Wake reason: EC.RTC (Alarm) Wakes my Mac every minute and drains about 90% battery life in a night.

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Wake reason: EC.RTC (Alarm) Wakes my Mac every minute and drains about 90% battery life in a night.

My 2018 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, is always extremely hot when I wake up and is about to go to work. The worst thing is that it has been in my sleeve with the lid shut. I tried to google the error and I then found that I needed to check in the terminal, what it is that wakes my Mac up.

It was this reason I got; Wake reason: EC.RTC (Alarm). And it occurs every minute every single hour of the night. It drains about 90% of the battery in a night, and the Mac is blazing hot in the morning.

It grinds my gears, because no matter what I do, this just won't stop.

I've tried to google "Wake reason: EC.RTC (Alarm)" and all I get is people from 2014 having the error in MacOS Yosemite, and even here, the wake only occurs once every two hours.

What should I do?

Thanks in advance.

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Aug 22, 2019 5:11 PM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

238,973 points

Aug 22, 2019 5:23 PM in response to jeppehedegaard19

RTC is real Time Clock...

http://osxdaily.com/2010/07/17/why-mac-wakes-from-sleep/

Have you done a PRAM reset, CMD+Option+p+r...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

In fact, do 3 in a row, takes a bit of time.

Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

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Answer 2

Aug 23, 2019 6:58 AM in response to jeppehedegaard19

Your Mac needs to get rebooted on some regular basis so that it can clear out its System caches, and other house keeping. I let my MacBook Air snooze during the day if I plan to reuse it within an hour or two, but it is off overnight — since it won't be used for hours, and for reasons of the first sentence.

What you describe may or may not be an issue with the operating system, third-party software, or even malware.

Reset the SMC, but also boot that Mac into Safe Boot mode, and then reboot normally. Evaluate if the RT problem continues. Safe boot is performing a bunch of system services and will take longer than a normal boot. Be patient.

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Answer 3

Aug 22, 2019 6:46 PM in response to jeppehedegaard19

Is there a special reason you leave your Mac on all night, and do not shut it down as I do before Zzzzzz? If for some reason you must do so, keep it out of that suffocating sleeve so it can cool itself and see if that changes the RTC errors and improves battery life.

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Answer 4

Aug 23, 2019 6:04 AM in response to VikingOSX

VikingOSX, to be completely honest, all I've ever heard people doing, is just shutting the lid, putting their Mac to sleep. And that's what I've done with my past 3 Macs, but this one just keeps waking up once every minute, no matter where it is located. In a sleeve, not in a sleeve, in a charger, not in a charger, etc.

BDAqua, PRAM reset didn't work, so I will try resetting SMC.

Thanks for the suggestions, I hope it works.

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Answer 5

Aug 23, 2019 7:02 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thank you for the advice! I will try it out and report back.

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Wake reason: EC.RTC (Alarm) Wakes my Mac every minute and drains about 90% battery life in a night.

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