macOS Big Sur battery drain issue

Eu tenho o mesmo problema no meu macbook pro 2016 após a atualizaçao e além disso o meu mac ficou lento e após realizar a verificação das informações do app Geekbench notei que a performance do meu mac reduziu em média em 33,3%.

I have to correct that... drain is still there, but muuuuch better than before. Also temperature isn't rising as before.

So the first percent from 100 - 90% did hold for approx 1h = 10%. The second 10% from 90 - 80% only stood for apron 50 mins. so drain still there, but much better than before... hope it does get better with time...

Welcome, Bfaux, to Apple Support Communities!

Have you read the comments and recommendations from the longtime users, here?

If you are unsure what is relevant, after catching up, here, I and other longtime users can help clarify.

It’s a week since I upgraded and my battery drains significantly...I never had problems with my battery...They need to fix this issue ASAP! It’s driving me crazy and makes me mad that I need to keep plugging in.

I have EXACTLY the same problem. MBP 2019, few months old. Battery easily lasted 8+ hours when working before the upgrade, now it's max 3-4 hours... and it gets hotter faster, too. Activity monitor does not show anything weird that wasn't there before. It just drains the battery 2-3x faster... a disaster.

hayrettin193 and @All:

This is not a problem with Big Sur.

This is not a problem Apple can fix, except to better educate users about what to expect from a major Operating System (OS) upgrade, such as this major upgrade from Catalina to Big Sur: an upgrade so major that Apple actually increased the major version number, from 10 to 11, for the first time since 2001!

This OS needs to spend some time reindexing your system, your libraries (such as your photo library), and much else, for your user experience within this new OS. I’ll refer to such as “housekeeping” tasks or work.

The more “stuff” you have on your system, the more work the system will need to do to be fully ready for your use!

Unless you have a hardware issue—such as a short-circuit (potentially even within your battery: a most serious situation!)—the only way a computer will use more power is if it is running more CPU computations, and/or more memory/drive work.

Perhaps now is a good time to become familiar with the Activity Monitor (Launchpad -> Other -> Activity Monitor)!

Don’t just look at the default View of My Processes, but look at All Processes (I set this for Hierarchically, so I can see what processes subprocesses are associated with).

The Energy tab, in Activity Monitor is a good view, but not all processes—especially not all Background processes—seem to be “instrumented” for Energy Use.

Additionally, look at the CPU tab, since the more CPU a process uses, the more energy it uses. (Similarly, the more memory operations and storage operations use more energy. Unfortunately, Activity Monitor doesn’t give us the rates of such use, so this is difficult to ascertain. However, such energy use is usually rather ignorable, compared to CPU and GPU use.)

The normal OS background “housekeeping” tasks will “settle down” after a day or two of continuous work, depending upon how large your various (photo, Mail, etc.) libraries are, and how many files you have.

However, there is also the potential for various third party processes to go “out of whack”, with a major new OS!

Using Activity Monitor, as outlined, above, will help you spot such “errant” tasks, as well.

Some of these third party tasks may “settle down” after some time, while some may never “settle down”!

Many third party programs may need to be upgraded, themselves, to be compatible with this major OS upgrade!

I have the same problem and I have the MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) w/ 2.4 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9. In the two minutes it took to write this, I lost 3 % battery. Do we have any info about this getting fixed after 1-2 days? I updated yesterday afternoon.

I have the same issue.

Just bought the new MacBook Pro 16 (MVVK2) and instantly updated to the latest macOS Big Sur (11.0.1).

It's pretty annoying when my laptop loses about 8-10% of battery every 20 minutes just browsing text articles.

Hope there will be some update, that fixes this issue, because I expected to get much better result out of 100‑watt‑hour lithium‑polymer battery!

If your MacBook is brand new, arsenowitch, and you haven’t installed any Apps, or migrated or installed any files (like photos, movies, music, etc.), before or after upgrading to Bug Sur, then the “housekeeping” processes should “settle down” fairly quickly.

Yes. Your MacBook is doing a lot of work in the background. What I’m referring to as “housekeeping” processes: indexing, analyzing, caching, etc., all in preparation for your use!

Halliday, Please stop denying the truth of this matter. Many of us are advanced users, who are now 7-10 days into this problem. Apple is silent and all this is suggesting they abandoned Intel chips . I see a class action lawsuit if this isn't addressed shortly. Why should my $5000 machine have half the battery life it had a month ago ?

Please stop telling everyone it is 'normal housekeeping,' 'spotlight' etc. I'm a PhD , Computer scientist - this is a very real matter.

Thanks @medsfacts - I was thinking the same thing. I'm on 1.5 weeks of troubleshooting and I reinstalled Big Sur yesterday at Apple's "suggestion" (I really don't think anyone should have to do this). Same sh*t and now my Touch ID doesn't seem to be working. As for 'housekeeping - I let the machine run overnight on the offhand chance it would do something but there's very little improvement. There's nothing left for me to do until Apple pulls up their big boy pants, acknowledges the problem and fixes it.

This worked for me. Thank you for sharing!

My computer battery was draining within an hour. Looked at Activity Monitor and saw that Google Chrome Helper was using 98% CPU. Once I uninstalled Google Chrome and Forced quit the process in the Activity monitor, it was all better.

After that I did notice what looked like other processes that were in queued and taking up a lot of CPU. "Photoanlaysisd" & "Photolibraryd" were all taking up a total of 98% GPU, probably because they were so backed up. But now, the fan has stopped running continually on my laptop, and its back to having a quiet and fast running Mac.

The suggestions I have given, medsfacts, are so you can see «Why [your] $5000 machine [has] half the battery life it had a month ago».

It’s because, for now, your «$5000 machine» is doing twice the work it was doing (unless, unfortunately, your «$5000 machine» now has a hardware fault).

Unless your «PhD , Computer scien[ce]» degree never included the hardware side of computer science (which, unfortunately, it may not have), you should know this quite well.

The only Feedback anyone has received from Apple, that I have ever seen on any of the discussions of this “issue”, ChaStp, is: this is expected behavior, have patience.

However, there are errant third party Apps, Utilities, and background processes that are getting “confused” by this major Operating System (OS) upgrade!

Such need to be “hunted down” and eliminated or replaced.

See my recommendations for using Activity Monitor to see what is doing so much work (typically in the background) on your system.

Hello everybody. I also noticed battery drain issue after upgraded to Big Sur. From the moment of the upgrade, in principle, enough time has passed and, in theory, everything should be settled. What will I lose if I turn off spotlight indexing?