Three things in InVintory draw real power: the 3D cellar, the camera scanner, and a paired Govee sensor. The first two stop the moment you leave the screen. The third does not — it runs the whole time the app is open, and it is the usual answer when the battery falls while you are just browsing.
🔋 InVintory does nothing while it is closed. Receiving a notification is the only thing it is allowed to do in the background — no background refresh, no background Bluetooth, no background location. If the battery dropped overnight, it was not us.
Find your case
When it drains | What to do |
While you are in a 3D cellar | Leave the 3D view when you are done browsing it |
While the camera is open | Close the scanner between bottles, and leave the torch off |
Any time the app is open, on any screen | You almost certainly have a sensor paired — see below |
iOS Settings lists InVintory under Location | Nothing — we take single readings, never a trail |
The 3D cellar
VinLocate's 3D view runs a full 3D engine on your screen, and it is the most expensive thing in the app while it is on. Closing it genuinely stops that — the engine is shut down, not merely hidden — though it takes a couple of seconds to let go. A long browse costs a lot; leaving costs nothing.
The camera scanner
Scanning holds the camera open at high quality with a live preview, and the torch runs at full brightness when you turn it on. Leaving the scanner shuts the camera down properly. Recognising the label is not the expensive part — that happens on our servers after the photo is taken, so a scan is a moment of work, not a continuous one.
A paired Govee sensor — the one that runs all the time
Your iPhone is the bridge between the sensor and your collection, so InVintory has to listen for the sensor's Bluetooth broadcasts to collect any readings at all. It starts listening about a minute and a half after you open the app and keeps listening for the rest of the session — on every screen, not just the sensor screen — taking a reading every 30 seconds and sending them up about once a minute. That is a real, continuous cost, and it is the honest answer to "why does browsing my collection use battery".
There is no switch for it in the app today. To stop it, either unpair the sensor or turn Bluetooth access off for InVintory in your device settings — no new readings will be collected either way.
Home → Cellars & fridges → your storage → Sensors → gear icon
Widgets
Each InVintory widget on your Home or Lock Screen asks iOS for fresh numbers roughly once an hour, and each refresh is a real request to us. Removing the widgets removes that — a small cost next to the three above.
Android and the web app
Android has no sensor pairing, uses no Bluetooth and runs no background tasks, so the sensor cost does not exist there. On the web app the 3D cellar behaves as on iPhone — the one thing that will spin up your laptop's fan, and closing it stops that.
Next steps
How to connect a Govee sensor — pairing, unpairing, and why readings look stale when you are away from the cellar
How to add InVintory widgets — how they refresh, and how to remove one
How to report a bug — if the drain does not match anything here, tell us