How Can I Remove MDNSD From My Android? It’s Draining My Battery!
April 14, 2017 By Ashley Orndorff, aka Marketing Geek
Although this post was originally published in April 2017, it has been overhauled and updated to include information about MDNSD as of June 2019.
Are you experiencing major battery drain on your Android?
If so, a process called MDNSD could be behind it.
Looking at forums, it’s obvious this has been going on for years. What’s not so obvious is what to do in order to fix it.
There are a lot of solutions out there, but a lot of them seem to be temporary fixes and do not always work for everyone.
Still, there do seem to be some things you can try to save your battery.
As a disclaimer, our expertise lies with websites and not phones. So, any advice or tips provided here are from a personal use perspective and do not come from experience as a phone developer or manufacturer.
Here’s what you need to know about MDNSD and how to manage it to try and save your Android’s battery life:
What is MDNSD?
MDNSD is a process, not a specific app.
Throughout the years, it’s been “caused” by various apps. For some, it was Freeflight 3 and other mini-drone software. For others, it was Firefox. More recently, Facebook and SD cards are getting the blame.
In the past, disabling these apps has sometimes solved the problem, at least temporarily. But, it wouldn’t be long until MDNSD was up and running and draining batteries again.
Various customer service representatives from phone manufacturers over the years have said MDNSD is an Android operating process or a part of bundled Android software that can’t be removed. Other reports around the web call it a media scanner or a networking discovery software.
Although each of these has a kernel of truth, none of them are completely accurate standalone descriptions.
MDNSD is considered a daemon, more specifically it is a Multicast DNS Daemon, which means it is a process and is not a specific app.
What is a Daemon?
In this case, “daemon” is a computing term that refers to a process that runs in the background and answers requests for services.
It is usually long-running and, because it runs in the background, it can run down the battery on your phone if left to run continuously. And, because it’s a process used to answer “requests for services”, it can be triggered by a wide variety of apps and functions on your phone.
Anything that would be constantly hitting URLs would likely start MDNSD, such as social media apps, search apps, shopping apps, reward apps, and other apps that update frequently.
Depending on the system, daemons could start up at boot time, so it’s possible MDNSD could start running when you turn on your phone or restart without you even needing to access an app or try to do something else first.
The battery drain seems to be caused by the MDNSD process getting overloaded.
When the process is overloaded, it can trigger a loop. This looping means it requires more CPU usage on your phone and subsequently drains the battery as it continues to loop and try to keep up with the overload of responses from other services on the phone.
6 Ways to Manage MDNSD on Your Android
All of this indicates that MDNSD is not something that can be removed from your phone. Instead, it indicates that it is a built-in background process that should be managed in order to save and extend your phone’s battery life.
Specific approaches and solutions will vary from user to user and phone to phone, but there are some things you can try to better manage MDNSD on your Android:
1. Stop Apps and Processes from Running in the Background
One way to manage MDNSD on your Android phone and, hopefully, help save the battery life is to stop apps and processes from running in the background.
Not only should this stop apps from continuing to run when they are not in use, but it could also help keep MDNSD from getting overwhelmed by too many requests – both of these should help your phone battery last a little bit longer.
Usually, the option for managing this is located somewhere in Settings and could be located under something like Battery, Device Maintenance, or Apps.
The step-by-step instructions for this will vary from phone to phone, so your best bet is to search online or reference your owner’s manual for instructions for your specific phone model. Something like, “how to stop background processes on [your phone model]” or “how to stop apps from running in the background on [your phone model]” should bring up what you need.
2. Restart Your Phone Regularly
Because MDNSD can start draining your phone battery when it gets overloaded by too many requests or responses from other processes or apps, shutting down active apps and restarting your phone can help.
In the moment, this will restart the process so it is no longer looping and, therefore, no longer causing extra drain on your battery.
In the long run, regularly restarting your phone can help keep it running at peak performance.
Just as you need to update and restart your computer every now and then, the same is true for your phone – it is a little handheld computer, after all.
3. Clean Up Your Apps
Bloatware, the branded bundled software we can’t remove from our phones, is an issue for everyone. Unfortunately, aside from stopping them from running in the background, there’s not much you can do about them.
But, you can clean up the inventory of apps you’ve collected over the years.
Do a little “app audit” on your phone.
Go through all the apps you have and be honest with yourself – do you still need them?
If there are some apps on your phone that you haven’t used in a while, consider removing them and freeing up some the memory on your phone.
It may not make a big difference. However, if you’ve found MDNSD draining your battery a lot recently, it could help reduce those extra requests and keep it from doing it as often.
4. Clean Up Your Media Files
One of the reasons MDNSD can get overloaded and start draining battery could be related to your media files. It’s one of the reasons MDNSD has been accused in the past of being a “media scanner”.
Regularly cleaning up unnecessary images and documents on your phone can reduce the sheer amount of requests needed during an update related to that area.
Plan to transfer images off your phone to an external storage source on a regular basis, whether it’s your computer or an external hard drive, and then delete them from your phone.
Not only does this clear up memory on your phone, but it should also help keep processes from getting overloaded when they need to access media for any reason.
If you store most of your media on an SD card, remove it from your phone when you don’t need it.
Similarly to your phone’s internal storage, you can also clear off your SD card regularly to keep it from storing too many files for your phone to handle.
5. Update Your Phone Regularly
Another thing to do, in conjunction with other methods, is to update your phone regularly.
Phones running older or slower hardware or those with minimal internal storage and memory tend to have more issues with MDNSD draining the battery.
Keeping your phone up to date can help ensure you’re running the newest, fastest operating system and can help reduce how often MDNSD gets overloaded.
6. Try to Stop it with CCleaner
This was a solution provided in the 2017 version of the article that seemed to resolve issues with MDNSD for some users, at least temporarily. It is included here in case anyone would like to give it a try and see if it works for them.
12 Steps to Remove MDNSD
- If you have Freeflight 3 or other mini-drone software go here for your solution. If not, then go to step 2.
- To eliminate an app as a possible cause, remove it from your phone and restart.
- Go into Settings and touch the Battery button.
- If MDNSD does not show up here, you have fixed the problem for now. If MDNSD is still showing up, move on to step 5.
- Go to the Google Play Store and download the CCleaner app. It’s free.
- Install CCleaner on your phone and then open it.
- Touch the Analyze button and wait for the analysis to show up. It could take several minutes.
- In the past, MDNSD sometimes showed up in the Documents folder. If you don’t see it in yours, check Downloads and any other folders that show up.
- Select MDNSD for removal or select the whole folder for removal if you don’t need it.
- Touch the Clean button.
- Restart your phone after Cleaning finishes.
- MDNSD should be gone, at least for the time being!
It seems dealing with MDNSD is a pervasive and ongoing issue for many Android users. Hopefully, these tips can help you manage it and make your battery last a little longer.
Again, we’re not phone developers or manufacturers here, so everything listed here is just an observation from a single-user perspective. Hopefully, it helps!
We may not be much help when it comes to your phone, but we are pretty darn good with websites. If your website is outdated and needs a refresh, or you need one to be built in the first place, let’s have a chat about how we can help!
I can’t find the mdnsd when I check under Documents or Dowloads… any other ideas on where it might be hiding?
It’s been draining my phone for 3 weeks now, ever since I downloaded the Uber app, which I quickly uninstalled within 24 hours after noticing my battery life completely drain within just a couple hours.
Thanks.
If your battery is being drained by mdnsd
Look for the app android beaming services and remove the update. This will end the issue on a galaxy note. Took forever to find it but it was an update that put mdnsd on my phone and it suckered the life out of my battery. I called a tech support and they told me it was my battery. They also said that mdnsd was an android op system.
Well folks, I had a long talk with Samsung tech support and voiced my displeasure with mdnsd. I was told that was bundled android software that was unremovable. Supposedly, a 6.0 software update was supposed to be along shortly that would fix this. I’m now seriously thinking about kissing Samsung goodbye and going with an iPhone!
I found that the mdnsd problem for me was caused by an app called Wemo which controls remote electrical switches. I had previously removed Firefox as suggested by other forums and I don’t use Facebook. Turning the phone off and charging it fully before turning back on again made mdnsd disappear from the battery discharge list but it would return again every time I ran Wemo. I decided to try changing the permissions for mdnsd and to do that I had to root my phone. I initially tried removing mdnsd from the systembin folder but that stopped Wemo running altogether so I changed the permissions using an app called Root Browser. The permissions were changed to read, write and execute for the ‘owner’ and just execute for ‘others’ and ‘group’. I can now see mdnsd appear as a name in the list of programs in memory using an app called ‘Simple System Monitor’. So far this seems to be working for me. I’ll be back if a problem occurs in the future.
I hear of all sorts of solutions, which may actually appear to work, temporarily, but this crazy MDNSD thing is devious, not unlike some viruses, which it seems to emulate. I deleted Fire Fox… Gone! Then, it soon reappeared, chewing up 40% of my new battery usage when looking under the “Power” button. I just tried the CCleeaner solution, and that worked as well. However, I’m expecting it to return soon.
Here’s my thesis: MDNSD likely looks at my phone from it’s Android lair, and if it sees it’s not on my phone, then it reattaches itself. OK, if someone can create a dummy version of MDNSD, minus the guts, and install that… Chances are that when the real MDNSD looks and sees it’s there, theoretically, it will bypass my and your phone, leaving it free of that dang battery-consuming culprit.
I’d create it, but I don’t have the “smarts” or knowledge to do so. Gotta be some genius kid who grew up knowing all about this stuff that can do it. Any takers?
RM
I tried the CCleaner, and I can’t find the mdnsd anywhere. It’s eating up my battery. Any suggestions?
Since mdnsd is a process, it seems like it can be triggered and see heavy use from a ton of different apps. In the past, FireFox was a big culprit, but this seems to have been resolved with updates in recent years. There are some cases where updating to the most recent Android system helped, at least for a little bit. Social media apps tend to be quite data heavy, so several sources are connecting an increase in mdnsd usage with Facebook.
Not sure if this is the case for you or not. If you’re using the most recent version of the app and it does still seem to be causing you issues, you can uninstall the app and instead navigate to Facebook within your mobile browser. It can be annoying, but if it helps, it could be a temporary solution. You can also kill your apps and processes right after you’re done using them so they’re not running in the background to see if that helps your battery last longer. You can also try running CCleaner again in a few days to see what comes up.
It seems like dealing with mdnsd is more about ongoing management than actual removal because so many apps seem to trigger and restart it. Our expertise is definitely with websites, so these suggestions are based more from a phone user perspective, not a phone developer or manufacturer one. Hope it helps!
Thank you very much for replying. I really don’t do much on my phone at all. I mainly use it for texting. Facebook is not on my phone. Neither is Firefox. I play a mindless game called Jar of Marbles maybe once a week. I use a ShopRite app, occasionally Verizon app (to see how much data my kids have used), I go on the internet for less than half an hour a week to check something quickly. Would you please give me directions on how to kill apps and processes? Other than close them out (which I always do as soon as I’m done), I don’t know what to do.
For some bizarre reason, the Kohl’s app was using even more battery than the mdnsd, 40% or more when it wasn’t even running. I uninstalled that, and it helped a lot, but the mdnsd is still keeping my phone from lasting the day.
Based on what I’ve been seeing, it looks like mdnsd could be triggered by a variety of apps or just app usage in general. How you kill apps and background processes is going to depend on what phone you have. A lot of the time, you can find what you need in Settings somewhere. You can also control which apps are allowed to run in the background from there, usually. It may not help much with mdnsd, but it will help keep other apps, like what happened with the Kohl’s app, from running in the background and draining your battery. Since it varies from phone to phone, you’ll probably find the best advice by googling something like “how to kill apps and background processes on [your phone type]” or “how to stop apps from running in the background on [your phone type]”. There are general instructions for android available, but if you’re looking for specific step-by-step instructions, you’ll want to search for it with your specific phone model.
I have been having problems with mdnsd for about a month or so. Most of the advice on forums dates back a couple of years, but at least some of us are still having this. I’ve never had Firefox or Facebook on my phone, which were the most talked-about culprits. I went to my list of apps and deleted the two that I had installed in the last couple of months and also rolled back all the recent updates. After switching off and fully recharging my phone it worked perfectly for the first few hours, no sign of the dreaded mdnsd. But then it kicked in again and drained the battery in about three hours. I haven’t worked out yet what triggered its return. I’m trying again today. If I can’t get it sorted I’ll have to get a new phone, but then probably not an android with a guarantee that this mdnsd “virus” won’t appear.
I found out that on my Galaxy S5 phone, there was an app added during an upgrade of some other apps. The added app, “Hangouts” was running mdnsd continuosly, and draining my new battery, by the end of the day. Once I disabled “hangouts”, my battery life returned to normal.
Coming strictly from a layman’s perspective, I add my name to the lengthy list of frustrated LG G3 mdnsd daemon sufferers. My only “tech” experience is one college class of Algol coding in 1975.
My approach therefore was more from a desperation approach than knowledge-based action.
First I read the myriad of blogs that left my head reeling.
Background: I uninstalled or disabled every app I knew I would never use, immediately upon getting my phone. I have never used FB and don’t fly a drone (yet).
My procedure: I uninstalled Firefox. I checked to make sure my phone was current with updates.
I followed procedures to re-calibrate my battery, 3x. Cleared cached info. No help. Then yesterday I individually enabled each disabled app, took all permissions away, cleared cache and data, and re-disabled. Then I moved my pictures (all197) over to another device. I also checked “restrict apps in background” under battery saver. Rebooted phone and charged to 100% again.
I have no idea which action did the trick; perhaps it was a combination, or even just me believing I could overcome this little monster, but it took my nasty little daemon off my phone (and also the no-name one) and my battery is back to normal.
Glad to hear you found something that worked for you. It’s certainly a pesky problem that seems to have varying solutions for everyone. Here’s to hoping this one continues to work for you even after the next round of updates!
I am having a problem disabling Hangouts. Any help would be appreciated.
Because step-by-step instructions will vary between different phone models, your best bet would be to google something like “how to disable hangouts on [your phone model]”. This should bring up the instructions specific to your device and, hopefully, a walkthrough video or two as well. You won’t be able to remove it as it’s standard on android phones, but you should be able to adjust settings to help manage it better, like preventing it from running in the background or something like that.
Remove your sd card. Its a scanner of multimedia
I have also problem with mdnsd, Samsung galaxy s4, but for me i think when leaving wifi on when i am outside my network will trigger the mdnsd. So i disabeled wifi when i go out. Thats my opinion
YES ! It was “Hangouts”.
Thanks, Robert Bonadonna!
Samsung Galaxy Note 3
Android 4.4.4