Big Sur battery drain

Welcome, jonasboor and @All, to Apple Support Communities!

Many of us “old timers” have been trying to inform those that are “panicking” about this, but few are listening, and many simply seem to “listen” to each other “complain”, and “call” for Apple to “take action”.

This is what is well known, by those of us that are “old timers”:

• Unless a computer has a hardware fault (such as a short-circuit, including an internal short in a battery), there is no way for a computer to use a great deal of energy without running programs being the cause! (CPU or GPU intensive processes, usually.) Of course, we all hope your computer’s hardware is and keeps running well!
• Big Sur is a major Operating System (OS) upgrade. It is not a mere update! In fact, Apple considers it to be such a major upgrade that they actually increased the major version number, from 10 to 11, for the first time since 2001!
• With any major OS upgrade, there are a number of “housekeeping” processes that run in the background (you won’t see them in Activity Monitor unless you change the View from the default of “My Processes” to “All Processes”): these are indexing all the files on your Data drive, analyzing and indexing all your photos/videos/music/books/etc., and any number of other “housekeeping” tasks to get the system ready for your daily use and convenience. (The results help make your system more responsive to your needs.) These will “settle down” when they have completed their “housekeeping” to the point that they are “caught up” with your files and such. (After that, just as with the previous OSs, they simply work as needed to keep up with what you change and add.)
• There are third party programs, utilities, extensions, etc., that simply may not be ready for such a major OS upgrade: they can get “confused”, and can “run amuck”, on your system, until you upgrade these third party programs! Please be aware of this potential issue.

From Andrey Threat’s experience, it appears that there may be a possibility for issues in interactions, through iCloud, with other systems. However, this is still quite preliminary!

You can run Activity Monitor, with the View set to All Processes to see what is running on your system, and how much CPU or GPU or Energy they are using. (Note: it appears that not all background processes have been “instrumented” for Energy use. So, the listing of All Processes using significant Energy is likely incomplete. However, since the majority of Energy use is generally due to CPU and GPU use, these will show up under the CPU tab, in Activity Monitor. That being said, though, the total Energy Impact is not dependent upon having all programs “instrumented” for Energy use.)

The Activity Monitor is a good tool for seeing what is going on “under the hood” of your computer.

Any time you wonder what might be going on, on you computer, that might be affecting its responsiveness, Energy use, Heating, etc.; the Activity Monitor can, usually, help you get an idea of what is going on.

(Unfortunately, if your computer has hardware faults, Activity Monitor is not the best tool for recognizing such issues.)

Here's a screenshot: From last night and again this morning, you can see the battery drain from 100% to red within 2 hours or so. Last night, I was watching a symphony performance on Airplay and this morning another video streaming through Airplay, same trajectory both times, and it caught me by surprise that my battery almost went dead during the performance. I'm looking at "Battery" in System Preferences but don't see any setting changes that would help with this.

Same here. With a 2017 13" MacBook Pro with 4 Thunderbolt ports, when using screen mirroring, the Mac gets really hot, and the battery is drained after about 2 hours. I am concerned about the safety of this, and I did not have this problem before updating to Big Sur. Is there any setting that can be changed to help? I found several settings had to be changed from the default for Airplay by screen mirroring to work with a 13" screen already. For example, until I changed some settings, screen sharing options did not appear in the menu bar. And as soon as I clicked on "screen mirroring" in the drop down box, all open windows and, the drop down box and, most importantly, the cursor were shown in greatly reduced sizes, making it nearly impossible to find the cursor. Plus, the drop down box and (now that I added it) the screen mirroring in the menu bar do not even have the option to exit screen mirroring. You have to click on "display preferences" to open another box that gives you the option to turn off Airplay Display. As a default, this is not acceptable. The only way I could stop Airplay and get a screen I could actually work with was to shut the lid on the laptop and wait for that to exit Airplay. Only then could I even find the settings I needed to change. And having no way to turn off Airplay without clicking on 2 or 3 things to find it? Not good. This new OS is not ready for release. Sorry. But battery draining in 2 hours and no user friendly way to turn off Airplay? Not good.

My MacBook Air 2017 gave me 8-10 hours of battery life with no extended screen and at least 15 applications (at minimum) operating simultaneously. Even with Catalina it gave me a very decent back up... but no sooner I got the Big Sur update... my machine has turned into a power guzzler! I didn't to a Time Machine back up and can't go back to the previous version. I am terribly disappointed that Apple would release an OS with such obvious issues!!

I do hope they fix this very, very soon!!! I can't be roaming around with my power cord all the time!

Stanley22 wrote:

So this is my activity monitor, one tab open in Safari. I reseted all SMC, P..., have the latest update. Having the computer in the power for 48 hours, cleaned Safari history, clean all via CC cleaner... but still not getting back Catalina battery. any suggestions? I did my update via Software update (About this Mac). Any suggestions?

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/09e083eb-f5fd-4fdd-beed-520fb573bf02

There is simply nothing there to explain any quick drain of your battery.

How long has your MacBook been on? If it has been on for only about 20–30 minutes, your screenshot may have missed the heavy use time period. (See WindowServer and kernel_task, [cumulative] CPU Time.)

What is the brightness level of your display? The MacBook backlight can be a major power drain, but most people make sure their On-Battery settings are set to decrease this drain (including a short display sleep delay).

Another possibility (though one that is usually minor, compared to CPU and GPU usage) can be wireless power usage: if using Wi-Fi, a lot of networking, and the base-station is rather far away; your power drain could be considerable.

Of course, such are simply speculations, since you seem to have no CPU or GPU usage to account for your power drain.

(Another possibility—though not one wished upon anyone—is a Hardware issue: a short-circuit, such as in the battery, will drain power while your computer is doing, essentially, nothing. We all hope that isn’t the case.)

Petrie1 wrote:

It is an intel Based 2020 MacBook Pro 13inch with Big Sur installed by my self because Apple Have stoped Supporting Mac OS Catalina because of the realese of Big Sur and it is 1.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 with 16GB LPDDR3 Ram and a one 1TB flash storage . and here is the example of the battery drain

Apple has not «stoped Supporting Mac OS Catalina because of the realese of Big Sur».

Even all macOSs back to High Sierra are still supported by Apple, with only High Sierra going on the “no longer supported” list, sometime soon.

I’m sorry if you so misunderstood the nature of the release of the major Operating System (OS) upgrade of Big Sur. Big Sur is certainly not a mere update.

In fact, Apple considers Big Sur to be such a major OS upgrade, that they increased the major version number, from 10 to 11, for the first time since 2001!

The distinction between an update vs. and upgrade is quite important:

• An update can only include compatible OS changes.
• An upgrade can include a number of incompatible OS changes. In fact, this is the only time incompatible changes are to be made!

Note: No one should install an OS upgrade without checking the compatibility of their own software, with the new, upgraded OS!

I’m sorry to say this, but since you simply treated this major upgrade as if it were a mere update, you are “reaping” one of the consequences, due to third-party software incompatibilities.

In the case of Big Sur (and some OS upgrades, in the past), rather than having so many third-party programs simply “bombing” or refusing to run, they are running, but are “confused” by the changes in their operating environment: this has caused some to “run amuck”, using a great deal of computer resources (usually CPU) for no productive result!

Please read the Solved comment, in this Discussion, for information on how you, too, can solve this issue on your system.

Please do keep us informed of how things go, or don’t, for you, in this “hunt”.

We are here to continue to support you as best we can, in helping you find and fix the issues you find.

Welcome, mmabood, to Apple Support Communities!

If you’ll more carefully read the comment labeled “Solved”, you’ll see that:

1. This behavior is not an intended behavior, but is due to errant background processes.
2. There’s recommendations on how to find those errant background processes.

If you have further questions, we, all as fellow users, are here to help you track down the errant background processes.

mmabood:

The very fact that Big Sur, installed upon a pristine computer—having no third-party software (including no third-party drivers for third-party add-on hardware)—have absolutely no problems, already proves that the problem is not Big Sur running on the Mac.

So. The only possible, remaining issue is third-party software that simply was not ready for this major Operating System (OS) upgrade—not a mere update.

Upgrade vs. update is an important distinction:

• Updates can only include compatible OS changes.
• Upgrades can, and usually do, include incompatible OS changes. In fact, this is the only place where such incompatible OS changes occur.

Hence, just because you have been using applications «in the past on [your] older Mac», is, absolutely, no guarantee of such working on a major OS upgrade.

In fact, it is far more likely that such software is the culprit!

No one should ever upgrade their OS without checking the compatibility of their software and add-on hardware for compatibility with the new OS, first.

Are you running the upgraded versions on MS Office and Opera?

I know for a fact that the earlier versions of MS Office are not ready for Big Sur. (I’m not certain about Opera.)

You should check for compatible versions of all your software, just as you should have done before upgrading.

Unfortunately, you are now in the unenviable position of needing to try to fix this, after the fact.

The worse thing is that you may, possibly, have old software that you may have even forgotten that you installed, who knows when, that may be causing you trouble, now.

We, your fellow users, will try to help your get your system back to the condition it should be running in.

Stanley22 wrote:

i had previous versions of OS, no problem at all. Upgrade vs update —> I simply downloaded new version and updated.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t answer much of the questions I asked of you.

Upgrade vs. update is an important distinction:

• Updates can only include compatible Operating System (OS) changes.
• Upgrades can, and usually do, include incompatible OS changes. In fact, this is the only place where such incompatible OS changes occur.

Hence, just because you have been using applications on «previous versions of OS, no problem at all», is, absolutely, no guarantee of such working on a major OS upgrade.

In fact, if the previously well running applications have not been upgraded/updated for the major new OS, then they are the most likely culprits for problems on the major new OS.

Even though Big Sur was provided via the Update Panel, it was still labeled as an upgrade, not an update.

(Unfortunately, this was, probably, a “tactical” error, on Apple’s part: in the past, they never provided upgrades through the Update Panel; instead, one had to find the upgrade within the Mac App Store, in order to upgrade. People don’t always pay attention to what the software is called—upgrade vs. update—in the Update Panel. After all, they have typically only seen updates in the Update Panel.)

So. Have you tried changing the View to “All Processes”, within the Activity Monitor?

Hi everyone. I'm having the same issue. My 2017 13" MBP went from 5h battery time down to less than 2h.

So today I started diagnosing my system to figure out what's wrong. I remember back with Catalina update there was a similar issue with Safari iCloud synchronising, draining batteries, so I turned it off. Then in Activity Monitor I noticed com.apple.Safary.History process had 9 days of CPU usage, which is exactly when I upgraded to Big Sur... So I killed the process.

After that, I charged MBP to 50% and left it playing Youtube video for about 90mins. In the screenshot below, you can see the results.

So it is 100% Safari issue. Maybe it has something to do with iCloud sync, but most likely it is a com.apple.Safari.History process.

Can somebody try to kill the process to confirm?

Edit: also noticed my CPU temperature went down from 60C to 39C.

It is an intel Based 2020 MacBook Pro 13inch with Big Sur installed by my self because Apple Have stoped Supporting Mac OS Catalina because of the realese of Big Sur and it is 1.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 with 16GB LPDDR3 Ram and a one 1TB flash storage . and here is the example of the battery drain

So this is my activity monitor, one tab open in Safari. I reseted all SMC, P..., have the latest update. Having the computer in the power for 48 hours, cleaned Safari history, clean all via CC cleaner... but still not getting back Catalina battery. any suggestions? I did my update via Software update (About this Mac). Any suggestions?

here I attach the activity monitor with notebook on battery 20 minutes, with at least 15m with no activity (black screen, opened notebook). There is just one tab in Safari opened (komentare.sme.....), for me it seems it takes a lot of power (99),above highlighted, but I am not expert.

Feel free ask any questions

Please pass the word to turn everything off, as in everything, shut it down, closed, connect to recharge the battery to full.

Leave it closed and wait 24 hours if possible, 12 to 16 hours should be enough for full battery and for codes to work in the background. Leave manicuring and personalizing alone until OSBS is running properly. I have noticed things working in the background that are not my doing, yet are to the benefit of my MacBook Pro retina 2019. I reopened a couple of hours ago to see what would happen if I opened and read my FB, and Yahoo news, checked mail ( it is all Apple Support Community ). Apple is obviously doing their thing. Mine is holding strong while plugged in. Next is the unplug and shut down for 6 hours minimum to let the background code do it’s job, for things I have done to do their repairs. Slowly start using the essentials only, do not run anything other than essential, Music is not essential, .FB is not essential. do only in small batches. Wait for background to tinker around and fixes take place. I was ready to go haywire until I calmed down and studied what had to be done.

Good luck. Be patient. Leave your Mac alone. Wait for it to fully recharge and background code to do the work. Do not tinker. Do not run virus programs, Do NOT open any banking sites or sensitive materials. Wait and be patient. I have already seen good things happening on my laptop. NOW, I am leaving my desktop iMac alone. Not even looking at it for fear of strange juju happening. I forgot to unplug my back up drives, so praying thinking waiting to meditate in order to avoid opening up my desktop. Patience. Good luck, you all! Remember : : BE PATIENT and LEAVE IT ALONE.

What basis do you have for these suggestions? Not much code (apart from Intel ME stuff) should be running if you shutdown your computer.

After new OS installs Spotlight does some reindexing which can impact performance/battery life for a short time (it needs to be turned on to do it). But I don't believe the best option is to leave it turned off for a day!