macOS Big Sur battery drain issue

Check that ☺️ https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

I solved the problem by factory reset the Mac Pro and re installed the Big Sur, now the battery great and all the issues gone

Same probleme for me with a macbook pro 2018 after uprgrade, I did a clean install of Big sur. That not resolved the probleme but after chrome update, it’s good for me. No battery drain now.

The fix for me was to remove/uninstall Google Chrome and all of the files that go with it. Spotlight Indexing had nothing to do with it, for me.

macOS 11.2.1 fixes this issue.

Well, this is sad but true:

787 replies and 163.450 views since Nov 13 2020 and still no solution.

Downgrade to catalina... that's what I just did

So what I did is, formatted SSD, installed Big Sur from USB and measured battery drain on newly installed OS. It is better than before (29W batt. drain) with now 13W drain, but still worse than Catalina batt. drain which was about 6-8W compare 13W drain on new Big Sur with no any apps installed on it. Conclusion: Apple wants to push you to buy new HW with M1 chip. This is shady business and I no longer willing to support this huge rolling Apple corporation. Iphone 12 is also bad, worse batt. live than iPhone 11... no comment, I’m very very disappointed. Not mentioning that Apple blocks 3rd servicing, so if by chance there is HW problem on your new Mac, you will loose your data if not backed up. Bad, bad, bad and again all bad...

I have reseted the SMC and NVRAM plus stopped the spot light search for some and it is working fine now just reached one hour working from 100% to 90% with around 70% brightness and only safari working with one youtube tab and bluetooth connected AirPods. I have MacBook Pro 13" 2016 non-touch with cycle count 22

I think this may be useful to fix this issue, Good luck

Unfortunately, Stoyanski89, even if you choose All Processes, in View, the Energy tab, in Activity Monitor, only shows a subset of processes. (It’s probably a case of those processes that have been appropriately “instrumented”, in order to account for Energy use.)

So, you may want to also take a look at the CPU tab, with All Processes being viewed. (I usually run with All Processes, Hierarchically, so I can see what Apps are running what sub-processes.)

It should go without saying, but, unless you have a hardware issue (short-circuits, or such), high energy use comes from high hardware use!

See what’s really going on “under the hood”.

Although some apps shows high CPU, there isn't problem with single apps, but Big Sur OS coding. It has issues with kernel and has to be fixed by Apple. Just for comparison, you can see consumption of clean installation of Big Sur (no apps installed yet) and old installation of Catalina incl. apps installed with running processes in a background.

Big Sur - best achieved batt. drain -19.9W

Catalina - usual batt. drain -9.0W

Big Sur - high CPU on OS kernel

The only Feedback anyone has received from Apple, that I have ever seen on any of the discussions of this “issue”, ChaStp, is: this is expected behavior, have patience.

However, there are errant third party Apps, Utilities, and background processes that are getting “confused” by this major Operating System (OS) upgrade!

Such need to be “hunted down” and eliminated or replaced.

See my recommendations for using Activity Monitor to see what is doing so much work (typically in the background) on your system.

After 2 days after update to macOS Big Sur the problem is gone.

Looks like indeed some indexing in background took place.

Now I have slightly more than 4 hours out of 40% of battery.

My workload isn't heavy, Chrome (5 tabs), WebStorm without builds, Music and a couple of messengers.

I'm pretty happy with this result so far!

Hi all,

I reinstalled Big Sur a few days ago and my drain is worse. Initially, I got about 4 hours (not great but better than the 2 hours I got with the original install) but this has been progressively decreasing. This morning, my battery drained by 50% in under an hour. After reinstalling the OS, I gave the MBP plenty of time to 'houseclean' (even though my MBP is pretty bare). Similar to the troubleshooting I did after the first installation of BS (how ironic), I:

Reset the PRAAM/NVRAM

Reset SMC

Disabled several items in Spotlight

Ran Diagnostics (no issue)

Checked CPU usage (no issues)

Booted into safe mode (apparently that might help but I have doubts) and checked the disk(s).

Latest step:

-Disabled 'optimize battery charging' - this was suggested in a recent article.

-It was also suggested that the battery calibration may have been affected (to recalibrate, it advised to charge to 100% and then let the battery drain till the MBP shuts down). I'm not convinced this will resolve the problem and frankly I shouldn't have to go to all this trouble even if it's a major upgrade. I have not tried this step.

Hopefully some of you have resolved your issue and if not, maybe one of these suggestions will help.

Have you actually tried the recommendations, Christocce, to find the errant software?

If your MacBook doesn’t “settle down” within a few days of continuous use, then you likely have a case of third-party software that has gotten “confused” by the major upgrade (not an update).

If you have never run Activity Monitor, on your computer, with the View set to All Processes (I usually use “All Processes, Hierarchically”, so I can see what processes subprocesses are associated with), then you have no idea what is running on your computer, nor what could be causing your computer to be using so much Energy.

All I’m recommending is for you, and others, to try and see what’s really going on, on your own computers.

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.