macOS Big Sur battery drain issue

Hello,

Yesterday my MBP 2019 did not want to charge, a message saying that according to my uses it was not necessary. But overnight, he drained my battery.

Maybe it is an automatic cycle to keep the battery in good condition

Hello Halliday - I really appreciate your efforts to help and your detailed suggestions - sorry for the slow reply.

Except when I am travelling I only use one third-party application, so after my clean install I have only uploaded one app. (I will reinstall photoshop etc one I sort this cr@p out)

I am familiar with activity monitor and features such as spotlight indexing etc and check all these - there is nothing sinister.

The one app I have been using is Zwift - it is a virtual world cycling app and it is known to be not well-suited to the MacBook graphics card - it has been running CPU at >100% and GPU >75% and delivering ca 60 fps in UHD. So pretty intense - but working absolutely fine before Big Sur upgrade.

As noted, prior to upgrade I had no poblems with battery life. Now as you will see from my OP it was using 85% in just over an hour when plugged in to 3-month old original Apple 96W charger (which is running quite warm, but not hot).

After a clean install of Big Sur failed to deliver any improvement, I have tried a downgrade to Catalina. I'm still getting similar problems although not quite so bad. CPU running more like 60 - 80% and battery life a bit less rubbish. Here is the screenshot of the Catalina battery drain using Zwift while plugged in:

You will also note the time until full charges which at 49mins is absolute nonesense - takes hours.

Obviously this was a big frsutration/disappointment as I thought the downgrade would sort the problem.

So I'm starting to think it is a charging or charger issue. Will try my wife's charger and research software that can measure charging curent/watts - if anyone has any ideas, would love to hear.

Thanks

I've also noticed that my battery dies a lot quicker and charges a lot quicker. When I looked at my history of energy usage I found that the day prior to the update my battery charged to over "100%", around ~175% by these battery standards and hasn't been able to charge to that level since. I'm wondering if this new update put a new cap on how much my laptop can charge. Not impressed with the new battery life either way, this is crazy.

7493432401 wrote:

these are way older and not relevant to Big Sur

Congratulations on your Epiphany!

The inconvenient truth for you is that every laptop manufacture that uses lithium-ion batteries has this same issue. It is not an Apple issue. It is a lithium-ion battery issue. Here is a webpage where Dell explains the issue (and obviously they don't use Big Sur as their OS):

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/wyse-3480-mobile-thin-client/SwollenBattery

You'll notice where they say, and I quote:

Inherent to lithium-ion polymer battery technology is the potential for swelling of the battery cells

Even phones (of all brands) have this same issue, and they also don't use Big Sur as their OS:

There is only one way to get around this, and that is where a responsible laptop owner replaces their battery after the 3 year period, which is when most batteries of this type start to degrade at a faster speed. Of course you can just ignore this issue with lithium-ion batteries and allow them to degenerate more and more over time, but eventually they will swell up over time, seemingly overnight, and if you recently completed a OS update it's easy to blame that update for the issue, but coincidence aside clearly the facts prove otherwise. I know this isn't what you want to hear, but lithium-ion batteries have a long history of this characteristic, and that is a well known documented fact.

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.

Hi everyone, I am using MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017). After @Halliday suggestion, I checked Activity Monitor. I see that Google Chrome Helper was using CPU with %96 percentage. Then I removed Google Chrome from my Mac, but I still see that 'helper' on activity monitor. After that, I removed all Google maps (Chrome, Drive, Gsheet, GDocs) from my Mac and I see that Google Chrome Helper is not on activity monitor anymore. I am now using Safari since I removed Chrome.

Above trials seem solved my issue, but I will check the activity for a while and share my experience here.

I hope all you can solve this Big Sur drain battery issue soon.

Remark: As I red some blogs, this issue is related to Google apps and not Apple. We will see who will solve the issue...

With wiping the boot drive and restoring anything, only first party software. No iCloud, too. Battery drain 1% per minute.

In the meantime I installed Evernote, MS Word, Acrobat Reader, Spotify.

Seems like Safari could be a problem?

Hi everybody,

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 ...

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 ...

I am experiencing a similar problem as well. I have a MacBook Pro 16 inch, 2019. Only a few months old. Battery was working pretty well pre update and since the update it's clearly draining a lot more. I drained 40% within an hour which is very unusual for my laptop.

I have tried to reset SMC, PRAM, NVRAM, stopped using google chrome and the quit dropbox app. Potentially small improvement since then but still draining quicker than before. Hopefully apple comes up with something to fix this, otherwise it's very annoying and frustrating.

I am also having problems too. I contacted Apple support and I did the SMC reset, and it still continues. I will have a full battery drain down in less than two hours. I was supposed to get a callback from Apple, but I didn't get that call. Anyone who had done an update don't leave home without your charger.

Same problem. Installed Big Sur two days before and now battery drain down in less than two hours.

Same problem here. i have MacBook Pro 13 inch 2017. I upgraded from Catalina to Big Sur last night and now what usually is an 8hr battery life from light to moderate task now down to less than 5hours. If apple can not address this I hope I could return to Catalina.

Big Sur is a big drain. I have gone from 100% down to 8% battery in a matter of under 30 minutes, and then after second notified install, so I installed it twice, it overheated again, the fan running, and this was after a 16 hour recharge, from 100% to 34% battery life. I have had it turned off and charging for 2 hours so it has gone up from 34% to 43% battery.

The suggested control option shift power button restart, try getting your fingers around that 4 step start up, did not work.

Stupid “Spotlight rebuilding” is just a fantasy as this is not occurring. Oh My, Apple! There are Zero apps running and still

it will not charge. My one year old MacBook Pro 2019 with NO issues is suddenly with issues, as are many other MacBooks.

I guess we all suddenly corrupted our computers in protest of Big Sur, or something ridiculous an Apple person will state here. .

I am angry. Kill my laptop with an untested update. Great computing there, Apple.

I found that issue recently as well, Battery drain become noticeably much faster and unusual, I have a MacBook Pro 13" 2016 with battery cycle count 22 and the laptop has no apps fresh upgrade to this big sur from Catalina and it is consuming around 10% on 23 Min only previously it was around 1 hr. This weird and I am thinking downgrade back again to Mac OS Catiline