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

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!

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.

This is my experience also! If I shut everything down I can get the battery to last a couple days with the lid closed. Previously, I could easily get a week with my light usage (browsing/email) for 30-min to an hour per day.

Unfortunately, reinstalling OSs is not an option for people using their computer for work. I did it when I had some time (this is how I got to Catalina) now I regret it. And I blame Apple for pushing me into it. Jobs must be rolling is his grave.

Hey guys, no change in the battery drain issue? not even with the latest update 10.15.3?

My MBA 2017 is still running on HS with 10h+ battery life. I didn't upgrade to Mojave due to a lot of complaints on battery drain and now with Catalina I see the same issue.

Please let me know if you did update a MBA to latest OS version without problems?

I have to mention that my MBA is basic - not to many apps installed, I also use safari for web browsing and most of the time this is what I do on my laptop.

Thanks!

Hmm, just upgraded to Catalina last night (April 11, 2020), and here I am to say that my battery was drained on sleep like never before. Researched it and found this thread. Yet *none* of the above comments will fox my issue. What is really going on here? Anyone have any relevant info (not "I suspect", or "I read")? I get that some of you have had success, but it should be obvious that this is a broader issue than previously suspected. So now what?

I am facing the same issue in my MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2018), after updating to Catalina 10.15.4. Before that with Mojave life was good, peaceful and not panicked to back the power on. The battery life with Mojave was much much better than Catalina was able to run the system without plugging into power around 10hrs, now within 2 hrs the battery is drained.

I checked the Amperage power in System Battery is always showing -ve either I plugged it to power or not.

Apple please make our life easier and stable, release a new version with fixing all these issues.

It’s a very challenging time for everyone’s ongoing mental health around the world right now. It’s a time to reach out with support and for Apple to show compassion offering hope by publicly stating they acknowledge Catalina incl 10.15.5 has issues, and that they are working on fixing these. I need a workable computer to tend to my late fathers affairs which are not possible on the iPhone. 

Same here. I put mine to sleep at 100% and next morning its at 55% something is wrong. But apple dont accept responsibility. Seen that with my keyboard replacement

I have the same problem - I had a 100% charge at 6:00, it is almost 9:30 and I am down to 6%. Before Catalina I had a 10 hour charge as well!

Same problem here.

MacBook Pro (Retina 15-inch Mid 2014)

OSX 10.15 Catalina - Clean install

Battery Cycle Count: 607 (normal)

This sounds suspiciously like Apple slowing down iPhones with each software "upgrade".

Mine also having an issue with this too .after i update to catilina os my bettery draining so fast than i expected.