One YouTube Music setting was quietly draining his phone battery

A writer at Android Police found that YouTube Music was one of the biggest battery drains on his Android phone. The cause was Smart Downloads, a feature only Premium subscribers get. He had turned it off before, but it switched itself back on after he moved to a new phone.

The clue

YouTube Music sat at the top of his daily battery usage list. That was odd, because it had less screen time and less background use than his other apps. The drain showed up even on days when he did not play music or podcasts with the screen off.

He tried lowering the audio quality and turning off autoplay. Neither fixed most of the problem. With help from Google's Gemini Live assistant, he traced it to Smart Downloads.

What Smart Downloads does

The feature looks at your playback history, your liked songs and the playlists and albums you visit most. It then guesses which songs you will want and downloads them to the app on its own. It runs in the background with no input from you, which explains the battery use.

A second setting in the same menu, Recently played songs, also downloads tracks based on what you listened to lately. It does not use the same guessing method, but it still drains battery in the background.

What to do

The writer says turning off Smart Downloads took only a few steps in the app's settings. He also suggests switching off Recently played songs. If the app does not remove existing downloads by itself, tap Clear downloads at the bottom to wipe the list.

Other ways to save battery

If the drain continues, he lists a few more changes. Most are small.

• In Settings, open Data Saving and turn on Don't play music videos and Don't play podcast videos.
• In Settings, open Notifications and turn off any alerts you do not need. He turned all of them off.
• In Android Settings, go to Apps, then YouTube Music, then App battery usage. Keep background use on and pick Optimized.

Even on Optimized, music or a podcast keeps playing in the background while one is active. The writer warns that Unrestricted can cause more battery trouble. He says that setting is best kept for priority apps, such as messaging and fitness tracking.

Who it affects

This applies to people who pay for YouTube Music Premium, including those who get it bundled with YouTube Premium. It matters most after a phone upgrade, since the writer's setting came back on without him asking. The article does not say how many people see this problem or whether Google plans to change how the setting carries over.