macOS Big Sur battery drain issue

Welcome, brsm1990, to Apple Support Communities!

Unfortunately, there is no «general fix», because the issue(s) depend upon further details of your system setup.

In fact, this is not at all unique to Big Sur: it has been seen in many, if not all, previous macOS upgrades (not updates).

The process toward an individual fix is the use Activity Monitor (Launchpad -> Other -> Activity Monitor) to look at Energy, CPU, and GPU usage of All Processes (not just the default of “My Processes”) on your system.

This helps you find the culprits.

Once you know the culprits, on your computer, you are beginning to find out what is needed, in your particular case.

(Of course, this all assumes there are no hardware issue! We do hope there are no hardware issues on anyone’s Mac!)

my 2015 MacBook Pro on Big Sur drains so much faster (in sleep mode-Power Nap off) compared to my 2012 MacBook pro on Catalina... It improved significantly when I turned off Handoff (can't recall the source of the article that suggested it) but there's still a noticeable drain difference compared the two laptops.

I have this issue too but the Battery Preferences says "Service Needed", which means new battery needed. Does anyone else get this ? Also is a new battery in a 4 year old MacBook needed ? I have pretty light use. Thanks

I am facing this issue too. SIGNIFICANT drop in battery performance after upgrading to Big Sur. 

Using a 2016 MBP 15” (13,3) with 2.6 GHz core i7 and 16 gigs of RAM. I’m at approx. 322 battery cycles & 90% battery health. Prior to Big Sur, I used the latest version of Catalina. That gave no issues and I managed to get 8-10 hours of usage on a single full battery charge with regular use. After upgrading to Big Sur, battery life is approx. 4 hours with similar usage. It’s been a week since I updated and battery life hasn’t improved. Activity monitor and iStats Menu reveal that ‘windowserver’ is using about 50% of 15% of total cpu power when moving the pointer and about 15% of 4% when idle. I haven't seen much of the "settling down" some users have spoken about. Battery life improved only marginally in the week or so since I updated. I know I am not alone because there's a reddit page about this issue (See: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/juqcrd/calling_all_big_sur_users_here_check_windowserver/)

Another issue that's draining battery life, but I haven't seen anyone else complain about, is that when I open MS Word 2016 my Mac automatically switches to the discreet graphics card. None of the other Office apps cause this issue. Opening Word also causes my desktop background image to go partially or entirely black. When I quit the Word app, the desktop background image returns to normal and the Mac switches back to the integrated graphics. Discreet graphics obviously uses a lot more power. Neither of these issues occurred with Word 2016 in Catalina. I have the latest version of Word. Hard to believe that the same version of Word suddenly requires more GPU power in Big Sur.

I have sent feedback about all the above issues to Apple via apple.com/feedback. I hope they are listening! If a 2 year old MBP 15 is down to less than half the battery life I got when I bought the machine then I've lost faith in Apple!

Is there a safe and stable way to downgrade to Catalina? (I didn't Time Machine before the update because pretty much everything is on iCloud Drive).

Re: Is there a safe and stable way to downgrade to Catalina? (I didn't Time Machine before the update because pretty much everything is on iCloud Drive).

A TM backup wouldn't help you anyway since Big Sur is newer than Catalina, at least that's what the shop I had replace my battery and revert by mid-2017 MBP back to Catalina told me.

They had to back up and remove all of my docs etc and reinstall them after switching back to Catalina. It was a relatively simple exercise on my end as I only had to log back into my Apple ID and all of my bookmarks and contacts were there. I lost my iMessage history and had to download my apps again (locate your activation keys for paid apps ahead fo time to make this easier on the back end).

The rest is interesting, especially your Word experience. I switched everything over to Google apps have have zero issues with Docs and Sheets which I use all day every day for work.

The stats that you quoted about your battery cycles and health are pretty similar to what mine were when I upgraded to Big Sur and I needed a battery replacement. Two Apple Senior Advisors and Engineering told me that my battery was completely depleted at 300 cycles, which seems insane to me, but alas here I am with a new battery, a machine I will never update beyond Catalina (at least not in the foreseeable future) and $400 less to spend on my family at Christmas.

Seeing the 'windowserver' issue too. Lots of safari tabs open, but I had many safari tabs open in Catalina too. I have similar fears about whether this has to do with changes because of the M1 chips and whether this might just be how Intel Macs run now!

Yeah, the feeling arises that this should never have been made available for none M1 machines as it seems like this a M1 only fitting OS.

I'm pretty disappointed. It was communicated that it has been built to better fit M1 machines but not that it cause issues to all machines having other cores.

On the last Windows upgrade the system created an 'old windows' backup to allow an easy rollback ... Think about that ...

Thanks for your response, aubeone.

If your battery health stats are similar to mine, then I don’t see how a battery with ~90% health could be “completely depleted”. I’m still covered by the extended warranty, so if my battery is indeed “completely depleted”, I should be able to get a free replacement. How did the engineer in your case make this determination?

Using Google Docs is out of the question for me. Word is my second most used app (after Safari) and I absolutely need it for work. It seems counterintuitive that I would need to stop using one of the most popular apps for Mac because I “upgraded” to a new OS. To me the discreet graphics issue coupled with ‘windowserver’ hogging cpu clearly reveals that the issue lies with Apple and the latest MacOS.

You’re right about TM not being of much help. But had I done a TM backup just before installing Big Sur, I would have been able to erase hard drive, reinstall Catalina and then restore from that TM backup (since all docs are on iCloud anyway).

I’m considering the downgrade back to Catalina, but am sceptical of whether the effort will be worth it because some users report that even the downgrade doesn’t seem to resolve the issue.

Big Sur 11.1 RC has just been issued. Will wait for that release to see if the issue improves before deciding whether to take the plunge back to Catalina.

Welcome, Anon02, to Apple Support Communities!

Unfortunately, all the issues you describe are attributable to errant third-party Apps.

Why anyone would expect a 2016 version of Microsoft Word to run well after a major Operating System (OS) upgrade, is beyond words.

Additionally, when you did look at Activity Monitor, did you simply use the default “My Processes” View, or did you change the View to All Processes? (I run using “All Processes, Hierarchically”, so I can see the relationship between processes and subprocesses.)

Guys, I have the solution. After weeks of my brand news MBP 2019 battery suddenly draining within 1-2 hours I found the solution.

Just download & run mackeeper (free version is enough) & let it do it's thing (automatically update all apps, clear your cache & ram, etc.) - afterwards your battery will be fine again.

[Link Edited by Moderator]

There’s no evidence of any such, LAHAtoomuch, with regards to Big Sur.

Those of us that have successfully “navigated” this major Operating System (OS) upgrade—especially those of us that have seen this sort of thing, before, in previous OS upgrades (not mere updates)—all attest to how baseless any such allegation is.

arber_b:

Do make sure you remove that “cleaner” software, as soon as you are done with it, following the manufacturer’s instructions!

This class of software is known to cause far more troubles than it even claims to “solve”.

(Why anybody falls for claims of clearing “ram” as being any sort of solution for anything, is beyond words. 🤦🏻‍♂️)

Of course, it’s simply the «updat[ing] all apps» that solves the vast majority of the persistent issues.

Halliday, your responses are not helpful (at least not to me). As someone else said before me, please stop denying the issue!

You attribute all my issues to third-party apps without any basis, when everything seems to suggest the issue lies within Mac OS. How do you even know whether I am running third-party apps (other than Word)?!

what does “beyond words” mean? Why wouldn’t I expect Microsoft Office Word which has been updated regularly since 2016 and was running smoothly on Catalina not to work efficiently after a Major OS upgrade. In theory aren’t OS upgrades meant to improve efficiency?!

i have looked at the “all processes” view in Activity Monitor. Please do not assume that you are the only person on this forum who knows the most about Mac OS.

you keep referring to yourself as belonging to group of “old timers” who are familiar with the “settling down” phase after an upgrade. What does that mean? I have been using Mac OS since 2009 and have seen several upgrades since then. I’d consider myself an “old timer”. I don’t see any other user here supporting anything you have to say.

I agree, when I updated to Catalina, or any of the previous OS 10 software upgrades, Battery Draining was never an issue until Big Sur. And I don't have any software that I wasn't running under Catalina.

I too hear the denial of the purported "Old Time". Too many people, including myself have not had battery drain issues with

previous mac releases. There is definitely something about Big Sur that causes severe battery drain across many makes and models and ages of the MacBooks. The "Old Timer" is definitely putting his head in the sand on this one.

It’s still Word 2016. Right? Anon02?

Must I say more?

(I bought one of the first Macintoshs, when they first came out. I ran the predecessor of what became MacOS X, in 2001, back in the ‘90s. I still have one of those pre-MacOSX [not Apple] machines.)

Additionally, this is not the first discussion about high Energy, high CPU, short battery life, here on Apple Support Communities.