Apple Wireless Keyboard Eating Batteries

I just put in freshly recharged batteries and the meter says 33%!

For me, it appears the software monitoring the keyboard battery level is what's flawed. I put in fully charged batteries and overnight the level supposedly drops to 12%. But I take out the batteries and put them back in, and the levels go up to 43%. I do the same thing and they level goes back up to 100%. See: Is my Apple wireless keyboard's battery life inaccurate?

My battery warning came up after only 3 weeks use, I checked the system preferences and the meter said it was down to 33%. I checked the Magic Mouse and that was down to 47% after the same amount of time.

I switched off the keyboard (press and hold) and the mouse, removed the batteries and checked them independently. They came back as being about 65-75%. I put everything back together and turned them on and, hey presto!, I now had 67% and 73% respectively for the keyboard and mouse, according to the iMac meter.

Conclusion: apple iMac meter is wildly inaccurate, I suspect it measures time rather than actual voltage, just takes a guess in other words. Ignore the meter and wait until they actually run out would be my advice or you could be unnecessarily using up a lot of batteries.

The past couple of months my wireless keyboard drains new batteries in a few days. Any fix for thos? i make sure that the power is off before I leave the keyboard.

I'm still having this problem, like 4 years later. I have a Mac mini and a Macbook air... working with an apple keyboard / trackpad / mouse (the models that take AA batteries).

I'm perpetually changing out batteries, and it seems like the charge % still jumps around. Is there something I'm doing wrong? Is there a sleep mode function I should be using? The mac mini is hooked up to the TV, so its always on.

Is there anybody from Apple monitoring the discussion and potentially picking up the issues? I have a year old Mac 5K and have the same problem. I don't remember having it at the beginning.

When the Mac decides the KB has low battery it stops working altogether until I replace the battery, I cannot really fool the counter into believing I've put in a new one. The battery really seems to have gine flat.

I wonder whether other current (June 2017) users have experienced this problem (as I have) and if a solution have turned up??

Posting on eight year old threads is not helpful. If you want an answer, start a new thread.

Barry

Thank you, Barry. I will follow your advice.

Erik