macOS Big Sur battery drain issue

I have the same problem; I have a 2018 MBP with Touch Bar and my battery drains within about 2 hours since I upgraded to Big Sur. I've reset the SMC, PRAM/NVRAM and run Diagnostics (at the request of Apple Support) - no issues to report except that now, I can't access recovery mode which would be necessary to reinstall the OS (which I have no intention of doing but thanks, Apple). I almost always see the 'Using significant energy' alert when I'm using Safari - which is always, however at most, I've got a few tabs open. I'm not running any other applications other than (sometimes) Firefox. All this to say that I'm not at all impressed with Apple. Trying Mohamed's tip about Spotlight, though my battery still appears to be draining. Will try a reboot to see if that magically helps!

It is, and trying to make out like the issue has nothing to do with Big Sur isn’t cool. I’m guessing if their ‘solution’ is to bring it in, we’ll end up getting charged for a repair rather then them taking ownership of this BS.

Apple isn’t here, medsfacts.

This is a users helping other users support community.

If you want to talk to Apple about such matters, you can use the Contact Support link in the upper-right corner of these pages, or you can submit macOS Big Sur product Feedback to Apple.

Actually, medsfacts, this is far from «product-recall worthy», especially for those of us that are experienced with major Operating System (OS) upgrades.

I, and others, have even tried to explain the case, and how people can actually see what is going on “under the hood”—for themselves—that is doing so much work on your system, in the beginning, until it has finished the initial setup, and such.

(The more y’all interfere with the process, the longer the process will take.)

Barring hardware issues, like short-circuits, or such, high energy use means heavy hardware use—even though the use is not directly related to what the user is trying to do on the system: there’s simply a lot more going on than meets the eyes of most users.

@Halliday, how long would you consider it normal for the issue to resolve itself? I’m asking because I did the upgrade on Friday afternoon and haven’t seen any improvement. Most of my troubleshooting has been in line with the input Apple fed back to me. There’s really not much else I can do, now. It seems most users here, are experiencing the same issues.

@Halliday, I've seen OS downloads suspended for much less than this, so we disagree on "product recall" worthiness. I was referring to the software being recalled, not the hardware obviously.

In my 35 years of using Macs, this is the worst install failure I've ever seen.

Mine took a full day or two, ElevatiAnn.

However, the more you have on your drive, I would expect to increase the time.

It will also depend upon what else is installed on your system, that cause background tasks to run.

Unfortunately, I notice that not all software is “instrumented” for energy usage. So, unfortunately, the App specific information under the Battery logo, and the Energy tab of Activity Monitor, are likely incomplete.

However, for short-term processor (CPU and GPU) use, look under the CPU tab, in Activity Monitor, with the View set to All Processes (with or without the Hierarchical part of the setting): the higher the CPU%, the greater energy use of the CPU; similarly for the GPU. (Note: the “housekeeping” processes will not tend to use GPU, since they are background processes.)

(Processes with heavy RAM or drive or network usage will also contribute to Energy use, but the Activity Monitor doesn’t give us per App bytes/second information, so it’s difficult to ascertain such.)

Now my battery drain is solved.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago in this thread, I stopped using Google Chrome and I ensure "Google Chrome Helper" is not running. This solved my battery drain because "Google Chrome Helper" was constantly using 100% of CPU.

I've also configured Spotlight as mentioned by other people but in my case I think it was the Chrome issue.

Hi @Jon_cg sorry but in my opinion stop using Google Chrome is like to stop using a pot because is dirty ... you have to clean it, not to stop using it. Otherwise tommorrow we'll have a Mac without any app. No app, no drain ...

I had Chrome Helper with Catalina, and had no problem. So the problem is not Chrome ma Big Drain Sur !!

I just booted up at 100% and am now going to 'test' to see how long the battery lasts today... Yesterday the Big Drain let me have ALMOST 3 hours.... 🤣. Hopefully this problem gets resolved for everyone.

I completely uninstalled google chrome and that still has not solved the battery drain issue. One of the purposes of having a laptop is being defeated because I am having to live on a charger. Apple please fix this issue. I should not have to buy an “M1” chip MacBook Pro in order to get basic battery life. I hope this is not a trend that we will begin seeing with Apple from this point on. Will “M1” chip laptops go downhill once “M2” is released?

I never used chrome on my MacBook Pro but I doubt that’s the problem. For me, the battery drains using safari which is the best browser.

But something that’s kind of helping me right now is quitting apps and using one tab at a time. Try it out!

I ran Activity Monitor, listing all processes heirarchically. I am seeing quit a massive energy impact from WindowServer. Nothing from Spotlight.

I do leave a lot of browser windows open simultaneously (around 45). I always had about 10-11 hours battery life with Catalina on my 2019 MBP 16" 64/2TB.

Curious- do the other people experiencing this problem have many windows open? Are you seeing WindowServer activity as well?

My concern is that Big Sur revamped windows in such a way that this is a permanent 'feature' on legacy Intel chips... As opposed to an easily fixed bug.

to whom may be interested, I solved the issue also thanks to Apple Support.

Long story short, the EFI processes draining my cpu were related to some Xerox printer software apparently obsolete and conflicting with the new OS. Once erased, everything came back to normality and now Big Sur works smoothly and quietly.

My advice is to check Activity Monitor and see what causes the cpu to work so hard and the fans to be on all the time. That's might be the problem. Or at least that was mine.

good luck

After longtime being sick from that battery performance, I decided to downgrade back to MacOS catalina 10.15.7 until this issue is being solved.

For now I had to completely format my MacBook. I will check again the battery after downgrade