Tomhat

Q: macOS Sierra absurde battery drain

So, here is the thing. I bought my MacBook Pro in 2013 and since then I've never made a factory reset, so I directly installed all the new OS', same thing I did last week with Sierra. Downloaded, installed and everything was fine.

A couple of days ago I decided to do my very first factory reset with Sierra already on my Mac. All went well, Utility, Erase and that stuff was all smooth. The problem occurred when I finally started using my clean Mac.

Now it is always hot, unusually hot even when I'm just browsing on Safari or writing on Office. Previously, my battery life (El Capitan and Sierra before reset) was about 10 hrs, now, only 3 hrs on average.

 

The point here is, there are many people complaining about the Sierra battery drain and overheating but I have found no solution, is there something I have to do in order to make it act normally (temperature and battery life), or, I just have to wait for an update by Apple?

 

Things I've done: Spotlight has finished indexing and nothing changed, not using the Photo app, SMC reset did not solve, going into Safe Mode and back did not help.

Posted on Sep 27, 2016 2:01 PM

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Q: macOS Sierra absurde battery drain

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  • by William Kucharski,

    William Kucharski William Kucharski Sep 27, 2016 2:10 PM in response to Tomhat
    Level 6 (15,152 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 27, 2016 2:10 PM in response to Tomhat

    Open Applications -> Utilities ->  Activity Monitor and look for a process or processes using a lot of CPU (click on the CPU tab.)

     

    Often a forgotten extension or other utility that is incompatible with Sierra will spin in a loop, causing the type of problem you describe; other times it's something like Safari interacting with a bad web page or using an out-of-date version of Flash (or, let's be honest, any version of Flash.)

     

    The first step is to find out who the culprit is.

  • by Tomhat,

    Tomhat Tomhat Sep 28, 2016 3:11 AM in response to William Kucharski
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 28, 2016 3:11 AM in response to William Kucharski

    I checked the CPU usage and noticed that there was a 'secd' thing, which is related to the activation of the iCloud Keychain, that was consuming about 95%. I activated the Keychain in iCloud and now the overheating is gone.

     

    For the battery, I have to dig deeper.

     

    Thanks for the tip about the Activity Monitor.

  • by Tomhat,Solvedanswer

    Tomhat Tomhat Sep 28, 2016 7:11 AM in response to Tomhat
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 28, 2016 7:11 AM in response to Tomhat

    After a full charge and some rest for my Mac the battery is back with its 10 hrs, so, the 'secd' process discovered in the CPU panel of the Activity Monitor is causing both Battery drain and overheating in Sierra.

    Activate the iCloud Keychain in Settings > iCloud and select Keychain, set it up and your Mac should be back to normal.