Mojave: HUGE battery drain during sleep

I would complain because my 2017 MacBook air did not have the problem in high sierra but as son as I tried Mojave the battery drain was dramatic. I reverted back to High Sierra and it does not have the problem. My 2018 MacBook air with Mojave has lesser battery life by about 50%! Bottom line is that Mojave has a problem and no one at Apple will admit it.

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What would I know! I am just a guy with ten plus apple products. I decided not to upgrade to the fancy new system on two of my MacBook Air that are older. The new one cannot be used at work so I use it at home.

The guys on this forum are really really knowledgeable and if they can't fix it it means it is a deep problem, which Apple is likely working on.

I can't contribute, except in a philosophical sense. As you grow old you degrade so slowly that mostly you don't realize it. The firs time I visited my mother after she got her cataracts removed she said 'I did not know you had a blue car'. She had not noticed the loss of her colour vision because it took 30 years to happen.

I upgrade OS so infrequently that I can tell you exactly how things change.

When I upgraded from 9.6.2 directly to Snow Leopard I had no regrets and missed all the drama in between.

When I went from SL to Sierra I had no regrets except that Google and other web pages loaded very slowly.

I was doing great in Sierra and did not need to go up to High Sierra but I'm regretting it. The boot speed is like OS9.6.2 and Microsoft Word crashes every time the computer sleeps. I reverted to HFS and when I get a half day to spare I will revert to Sierra.

Out of curiosity I upgraded an iMac at work to Mojave and target display mode broke and I have explored no further.

IMHO, Snow Leopard was the acme of the Mac OS and it has been down hill from there. They added a bunch of bells and whistles to entertain the children but it has come at a cost. You can't blame Apple for trying to move forward and it is possible they might produce another superb OS in the future. The trouble is that they will eventually break it. So if you're on a good one, stay with it.

Some people have had this problem, but most people don't.

I can't remember the details, but there are solutions for those afflicted, that have been offered on other threads.

Turning off power nap is the first and obvious thing to do, but it is not enough.

AFAICR, there were some processes that prevented some macs to sleep properly - because, let's face it, if the macs were indeed sleeping they would not waste away that much power.

In reality it is NOT accurate to say that the affected macs drain battery during sleep, but rather that something wakes then up and this drains the battery.

I bought a brand new Macbook Air 2018 on 5/6/19. I noticed the battery was draining faster than my 5yr old laptop. I spent a week troubleshooting everything with Apple Tech Support, all the stuff everyone here is talking about, including wiping and re-installing Mojave. Nothing worked. Then they told me it must be a hardware issue so I have to go and get it serviced.

I live 2.5 hours from the nearest Apple Store. I did not want to get a "repair" on a brand new product. So I tried to exchange the item in store but their systems were down, so I was forced to buy a second Macbook outright.

The 2nd Macbook also has the same battery drain. So I tried to return it but Apple said I have to drive another 5 hours RT to return it as I purchased it in-store, even though the only reason I purchased it was bc the store system was down and they were unable to make an exchange with my online purchase record.

So this weekend I have to drive another 5 hours round trip to return the second laptop. I am going to try purchasing a third laptop online (to have the online purchase record in case I need to return this third one) and pick it up in store while I am there.

As everyone says, no one at Apple will admit to this issue being a known problem. But clearly it is. I just want a new product that behaves like a new product, not one that needs repairs or dies after 4 hours.

Since Apple says there is no known battery drain issue with the Macbook Air 2018, I will buy a third one. If that one also has a battery drain issue, what are the statistics that this is a fluke, three times? Should I keep it and wait until the Mojave software is fixed?

I argued with Apple Support for months over this issue and I’ve has my MacBook Pro retina 2015 wiped twice which has dropped the battery capacity 3%, clean install, resetting stuff, they logged information from my MacBook and even after sending in coding that indicated the MacBook was connecting to the internet every 10mins whilst in “sleep” mode, and was also downloaded or sending information which basically overheated the MacBook. Apple still won’t admit they have a serious problem with Mojave.

I even went as far as to send them another thread with hundreds of comments, based on the same issue and how people solved it using the hybernation 25 thing and not one person from apple support knew anything. They literally read off a screen of instructions after they type in the issue in a search box - absolutely ridiculous.

they also tried to get me to turn this and that off and I ended up just ripping at them on the phone because I shouldn’t have to change ANYTHING on my MacBook to accommodate their software when I upgraded. One thing I did notice was that fileVault had been activated, even though I’ve never had it activated it on my MacBook.

made an appointment at the Genius Bar with someone who knows about MacBook’s and didn’t need to look up instructions on how to do this and that, and he downgraded my MacBook to high Sierra - never had an issue with the battery since and it’s back to normal.

i then emailed the person I had been in contact with at apple support and told them downgrading had worked (which they hadn’t offered btw and clearly have no knowledge since they told me this couldn’t be done!) and their reply was on the lines of “I am glad this has resolved your issue, have a good day” - useless!!

will not be upgrading to Mojave no matter how many updates because none of them have a patch to fix this issue even though it’s widespread (I’m in Ireland!)

If you’re desperate (this issue ran on for nearly 3months), id definitely get someone to downgrade to high Sierra

Good luck!

Well my 3rd brand new MacBook Air 2018 also has a 4 hour battery life. I spent 2 hours with tech support this morning and now Apple engineers want me to go through a battery of tests. I have spent a month troubleshooting 3 brand new MacBooks. And now they want me to be a guinea pig for their defective product. I've never had to deal with anything like this before. How could I have 3 defective new MacBooks in a row? It must be a bad batch from the warehouse near me. I'm going to see if Apple can ship me a 4th MacBook from a different source...

I think it is Mojave but with a brand new MacBook I don't have the option to downgrade to Sierra. My MacBook Air 2014 is on Sierra and did not have any problems. (Although it is dying now after 5 years which is why I am buying a new one.)

I don't know if anyone noticed, but for me the problem seems to be related to Handoff and Airdrop.

I checked my pmset log with "pmset -g log | grep PreventUserIdleSystemSleep" and I got several entries with Handoff and AirDrop preventing sleep.

I'm still running tests. I have tried hibernate mode 25, but the system is not supposed to work with this option. I've never had problems with my MacBook Air.

With hibernatemode 25 my battery drained 5% over night.

My extra tweaks were:

Activate Do not disturb (including the option when the screen is off)

Disable "Allow bluetooth devices to interrupt sleep"

Disable Power Nap on battery

I'm gonna make a new test. I returned hibernate mode to 3 to see what happens.

Ps. I don't want to set tcpkeepalive to 0 (again, it not how the system is supposed to work)

You have absolutely right, about hibernation modes , tcpkeepalive, etc. It is like : "let's disable security things, to get back to normal behaviour of the computer".

I will check my AirDrop settings. Maybe this is the cause.

Regard: Disabling "Allow Bluetooth devices to interrupt sleep" will probably disable option to wake up Mac by Keyboard/Mice.

Today i will do the tests.

[Edited by Moderator]

It seems I've narrowed down the problem. When I run pmset -g assertions, I get this:

2019-06-11 14:59:43 -0300 
Assertion status system-wide:
   BackgroundTask                 0
   ApplePushServiceTask           0
   UserIsActive                   1
   PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep    0
   PreventSystemSleep             0
   ExternalMedia                  0
   PreventUserIdleSystemSleep     1
   NetworkClientActive            0
Listed by owning process:
   pid 320(sharingd): [0x00021c4e00019d3d] 00:12:49 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "Handoff"

So, the culprit is Handoff. But turning it of it's not supposed to be a solution.

Does someone has the same output for pmset -g assertions?

Are you sure about your conclusions?

Because when you run that command it shows you actual reasons of not sleeping, not the past one...Am I right? :)

I don't have Handoff enabled and battery drain exist.

Now I am checking Airdrop ( visible only for contacts ).

If you find anything please share your work :)

Cheers,

I'm still running tests. Tonight I'll give another try to see what happens.

I'll post here my conclusions.

Power nap and bluetooth wake are enabled, Handoff disabled and pmset is back to the factory settings.

Test results:

More than 12 hours of lid closed.

Started with 100%

Finished with 90% of battery

Everything was on but the Handoff and Notifications with lid closed.

Tonight I'll turn on Handoff to see what happens.

Anyway, 10% is too much overnight.

After night from 77%->75%...so it is normal.

Handoff disabled. Powernap disabled. Bluetooth ON. WiFi ON.

I think it is random :)

I will check after another 8 hours.

I though that it was because of Logitech drivers but when i disabled it from autostart i managed to got this 20% battery drain when sleep. So it seems that it is not the case.

Please add a bug submission to apple, the more us, Apple maybe will at least try to fix it somehow.

It harmful bug...beacuse our batteries will be depleted after few months. Apple claims to have 30 days in sleep....so with the software bugs they will exhaust our batteries