macOS Big Sur battery drain issue

I had the same exact problem with Chrome. I removed it from my 15" MacBook Pro Mid 2015 and saw significant improvement in battery time. I had heard that you needed Chrome to properly use "Google Meeting". But I have used the most recent version of Big Sur Safari with "Google Meeting" and it worked just perfectly. So I'm not going back to using Chrome for anything.

Hello. I was one of the earliest complainants in this thread about Big Sur tremendously slowing down my Macbook Pro.

I am now happy to report that my Macbook Pro (Retina, 13-inch early-2015) has become stable. I am one again getting a battery run of 8-10 hours on a daily basis. Like many others, after I had upgraded my iOS to Big Sur, the battery life had gone down from 8-10 hours to just 2-3 hours. Its went on like that for close to three weeks. I thought something had gone wrong with my laptop.

I did NOTHING else after that. Just continued life as usual. And on its own, automatically, the laptop slowly settled down. And the battery life came back again. I read recently that some laptops were genuinely spoiled and Apple made a recall. But my Early-2015 one settled down eventually.

To all those who are disturbed with the slowdown of the battery after upgrade to Big Sur, my only sincere advice is: Wait for about 3-4 weeks. Give it some time. Keep your laptop switched on. Probably, Big Sur is taking up all the energy to re-index everything. If you don't find any difference after a month, then consult Apple.

Thanks and good luck.

P.S. One side effect that Big Sur left permanently is on MS WORD. When i activate the track-change mode (I use this a lot as I am an editor), MS WORD becomes very slow. But this is a minor irritant. I can live with that :)

Welcome, msoy, to Apple Support Communities!

Unless you experience High Battery Drain on a clean install of Big Sur—meaning that no third-party software is installed, including drivers for add-on hardware (which load and run third-party drivers without even informing you, the user)—then there is nothing that «Apple [can] take care of».

Have you even tried such?

How about using Activity Monitor, with the View set to “All Processes”, rather than the default of “My Processes”?

Note: when you put a Mac into its “Sleep” mode, many background processes will continue to run, and use Battery power. (Some will even prevent your Mac from actually going to “Sleep”, even though the display will go black.)

Welcome, Melissapickering1107, to Apple Support Communities!

Please read the comment marked “Solved” at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252045241?answerId=254006415022#254006415022. (That’s on another Discussion of this same issue.)

Furthermore, since clean (“virgin”) installs of Big Sur—before installing or restoring third-party software (Apps, system or kernel extensions, boot-scripts, user extensions, etc.)—have never exhibited this issue (except, perhaps, in rare cases of hardware failures); it is already proven that Big Sur, itself, is not the cause.

(This is actually the most tested configuration of Big Sur [like all macOS’ before].)

Hence, there is little, if anything, Apple can do about this issue.

Note: The distinction between upgrades vs. updates is important:

• Updates cannot introduce incompatible Operating System (OS) changes.
• Upgrades can, and usually do, introduce incompatible OS changes. In fact, this is the principle reason for creating upgrades!

Big Sur is a major OS upgrade.

As such, it is to be expected that, at least some, old software will not be compatible, and may “act up”.

We, your fellow users, can help you track down the errant, old software, if you desire.

One more data point. I have a mid 2015 15" Retina MBP with over 590 cycles and 77% capacity on my battery.

I had posted a while back that after updating all my 3rd party software my battery stopped the quick drain and went

back to the normal 4 to 5 hours of battery life I got under Catalina with Big Sur 11.0.1

Now I've updated to Big Sur 11.2.2 and went in and out of Safe Mode TWICE. Well to my surprise, my battery life increased

to 5 to 6 hours, which is actually slightly better than I was getting under Catalina.

The moral of this story is get 11.2.2 and try going in and out of safe mode after updating all your 3rd party software.

ElevatiAnn wrote:

… The point to my earlier comment was that it is unlikely that Apple isn't aware of the problem when so many people have reported it via different methods.

I fully recognize and acknowledge that point, ElevatiAnn.

The reason I emphasized the Apple preferred means for providing Feedback, to Apple, is to help people provide the best, most productive Feedback possible.

However, unfortunately, Feedback, alone, will not solve this issue for anyone.

Since this is a well tested issue, it is known that the root cause is old, incompatible third-party software—including driver software, automatically installed and run, when dealing with third-party add-on hardware (hubs seem to be one of the greatest culprits).

Unfortunately, this means that there is nothing Apple can do about it, short of disallowing (at least old) third-party software from running. (I doubt most would want to go with that solution. Besides, based only upon age is a poor criteria.)

Fortunately, y’all can check your applications for compatibility, using the provided link, to see what versions of your software (Apps, at least) are compatible with Big Sur. (It’s usable for previous versions of Operating Systems [OSs] as well.)

Also fortunately, this issue is gradually ameliorated as people upgrade/update their third-party software (including driver software). (Using Automatic Updates, for third-party software, helps with this.)

follow instructions on this video and it will be solved, this typically related to google chrome helper running in the background and draining your battery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bIvme2ONXA

Hi Everyone,

I upgraded yesterday to BigSur and my battery was draining fast. Using the activity monitor and with the help of this community, I decided to get rid of Malawarebytes software. I moved Malawarebytes to Trash--probably not the way to do it--then I uninstalled the icon located on my screen's header. It worked; the KernelManagerd is no longer sucking up 60 to 90% of my CPU. Now I need to replace Malawarebytes. I understand Intego is a good option, any suggestions?

Go to your Activity Monitor and see what's taking all the juice. To find Activity Monitor go to the spy glass in the top right of your screen and type Activity Monitor and the second column from the left entitled, " % CPU" will tell you. They should all be under 25%.

Delete Google Chrome or any application related with Google. Be sure that it works. Chrome is absorbing the battery in this OS. Restart your Macbook a few times and you will see that overheating and battery drain issues are solved forever. Use Opera instead of Chrome if you are obliged.

Hi all,

I've been having the same issue with my MacBook Pro 2015, but at least found a way to stop the battery drain over night.

Generally, it seems like the Big Sur installer wiped all Power Saving settings which I defined a few years ago (other OSX upgrades did NOT do this).

After setting hibernate mode back to 25, my MacBook hardly loses battery power in Standby mode anymore (only 1-2% per night). Only drawback is a slightly enhance wakeup time (additional 1-2 seconds) compared to hibenate mode 3, but that's fine for me.

This is the command I used to change the mode:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25

And this is how you can check your current settings:

pmset -g

But what's still left is that the battery lasts a lot less with Big Sur when the MacBook is actually being used. It's now 2-3 hours with Big Sur instead of 6-8 before in Catalina. This is still very annoying.

Hopefully, Apple can find a fix for this.

@Pablo25: With the last update (11.3.1) and following instructions I found on another site (https://macreports.com/how-to-fix-big-sur-battery-drain-issues/) - pasted below. I've been working on my Intel Macbook Pro 15" (2017) on and off, all the time on battery, for 3 hours and still have 77% battery.

If we could just get past the its all 3rd party software rant we may be able to collaborate on a way to help one another and advance the ball on this issue. I respectfully request no comments from @Halliday on this post.

"The last step that solves the Problem of the secd task draining the battery is to uncheck keychain in iCloud Preferences, sign out of the cloud, reset the smc and sign in to iCloud again."

I got some solution from stackoverflow which said that you can check which file the process 'syspolicyd ' open to indicate what exactly it was examine.

And mine problem lies on python framework.

After removing the python framework entirely, the fans stay normal and quiet for hours, and hopefully this will also solve the battery problem.

(Btw, why on earth need my Mac install six different versions of python .....

oh, nearly forget to mention, the way to examine the usage is by type in :

sudo lsof -c syspolicyd

lsof for list of file for a certain thread.

From my experience 100% YES !!

I had same and not solved big problem with Big Sure and a Mcb Pro Intel.

Yesterday I made a normal install of Monterey and: PROBLEM SOLVED !!!

It was months that I haven't seen more than 7 hour of battery !!

And I hade the same third part software as before ...

paomug67 thanks for posting abut your move to Monterey. Yesterday morning on Big Sur my battery (a new battery installed by Apple) drained to 58% in 2 hours. After reading your post I upgraded to Monterey and this morning after roughly 2 hrs on battery I am at 91%. No upgrades to anything else on my MacBook Pro and same applications running.