Fix for Google Search insane battery drain on Android

wpid-wp-1416717300177.pngI recently noticed that my Android phone was draining battery a lot faster than usual. So I checked out the battery page and discovered that Google Search was my top source of battery drain, more than Screen! That’s insane. None of my settings had changed so I didn’t understand why this was suddenly happening. Rebooting didn’t fix the problem.

Google Search was definitely the cause. From its app page, I saw that that Google Search was using up to 500 MB of storage, and was constantly restarting every minute or so and rebuilding that massive index. No wonder it was taking so much battery!

Searching online showed that other Android users has/had the problem, and that it wasn’t limited to my OnePlus One. So here’s my fix, after a painful day of research and experimentation:

Go to Settings > Apps > Google Search and then tap on Uninstall updates. Then head over to the Google Play store and update the Google Search app.

Three days in, Google Search is back to its rightful place on my Android phone: about 3% of battery usage, less than 70 MB of space and not restarting every minute or so.

If you have this problem, I hope this post has helped.

2 thoughts on “Fix for Google Search insane battery drain on Android

  1. my case i totally different my OnePlus One Battery performance became better and better
    since last update XNPH-44S and i am getting 5.5 hours SOT ,and 3 hours calls with battery lasts for More than 36 Hours .
    and that’s more than great for me.

    not denying that android Task management some times buggy . i have mediaserver before eating almost 40% of my battery and i was not using any media player or streaming !!

    but now every thing is OK for my OPO

    Liked by 1 person

  2. I was having the Google Search battery drain issue on my Nexus 5 since upgrading to Lollipop. Couldn’t uninstall updates, so I chose Clear Data and then rebooted. All is well, thanks for the tip!

    Liked by 1 person

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