix app can suddenly become a huge battery and cpu hog on the background. Apparently it keeps phoning home and doesn’t stop if it doesn’t succeed. Checked the system because battery wouldn’t charge and phone was hot like an oven. Typical intrusive and disrespectful GAFA’s coding. :rage:

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Does restricting background data help? (Settings => Data usage => Netflix => restrict background data)

Thanks for the suggestion, but it happened under Wi-Fi, so I believe it wouldn’t have any effect on it. I’m thinking about freezing the app when I’m not using it so it doesn’t do anything sneaky and unnecessary.

I have the same problem with the netflix app, force closing can stop this behaviour, but after a while the problem returns. I tried a few version, but no solution.

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Here is the solution, at least for rooted phones like mine (if yours is not rooted please test it and tell us if it works): AirFrozen. It allows you to create a list of apps that will be frozen automatically when the phone locks, and will only be reactivated once you initiate them through the AirFrozen interface. It keeps those sneaky apps from using your phone resources and battery. Just tested it, works great. :+1::clap::muscle:

Greenify is an alternative way to deal with this problem, I will give it a try and report on my experience.

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Greenify may help but after some time it started very strange things at least on my phone as I wrote by this topic:

“FP2 Battery Problems (drains quickly, CPU gets hot) - See batteryguide for workarounds”

I cleared the issue and am now without Greenify again.
I can advise also for non-rooted phones an app, actually a firewall named "NoRootFirewall from Grey Shirts.
It lets one block apps from accessing the internet also specific ports and separates between network or wi-fi.
It´s free and does a good job for this.

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To diagnose the reason for taking so much battery, it might help to install the App “Wakelock Detector”. Simply speaking, it shows how often the app wants to be called by the system.
In this way, I found out why the Messenger ‘Wire’ uses so much battery. Maybe the same is valid for Netflix?

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True, I installed it yesterday. It revealed a few battery hog apps, the most evident was Microsoft Outlook. But nothing about Netflix. And here’s what I found: Greenify is working for now and taking care of about a dozen apps that would trigger wakelock for nothing. Since it’s light handed on the apps it’s a good solution for those. But there were two apps, including Outlook, which would refuse to go to sleep with Greenify. So I let AirFrozen take care of them, and BAM, problem solved, no more repetitive waste of battery and data from Outlook & cia. Netflix however didn’t appear anywhere on the radar. Then Watchdog Lite came to the rescue: this old app (not updated since 2012) is still an incredible tool, it sounded an alert an hour ago telling me that Netflix was hogging about 50% of CPU power, and it went on hogging nonstop! I had Netflix in the Greenify list, meaning that Greenify wasn’t able to take care of whatever is it that Netflix does, so I included Netflix in the AirFrozen list et voilà, problem solved, AirFrozen immnediately took care of this rogue intrusive app. :+1::clap::muscle:

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For the record, I restricted background data as you suggested but it didn’t make any difference.

Created a new thread about Netflix apps since version 5 blocking themselves with FP Open systems.

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