macOS Big Sur battery drain issue

Halliday,

You've seemed to imply in the past replies that a "Clean Install" would be a panacea and solve the battery drainage issues.

It is clear now, that a "clean install" is not a requirement to solving the battery drainage issue.

It is clear that 3rd party software is the culprit whether you clean install or not.

I didn't clean install and my battery drainage issue was resolved by upgrading all my 3rd party software and drivers and getting

rid of 3rd party software that stayed problematic like Chrome.

I'm currently getting 4.5 to 5 hours of battery life that is the same as I got with Catalina only after I attacked the 3rd party software issues.

pvmikev1 wrote:

Halliday,

You've seemed to imply in the past replies that a "Clean Install" would be a panacea and solve the battery drainage issues.

Never as a procedure that simply “jumps” back to the same configuration that had the issues.

I’m sorry if people didn’t recognize this distinction.

If one actually reads where I outlined the individual steps, one should recognize this.

Unfortunately, many are—understandably—impatient for a “quick fix”.

It probably doesn’t help that some “lucked-out”, and performed some sort of “quick fix” type “clean install”, without a recurrence of this issue. However, such is not the generally expected result.

It is clear now, that a "clean install" is not a requirement to solving the battery drainage issue.

Neither I, nor anyone competent, ever claimed that «a “clean install”» was anything like «a requirement to solving the battery drainage issue.»

Where did you get that idea?

It is clear that 3rd party software is the culprit whether you clean install or not.

Yes! A completely correct conclusion!

You are to be congratulated for seeing this clearly!

I didn't clean install and my battery drainage issue was resolved by upgrading all my 3rd party software and drivers and getting

rid of 3rd party software that stayed problematic like Chrome.

Absolutely astute!

I'm currently getting 4.5 to 5 hours of battery life that is the same as I got with Catalina only after I attacked the 3rd party software issues.

Congratulations on a job well done!

You may have not said that clean install is the panacea directly. But those of us, including myself, wishing for a quick fix,

may have incorrectly inferred that from your much earlier replies.

But I think we're all on the same page now as our investigations have evolved. Again thanks for all your great advice and

support. Your expertise is greatly appreciated.

Thank you for sharing your experiences, ElevatiAnn!

Unfortunately, what does make this issue so difficult is that there is no universal culprit!

Really, though, once one recognizes that the issue is with third-party software, which have varying levels of compatibility with this major Operating System (OS) upgrade (incompatible changes), I believe the variety of issues and fixes becomes expected.

High Energy use, overheating, and poor performance are all symptoms of the same cause: software that is using a lot of your computer’s resources, like CPU time. (Well. With the potential exception of actual hardware issues, which we wish upon no one!)

I only bought my MacBook Pro a couple of years ago and this is really Bad. This Big Sur has made the battery life very short. I mostly am near a plug. They should never put out something that does this. It is terrible. It is the first MacBook Pro I have owned. UGGGG.

I don't know what happened, but after I had the problem shortly after the update to Big Sur that my 3d Party charger could no longer supply enough power to charge, this problem no longer occurs. I just noticed that the new battery charging management (since Catalina) uses its own algorithms to charge, stop charging, all supposedly to increase the battery life enormously.

But the fact that such enormous discharges are now taking place is actually the opposite of what was intended.

I can only recommend everyone here to use iStat-Menu to find out what is draining the battery so much.

The change I made to syncing my iphone automatically (I turned this feature off because it was causing the os component ampdeviceagent to hang) seems to have worked (or made a huge difference) for me. It's worth checking.

Another thing worth checking (how I found this problem) is in activity monitor. I kept looking at the energy tab to see what was sucking up all the energy from the battery. There was never an obvious culprit, some activity but nothing big. When I checked the CPU tab, this os component was using 98% of the CPU and had been running for hours (even when my computer was asleep, plugged in, etc.).

Just a thought. I'm concerned everyone's solution will be slightly different but this is an easy place to check.

Welcome, Miglanc13, to Apple Support Communities!

Yes. Since it has almost never been the “front-end”, user interact-able portion of any Apps that have been causing the troubles, one has to make sure one eliminates the unseen, background portions!

You’ve, essentially, hit the proverbial “nail” on the “head”, timvatlanta!

Yes. The solution is about as varied as people’s collections of third-party software, and other interactions.

However, you are completely correct in your assessment of Activity Monitor, and, unfortunately, the apparent fact that not all background processes are “instrumented” for Energy Use.

Welcome, Flo_14, to Apple Support Communities!

The large discharges, high Energy Use, is not part of Apple’s «new battery charging management (since Catalina)».

Instead, you have errant background processes running on your system, draining your battery.

Find and eliminate those processes, and your problem will be gone.

We have shared the methods for finding these processes earlier in this Discussion.

Please let us know how we can help you in this process.

Looking through the CPU tab in Activity Monitor I have no process making any significant resources use.

Also, I want to point out again that this is not only an issue of the battery draining extremely fast (which it does) but also the battery behaving totally crazy.

My Macbook would shut down at 20% without any warning.

Or, for example, battery percentage jumping more than 10% immediately after connecting to power (which is obviously not functioning correctly).

msonnino wrote:

Looking through the CPU tab in Activity Monitor I have no process making any significant resources use.

Also, I want to point out again that this is not only an issue of the battery draining extremely fast (which it does) but also the battery behaving totally crazy.

My Macbook would shut down at 20% without any warning.

Or, for example, battery percentage jumping more than 10% immediately after connecting to power (which is obviously not functioning correctly).

Unfortunately, these symptoms are quite consistent with a failing battery.

The early shutdown, for instance, can be due to a failure to obtain sufficient current, at the necessary voltage, from the battery.

I’ve seen very similar sudden «battery percentage jump[s]», «immediately after connecting to power», with failing batteries.

If, with the View set to “All Processes”, you see no significant CPU usage (ordered with highest at the top), then, it would seem, you don’t have a problem with errant background processes.

That’s something in your favor!

Before getting a new battery, try the calibration technique of 1) Drain the battery down to 0% 2) Leave it drained overnight

3) Plugin the power cord and charge it all the way to 100% and stay plugged in for about 3 to 4 hours at 100%

Then disconnect the power cord and see if your battery returns to at least stop jumping around.

For best results you might want to do this in "Safe" Mode by holding down the shift key while rebooting your computer for steps 1 and 3.

Then if none of that works, there is a much higher probability that you need a new battery.

I seem to have mostly fixed my problem by uninstalling Malwarebytes too. When I used Activity Monitor to see what processes were using the most CPU time, I found that a process called "kernelmanagerd" was the big culprit. Elsewhere in the Apple discussions I saw someone flag Malwarebytes as the application that uses this process.

Apple should be proactively warning its customers about the potential for this problem -- and recommended mitigation and solutions -- when the software update utility first recommends this "upgrade." Having to track this down as a novice user is a real pain.

I know I was quite surprised, DBalzerMcLean, when I heard that Big Sur was showing up in the “update” panel. (Admittedly, it was appropriately labeled as an upgrade.)

I had gone directly through the Mac App Store, directly through Big Sur, since I knew that Apple didn’t (historically) provide upgrades through the normal update mechanism!

Providing a major upgrade through the usual update mechanism was, probably, a tactical error on Apple’s part.

Unfortunately, what’s done is done.