Battery Optimization settings on OnePlus devices reset after sometime, users say

For quite sometime now, I have been noticing a problem with my OnePlus 6. There are no notifications from the Gmail app until I open the app. Of course, that defeats the purpose of having notifications in the first place. So today, I finally managed to spare sometime to do some research on this issue.

During the course of my research, I stumbled upon a Battery Optimization related problem that a lot of OnePlus users have been reporting for months now. Basically, complainants say apps set to ‘don’t optimize’ get reset to ‘optimized’ after a reboot or after sometime even without a reboot.

Given the way Battery Optimization (and its sub option Advanced Optimization, which was enabled for my OnePlus 6 out of the box) works, this problem results in missed notifications from the apps in question, which is clearly a major problem. Take a look at some of the user comments:

If I go to Settings -> Battery -> Battery optimization I can specify that certain apps are not optimised (I am assuming this will let them run as they like and stop them being killed by the OS?); however, after a few days, apps are being removed from the “Not optimized Apps” list, meaning they are liable to being killed. (The apps in question are things like GPS route loggers – I’m aware that this might use lots of battery, but still want them to run as their developer intended – is there some other way to do this?)

After adding apps in the “not optimize” list. It works for a while. Then after a while the list is empty and all apps are optimized. I have some apps. That I need to have open all the time, this affect me a lot. The phone has been totally reset, but bug remain

I am having the identical problem – specifically with live tracking apps [Locus Map]. The screen goes off, and then 10 to 15 minutes later the app stops. When I check, the batter optimization setting has changed from back to . Checked with the app developer and they have no other reports of this problem. No other app running that is interfering / causing the problem

Seral apps that I use for push notifications like K9, Whatsapp automatically switch to ‘optimized’ from ‘not-optimized’ state. I use those apps for getting notifications on incoming messages/mails. After some time (usually days) those apps are switched automatically to optimised, effectively stopping synchronisation and notification on new messages

Same problem here. Turned off advanced battery optimization but still showing optimized for WhatsApp and Facebook in app info. Plus can’t change the battery optimization for any system apps like Gmail, WiFi etc. Very Problematic

From what I could see, the issue is affecting OnePlus 6, OnePlus 5/5T, and OnePlus 3/3T users, which effectively means a very large number of OnePlus smartphone users. Following are some of the links where this problem is being discussed: 1,2,3,4,5,6. Of course, these are not the only ones. If you carefully take a look here, you’ll definitely find many more similar reports.

I really hope OnePlus takes notice of the problem, if not already, and fixes it as soon as possible. Oh, and what about my problem? Well, there’s no entry for the Gmail app in the list of apps that you see under the Battery Optimization option – that’s how it is on my device at least. So I am not sure what should I do at the moment. In case you have a suggestion in this regard, share it in the comments section below.

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