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

Well, I went back up to Catalina 10.15.3. Still same issue.. I just hit the keyboard on this to check battery %. Here maybe is something significant folks.. Instead of closing the lid, I put it to sleep in the menu and left the lid open.. That was over 6 hours ago. I just checked Activity monitor for the battery drain line over last 12 hours. I saw the significant change at about the 6 hr mark where I put it to sleep, and the line was significantly quite less steep the last 6 hrs. I'm wondering if it has something to do with the way this OS is looking or dealing with the lid sensor... I'll have to try this experiment a few more times to see if this is a pattern.. Fingers crossed. If so, I can submit more helpful feedback perhaps to Apple..

It's a combination of using the pmset utility from the command line (terminal). Here's a primer on using pmset: https://www.dssw.co.uk/reference/pmset.html

You'll need to remove the plist files that create them. I used grep to find those, and then deleted them.

Just updated to Catalina 10.15.2 and its still killing my battery. doesnt last longer than 2 hours. Am downgrading to mojave.

Yeah. My tests went as far as a bare bones Catalina with nothing on it. Only Apple’s stuff by default was there and the issue happens.

Im having similar problem. I have 2015 MacBook 12'' & battery drain has been ridiculous! When I contacted support, they blamed it on Chrome. My battery was replaced few months back so its not the problem. My battery shows normal & cycle count is 276.

Same issue.

Mine's MacBook Air (13-inch, 2017). Battery life down drastically after Catalina upgrade.

Cycle count is 374, which I'm assuming is higher than the rest of the posts here, but my battery life used to be significantly higher. At 56% charge, my Battery Monitor says it's going to last 1 hr 45 mins. It's a joke compared to what it used to be earlier!

I purchased a new 15in MacBook Pro in September. I loved it! It was my first Mac and it worked great! I upgraded to Catalina 3weeks ago and hate it! I cannot go more than 2.5 hours without draining to 0%. Honestly, my old Dell computer battery stays charged longer and that’s saying a lot! I hope Apple fixes this issue soon, I am taking my computer back to the Apple store tomorrow and I am crossing my fingers they can help. As of now...I am having to use my Dell if I need a computer for more than 2 hours.

I have the same problem with battery life under Catalina as noted by other users. Tried doing the reset of SMC. Not sure yet if there is any difference. The battery plus the heat being generated by my MacBook Pro is very odd and has only happened since upgrading to Catalina. Apple's lack of responsibility is very typical of them. Had to replace my 1TB SSD drive for $1500. The whole purpose of selecting that option was to ensure that my HD drive didn't crash. After placing the new HD card in I got a whole 90 day guarantee! Wow, a whole 90 days!

Hey guys! It happened the same with Mojave. I was constantly following the threads for a full year after Mojave came out and there was no fix from Apple. Finally I decided not to upgrade from HS until new MACOS comes out. Now Catalina is out and we have the same problem.

I don't know, but this is not what I expected when I bought a MAC. I was expecting that every update to run smooth and not bother about any OS problems.

I am just trying to understand, do you all have a lot of apps installed? Is your hard-drive full? While installing did you used the power-cord or you installed the new OS while on battery? The battery drain is the same after a week or two, like after the 1st day?

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..

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.

I have two Mac laptops on my kitchen table:

MacBook Air Early 2015, 4GB Ram, 128GB SSD, original battery

MacBook Pro Mid 2012, 16GB RAM, 500GB Hard Drive, new battery, calibrated, < 20 cycles

Both are running Catalina 10.15.3

I just unplugged them both this morning at 7:00 AM. It's now 11:00 AM.

The MacBook Pro had some light use for 30 minutes. No use on the Air.

MacBook Air: 64% remaining

MacBook Pro: 5% remaining

The MacBook Pro is burning through the battery almost three times as fast as the Air..

• I noticed the MacBook Pro hard drive never spins down
• The MacBook Pro has a lot more software installed. However, both systems have the latest Microsoft Office suite.
• Both systems showed CPU idle of around 95% in Activity Monitor, however the MacBook Air was a percent or two more idle.
• Bluetooth is off on both systems
• The MacBook Pro has Adobe Creative Suite installed, and DropBox and both are using a small amount of energy. Those are not installed on the Air.

Nothing showing in activity monitor would account for the huge difference in battery life.

Does anyone have any suggestions for experiments to try?

David