macOS Big Sur battery drain issue

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!

Did you have Automatic Updates turned on for your third-party software?

Once your third-party software was completely upgraded, for the new Operating System (OS, Big Sur, in this case), your system would work much better.

(It sounds like your version of «MS WORD» is still not, yet, fully compatible.)

Unfortunately, NJJackinVA, the culprit third-party software is about as unique as the users experiencing the issues.

This means there is no “canned” solution, or list of “culprit” third-party software.

I do wish the solution were simpler and easier.

Fortunately, as people’s third-party software is upgraded/updated, the problems will diminish.

(Additionally, for those users that have set their systems to Automatically update their third-party software, they will experience incremental improvements, in their systems, merely by the incremental updating of their third-party software.

The definitive proof that the issue is not with Big Sur on Mac hardware is the often verified fact that truly clean installs of Big Sur exhibit no such issues: a truly clean install of Big Sur is free from any and all third-party software, including drivers for third-party add-on hardware.

The fact is that such truly clean installs of Big Sur are the most tested configurations of all!)

I had the same problem after upgrading macOS to Big Sur for my MacBook Air 11".

My battery used to last for almost 7-8 hours but after upgrading to Big Sur it reduced to maximum of 2 hours.

However I found the solution to my problem, by following below steps.

Restarted mac, pressed Command+R to get the Mac Recovery Mode.

Selected the option of Reinstall macOS and reinstalled Big Sur again.

This took more than 4 hours to finish but after finishing the installation the battery life increased significantly. Now I was getting 5 hours of backup.

Afterwards I disabled all the spotlight options and added folders to search blocklist as well.

To further increase the battery life switch to dark mode. Doing all these has helped me to get the battery life close to 6-7 hours now.

After reinstalling the OS, I also noticed that now my fan is not turning on frequently and macbook is also not heating up as it was earlier.

I believe the upgrade OS is the problem. It's better to clean install the OS. All my files and applications were unharmed during the reinstallation. However I took the backup before reinstallation and it is recommended for everyone to backup data before reinstalling Big Sur.

Hope this helps others as well.

Welcome, HimVisa, to Apple Support Communities!

You can shutdown or simply use sleep mode (or deeper, like hybrid-sleep), as you wish.

Shutting down will use the least energy, of course.

The deeper the sleep mode, the lower the energy use, as well.

Unfortunately, EarthBased appears to be having trouble getting his MacBook to even go into any sleep mode.

Update: I took my 2017 MacBook Pro 15" with Touch Bar to Genius Bar. After confirming my findings the serial # qualified for extended warranty. I pay $18 for new USB board and Apple covers $496 to fix battery which includes a new keyboard surface side too since battery is sintered to that. Left it at Apple store since parts where not in stock.

I assumed the computer was not going into sleep mode but that was a wrong educated guess.

I’m glad all looks like it will work out for you, EarthBased!

There have been a few cases where the «battery drain issue» was caused by hardware. It sounds like yours falls in that category (though the hardware failure occurred later, and appeared after an update—strange, but, in no wise, impossible).

I hope, in the future, you’ll work on verifying your “educated guess[es]”, or, at least, make it clear when you are only using a guess.

disillusioned2 wrote:

Unfortunately, we seem to be talking past each other.

1) I have ZERO websites open. Notta, zilch.. :-)

2) If I have 2 Windows open(with zero websites) I'm over 100% (all Processes)

3) if I close one of the two Windows (with zero websites) the it goes down to 2%.

Not a website discussion what-so-ever.

What App are you seeing high CPU usage on, when you «have ZERO websites open. Notta, zilch.. :-)»?

What App are you using when you «have 2 Windows open(with zero websites) I'm over 100% (all Processes)»?

Is that «over 100% (all Processes)» the sum total of all CPU usage, for all processes? Or something else, such as the CPU Usage graph?

Same!! But for me, the Spotlight.app doesn't use the most battery. Usually under the battery logo, it shows that the app which I currently use, consumes the most battery.

I have to agree on this being the worst install failure. It’s a bit disappointing, really.

Jon_cg

even temporary solutions are welcome for me. thanks for sharing. I'll see if staying away from Chrome solves my battery drain as well. 😓

Yep - reinstalling Chrome seems to have done the trick for me. No more overheating, no fan noise and the battery appears to be working fine too.

Did it all, Big Sur then Catalina then Big Sur again, when I found out the problem remained after going back to Catalina .....

Huge regrets in using Big Sur. Battery now lasts 1h. Macbook Pro has less than one year bought. Used to last a lot longer.