Tasker and battery life

[Derek Thomas]

Has anyone noticed a difference in their phone's battery life while using Tasker? I think that my phone is definitely dying more quickly when I have Tasker running; however, when I check my battery manager Tasker doesn't even appear. The lowest process that appears is a processes that uses about 2% battery. So, is it possible that Tasker is using less than 2% battery whilst I notice a semi-significant difference in the battery drain? That seems odd to me.

What are other peoples experiences?

[Bob Hansen]

This has been asked many times. Tasker itself has a negligible affect on battery life. It is what you turn on using tasker that can use a lot of battery. Turning on GPS, Wifi, Bluetooth, screen, etc. and leaving them on for long periods of time will, of course, use a lot of battery. The only time I have ever had it appear that tasker was using a lot of battery, was when I had created a profile or task and it didn't work the way I thought it would and it left power hungry circuit (GPS, wifi, etc.) on continuously.

[Derek Thomas]

Hmm, none of the profiles on my phone work this way. I only have two profiles that I have switched on. One is designed to disable Tasker if the battery is too low, and the other profile is set to activate only when headphones are plugged in. So the only time it should waste battery, theoretically, is when headphones are plugged in (which isn't very often). I'll keep an eye on my battery to see what happens.

[Nuno Mendes]

Hey. I should share my experience with you. I currently own a SGSIII with stock JB 4.1.2 (only different from full stock is it is rooted)

From time to time i like to see whether Tasker(more directly, plugins/profiles(monitors) taht tasker enables) is wasting more or less battery. I started using AutoVoice to see if was using some battery, using a profle taht checks when power connected, when SMS are received etc etc etc. My recent one is Cell Near State to check and change some profiles around.
With some Tasks turning off the profiles when I dont need to and such, I can reach for about 3h~ screen time on 50% battery. Which means, it "should" reach the 6h screen time. Which is pretty much what I reached before without having Tasker even running. Of course Tasker will use battery when you start doing complex stuff, as GPS, Wifi etc, but from my own experience I would say using Tasker to its mediocre extent(i'm not a programmer, but i do play with tasker alot, even have whole week of Gym exercices planned, and each day it sends it to me by notification what are the exercices for taht day, based on the location - activates when I get near the Gym) and I can roughly feel a 5-10% more battery drain, and yet, that increase might be my own placebo effect! For example today I only have 2h18m screen time and im already at 61%. I might get 2h:30 screen time at 50%, who knows :D

But ye, no need to worry with Tasker if it uses moer batteyr or not, just think, if you had to do that manually it would take more time and creen on time(meaning more battery) to accomplish it. And hell, if you do remmeber to do taht X or Y stuff, u don't need Tasker :P

Hope taht helps in some way feeling u more secured about this great app. Aw another thing, if you got some profile stuck in a loop, that ye, will drain your battery dry :)

P.S: Use Better Battery Stats app from xda forums. You can check everything it does on ur battery. And as listed, Tasker its the lowest of the concerns :)

[Pent]

Hmm, none of the profiles on my phone work this way. I only have two profiles that I have switched on. One is designed to disable Tasker if the battery is too low, and the other profile is set to activate only when headphones are plugged in. So the only time it should waste battery, theoretically, is when headphones are plugged in (which isn't very often). I'll keep an eye on my battery to see what happens.

The headphones one is a not-noticeable amount of power.

You might want to try disabling the battery one, on some Android versions the battery signals come extremely often leading
to too much power being used just monitoring them.

Pent

[Derek Thomas]

Thanks for the info. I'll disable the battery checking profile and see if that makes a difference.