OS Catalina, short battery life on MacBook Pro 15" - 2016

BTW.. when did we lose the ability to edit our own posts in here?.. It's been a while since I've been here, but unless I'm missing something, I don't see an edit button..interesting.. I did the pulldown and edited this reply, but my earlier one does not give that option...

Sure would like to know how you are fairing with what you did.. I'm actually doing a backup right now and will bite the bullet again and load Catalina 10.15.2 from scratch and see if I can get Office loaded somehow, and not use a backup restore.. I believe I had first upgraded from 10.14.6 to 10.15, and then upgraded again to 10.15.1 when it came out.. I then loaded 10.15.1 from scratch, but was still having draining issues. Then upgraded to 10.15.2 and still having draining issues. That's why I downgraded to 10.14.6. Since I haven't loaded 10.15.2 from scratch I'll try that before I give up on it.. I still don't like the drive separation, but if I can get it to not kill my battery, I'll probably keep it. If not, back to Mojave, most likely for good if this doesn't work, or unless Apple specifically admits to this issue and issues a published fix...

Glad to know emptying your desktop worked for you alexandru217 :)

It's been more than a month for me since I did the whole reset and also cleared my desktop, and I'm happy to report that I have had no battery drain issues. However, I did not install any of my older apps back (too scared). Safe to say, I'm living pretty precariously :(

That other users have not seen any change even after clearing their desktop may point to the fact that they may have background processes running from other apps which my now minted Mac doesn't have. This is only a theory though.

But another strong theory I have is that the battery drain issue might be caused by how this new Mac version handles iCloud. Clearing my desktop seems to have cleared a great load off the continuous iCloud update process. I thought of this as my iPhone battery life too is a sh*tshow: it does fairly better on 4G than on Wifi, which is completely insane. Only reason can be that iCloud auto backs up or whatever only when on Wifi. I am too lazy to work this out for my iPhone, maybe when I have a lottt of free time, I'll move things here and there, maybe remove a few apps off of my back up settings. BUT that said, there's also the giant issue that during the big-drain phase, my Mac wasn't doing great either when disconnected from Wifi. So....that's a big challenge to the iCloud theory. Unless iCloud is up to some mischief even when offline (conspiracies, conspiracies). Yeah, pretty impossible.

All I know is that I still need a fix for my iPhone, and iCloud is where I should begin, which worked for my Mac.

Also, let's remember that iCloud is not limited to the desktop.

All this makes me very curious to understand the workings of iCloud offline: hidden background processes?

Yes, the iCloud theory does sound plausible.. Like I said, I've never really had anything on my desktop on my Air.. On Windows machine yeah, but not my Mac.. I keep it clean.. This is an early 2015 MacBook Air 8gb-512gb i5. It was originally a 128gb SSD but I put an Apple 512gb SSD in it a while after I bought it last year.. I'm loading Catalina 10.15.2 from scratch now. Like I said before, I had no weird or 32bit apps when I updated to Catalina, nor since. I'm a bit new to MacOS, but I do worry about access to the OS volume and processes etc. now with Catalina.. Being able to figure out what is misbehaving could be hindered.. not sure. This new way of operation with Catalina is a bit worrisome to me.. I am going to load this up with just OS, no non-stock apps if I can help it.. I do have 104gb of iCloud Photos and about 15gb of iCloud Match music as well. I could do without the music downloads, so I'll leave that alone. The pics however, not sure I can do without, nor my movies.. I'll try and live with just my iPhone and the old iPad mini 2 my brother just gave me. I would like to try and get a battery performance benchmark with just dry Catalina if I can help it. I'll report back as soon as I know something. I know the thing could take a few days to "settle down" if I downloaded my iCloud Photos library.. I'll see how much it drains overnight.. Tomorrow is New Years Eve so not sure how much I'll be around after noon or so.. Happy New Year everyone!

Well, just FYI*.. Cycles on battery=342.. I closed the lid on my Air last night with 98%, opened it a little bit ago this morning and it was down to 79%.. Same draining as before. Showing no apps with significant battery usage.. So dropped ~20% in 8 hrs. A bit maddening. It's like it really doesn't sleep anymore which is what I was suspecting before. I opened Photos app this morning and let it sit. Used around 100% CPU for about a minute, then pretty much idle.. Has to be a secret process or something not allowing sleep. I'm going to let it run battery out and recharge. Then I may turn off iCloud just to see what happens. I still haven't loaded any apps yet. Only downloaded my iCloud Photos Library.(12,882 pics/vids). I was doing some research the first time on Catalina. Found a couple terminal commands to try that alter a couple settings.

PMSET

New

sudo pmset -b tcpkeepalive 0 (Find My Mac won’t work right)

sudo pmset hibernatemode 25

Original

sudo pmset -b tcpkeepalive 1

sudo pmset hibernatemode 3

Don't think it helped much though, plus really didn't want to leave Find My not working. That's when I got fed up and went back to Mojave. I think I'll turn off iCloud after drain-recharge and see what happens. Edit..I started typing this around 0640 and have been streaming TV while doing it to drain. I'm down to 50% now.. Pretty quick drain..It is running a secondary monitor off Thunderbolt 2 port as well.

Hey there.. Not sure if you've been following my comments, but I left the house yesterday around 1700 with 100% charge, after selecting Sleep off the Apple menu, and closing the lid. I just now opened it back up and checked it.. 18 hrs on battery with all apps closed, doing absolutely nothing, and I'm down to 70%. I have a feeling of a couple things. 1. I think the Photos app could be analyzing photos on battery, even though it tells you it only does it when plugged in and you're not using the app. 2. There may be some talking with iCloud somehow and it's not actually sleeping. or 3. Some secret process that we're not being shown is doing this.. I've got a couple pics I took of the Activity Monitor data when I opened it.. I'm not sure really how to read it(what the column headers really mean.). Really wish there was more info out there on Catalina and its workings. This is just nuts.. Even Mojave after reloading, I don't think Photos takes this long to analyze and settle down.. I've got 12,897 pics/vids and it's only on 2132.. I'm about ready to load Mojave back on again.. I know.. I'm too impatient.. but really..

Well, I'm restoring from my TimeMachine 10.14.6 backup as I'm typing this.. Mine is an early 2015 MacBook Air 8gb-512gb i5. I've been on 10.15, 10.15.1, 10.5.2 both on update and load from scratch. Same draining in all scenarios. If you weren't having these draining issues on Mojave, I would suggest going back as well. You've got a non-Apple drive in that(that's why I paid the extra $ for my 512gb Apple SSD when I upgraded mine from 128gb), so not sure what other things Catalina won't do right, but if you were ok on Mojave with it, I would load it back up. I don't like going backwards, or suggesting others do so, as I'm all for security updates, if for a good reason. But when usability and functionality is compromised, I don't like that. Not unless it's an immediate threat.. I'm hoping Apple admits this issue, and issues a published fix/update for it. Hopefully you have a backup from before you updated or have all your data backed up somehow. I'm not sure that you can load a Catalina backup with Mojave. I've submitted feedback to Apple on this draining issue but of course, haven't heard or seen anything back. I'm an impatient man so I want my machine to work as well as it used to, so I'm reloading Mojave once again. I had NO issues with this machine from Sierra-High Sierra-Mojave. Now I really wish I had another Air to play with this, cuz I can't keep doing this with my daily driver.. don't have the money for another one. Oh well, only 2.5 hrs left on the restore. Good luck to you.

Same here. I have a 2019 MBP and same issue happens. Doesn't really happen when idle. For me it happens really with light usage of the MacBook Pro like basic web browsing, checking email, using NetBeans IDE here and there, etc. Mojave didn't have this issue. Cycle Count currently at 109. They also chose to blame Chrome, except when I took it to the store. They store themselves blamed Catalina. Its pretty bad when it even happens on their latest models. The store did tests and said its not any of my information causing it, and the battery passed tests. 10.15.2 shows the same. A fresh, empty copy of Catalina shows the same issue. If any of you guys get a senior advisor, I would refer them here to show it's not a unique issue. SMC and NVRAM resets do not help sadly.

Normally, I'd have 10 hours, now its 2-5 hours, activity monitor would show as if it had another 6 hours left, but it just drops much too quick. You might lose the first 10% normal, but goes down hill after that. Though it does seem it happens more on MacBook Pros from about 2015+, especially the newest design generation. I cant go back to Mojave since sadly, my backups are all overwritten with Catalina stuff which you cant do on a Mojave system. Even sometimes when it is idle you'll here its fan being super loud and it gets warm.

Thanks for the info. I have a 2015 MB Air. I now crank through a battery very quickly (2-5 hours). I posted earlier in this thread.

I have found that shutting down Chrome completely before I put the MB to sleep seems to help with the battery drain during sleep problem. So there may be something to the Chrome stuff. I'm still looking into it.

Unfortunately, I also run Microsoft Outlook and typically leave it open too. So I have to test each application.

However, when the laptop is awake it loses a percent every couple minutes. That problem is still there big time.

I posted before, but here's some further feedback. For me, the drain happens in all cases, but having Firefox or Photos open causes it to go down really fast. For Photos, I suspect they do some pretty heavy processing, like face indexing (this application is a catastrophe in every possible way). I suspect someone high up in Apple leadership had delusions of grandeur, imagining they would put all sorts of AI-like processing on everybody's laptop. The only problem is that they should have also put the HW needed to do it (like a dedicated TPU) instead of inefficiently using a CPU to do it. And, clearly, the thing was not tested. Jobs must be rolling in his grave.

For me mail was doing it too but it was because I didn’t let it sync in a while so I resolved that part of it, but happens while idle, and regardless if using 1st party or 3rd party applications. The latest thing I received from a senior advisor is that engineering said to take it back to an Apple Store where they’ll probably tell me the same thing over again and send me out. Obviously engineering doesn’t know what’s causing it.

Right, me too. I reloaded this Air with Mojave again. My Photos got a stuck on 1 original downloading for over a day so I reloaded it again but from scratch, not TimeMachine backup. All back to normal now! All needed apps reinstalled. Everything working. I'm staying put on Mojave indefinitely. If I had another machine to play with for future updates and see if Apple actually fixes this, that would be nice. oh well.. Good luck everyone.

2018 Macbook Pro with Touch Bar and i9, 16 GB of RAM...battery was lasting 8-9 hours using normal apps and 5-6 using high intensive apps like FCPX, Photoshop, and BlackMagic Media Express before update. Now only lasting about 3 hours using normal apps, and about a 1.5 hours using high intensive apps after updating. Currently running Catalina 10.15.2. Battery is normal condition. Very upset with this right now, especially with how many Apple products I have and how many my family has owned over the years...

Sympathize with all the many, many comments re Catalina. What really disturbs me after 40 years in consumer goods is Apple’s appalling customer service. Simply admit that there’s a problem and that you’re working to fix it. But they don’t do that. They act as if there is no problem until the time - hopefully soon - when they release a fix and then, and only then, will state that the fix resolves the problem. Whoever heads up Apple’s customer service strategy should be let go. And frankly, as Cook is the CEO, the Board may wish to look past current sales and consider customer satisfaction as their critical metric for rating the CEO. This fiasco is costing Apple future sales. I too have many Apple products and I’m thinking that in the future I’ll move to other hardware and software platforms.

I keep seeing a message saying that upgrading to Catalina 10.15.2 fixes the problem. Maybe it was worse before, but in my case it's not at all true. The only way to preserve battery is to close all types of wireless networks and shut down browsers. Then, battery life becomes... livable. but not OK.