MacBook Air M1 battery drain when sleeping

Check out this thread, there is a fix for this MBP and MBA Big Sur/M1 related issue:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252061187?login=true&page=1

In short, make sure you are on latest release of the OS and then open Terminal and run these two commands:

1. sudo pmset -a tcpkeepalive 0
2. sudo pmset -a powernap 0

You will get a warning message for one of them related to "Find My Mac" function that will not work properly after this so that is the price you pay..

Btw - to "undo" this you can run the same commands again with the flag "1" instead of "0"..

I went from 20% overnight drain to a more acceptable 1%.

In addition - read the thread as there are other hints and tips there.

I talked with apple support regarding this issue and I have been told to reinstall MacOS. I reinstalled MacOS and the issue has been left. Again I called them and they told me I should give the laptop to one of MacBook reseller to check the computer. I gave my new MacBook to Macfroum in Gothenburg and I received this answer after five days: " The Battery drain somewhat when in sleep mode, but nothing out of the specifications Apple have published. Apple diagnostics report no issue with the battery."

However Macfroum thinks drain battery 1% percentage every hour is normal!!!. I called to apple support again and they recommended to ask Macfroum to reinstalled the OS via Apple Configurator 2. Macfroum restored the firmware, erased and reinstalled the OS via Apple Configurator 2.

I checked again computer and I had the same issue look at the following picture. All applications were closed and does not install any program in the laptop.

I compare with my old MacBook Air and the old one just lost 2 % battery with many open applications.

I had the issue from the first day that I bought this new MacBook Air(M1) and it is around two weeks I am trying to fix it and had contact with Apple to fix the issue.

I have a brand new Macbook air M1, and i have noticed similar behaviour.

I have noticed that a fully charged macbook did loose 100% to 88% in 72 hours.

and in these 72 hours, it was Powered Off (not sleep mode, not power nap etc)

while old macbook pro 2013 model does not have this problem at all.

My M1 macbook air, in addition to having issues with crashing while sleeping (reboots on wake) if connected to an external monitor (which has also been put to sleep), will drain its battery completely while asleep in ~48hrs. It is directly connected via Thunderbolt 3 cable to the monitor (which does not charge the laptop when it is in low powermode/asleep) and to a Seagate Ultra touch external back up/Time machine hard drive, direct via USB-C cable. Suspect that the monitor is somehow contributing to laptop battery draining. Regardless, this clearly should not be happening, ie sleep management for M1s/Big Sur was not ready for prime time with respect to connection to peripheral devices...

Hi MikkelGJrgensen,

It sounds like you are experiencing some issues with the battery life on your Mac. We can help with this.

We'd recommend starting with the steps listed here: Get help with your Mac notebook battery

You can find out more information about maximizing your battery life on your Mac here: Maximizing Battery Life and Lifespan

Cheers!

Through "Feedback Assistant"

here is the walkthrough

https://tidbits.com/2020/06/17/how-to-report-bugs-to-apple-so-they-get-fixed/

and here is the link

https://idmsa.apple.com/IDMSWebAuth/signin?appIdKey=4b98a8e6a3a3ce265b93c90207c442b53c45a1afa9ff1dc9bde8bb6928078d3b&sslEnabled=true&baseURL=https://feedbackassistant.apple.com&rv=4&path=/

I tried some things:

• closing apps before closing lid
• removing unneeded apps
• remove orphaned services (e.g. Plantronics has left some which regularly appeared in system logs

all with no success.

in the end I yesterday reinstalled the system.

battery yesterday evening 100%

today morning 100%

Used it once today for 10 mins - still 100%

checked it now still 100%

this is really an improvement :-)

will monitor it further, but from experience of today I would say, wow the battery can be that good? I didn’t know until now :-)

I got my MacBook Air M1 back in early March (so going on 8 months now) and initially made some posts here regarding the battery drain while sleeping issue as well as other general battery performance observations. It's been a while, so here's an update:

• As mentioned in my previous posts, refraining from leaving anything connected to the USB-C ports (including an idle hub, a powered-off monitor, truly anything) while in sleep solved this issue. With nothing connected to the ports, it drains 2% max overnight while in sleep, and oftentimes just 1% or even 0%.
• I actually don't use it on battery much: On a typical day it spends the whole workday plugged into the power adapter in my home office, and then I'll often wander around with it a bit in the evening, watch some Netflix in bed before going to sleep, etc. My battery health is still 100% and my cycle count is only 34. It has learned that I don't use the battery much and now almost always stops charging at 80% and just perpetually stays there, with the message "Charging on Hold (Rarely Used On Battery)", which is a nice feature.
• Regarding general battery life/performance, I've concluded that it's indeed amazing for some tasks but mediocre for others. For example, just watching Netflix in Safari with the screen at half-brightness, it will pretty reliably drain 6%/hour, which just about lives up to the advertised 18 hours of streaming video. Regarding the advertised 15 hours of "wireless web", the fine print says they achieve that by preloading some "popular" websites and then simply "scrolling" in them. So that may be achievable, but of course just about no one spends hours on the web doing nothing but scrolling. If you're actually surfing the web—i.e. regularly clicking links & loading new pages & opening new tabs & downloading stuff & playing embedded media, etc., etc.—then the battery performance is much more modest, draining ~10–12%/hour on average, working out to 8–10 hours of battery life at best. Zoom drains the battery at an even higher rate, sometimes up to ~15% hour, other times a bit less. As a veteran Mac user, this reminds me of way back in the day when Apple released the PowerPC G4 chip: it had special acceleration for a limited assortment of tasks that it was able to perform at crushing speeds, but was otherwise pretty average for everything else. I believe with time software developers (and Apple itself) increasingly optimized their code to take better advantage of those specific acceleration features; so I can only hope things will play out similarly with the M1: whatever coding tweaks need to be implemented to take maximum advantage of its high energy efficiency capabilities will progressively come with time. Fingers crossed that Monterey will already deliver some improvements.

I'm always grateful for the input of peers, and struggled with the same issue. Some of the obvious things I had to do (all of which help with the battery drain issue):

1. Reduce screen brightness by 50%
2. Set light/dark mode to auto (in General settings)
3. Check the "low power mode" box in battery management

That didn't fix much. Then came more painful things:

1. Switch from Chrome to Safari with all the hassles that come with that such as importing bookmarks, passwords and installing the extensions I like. I'm mostly a PC user so won't be doing that on any other machine ;-). You're probably thinking: wait a minute, the latest Chrome is optimized for Macbook M1. I'm not so sure.
2. Considered reinstalling the Mac OS and decided that would make zero difference (as it did for our friend here!)
3. Suddenly remembered that battery life had not always been this bad. What was different? A USB hub (with HDMI, USB-C and SD card slots) that I constantly kept plugged in. I unplugged it. Guess what happened.

Battery life back to normal. Peripherals should not do this. But they do, and it's an easy fix.

Sleep mode: yes, the Macbook M1 does lose some power when it sleeps. I didn't measure the drain, but it's noticeable. Maybe it's a coincidence, but I notice that when I turn off wi-fi before I close the lid, the drain is much less to non-existent.

That's an issue you will also run into on quality PC laptops such as the Dell XPS.

And that, folks, concludes my admittedly unscientific findings. (No diagrams or charts). Hope it helps. It solved my problem.

Good night and good luck.

After several conversations with apple support they sent the computer to a repair center in Czchek and they returned the laptop after one day.I have been told the issue has been resolved. Not only the issue has not been solved, Now I have two scratches on the body on my new laptop.

Disappointed service from apple. Never buy apple products directly from Apple.

I noticed the excessive battery drainage right away, out of the box. I have had the computer checked at an Apple store and have sent diagnostic data to them multiple times. They are still in the process of analyzing the data. They have yet to acknowledge there is an issue. However, they have not told me (yet) that there is nothing wrong.

I just left the computer in sleep mode for five nights. The battery charge was 100% at the start. It was at 53% when first started from sleep mode. It has notw fallen another 3% while doing nothing but updating an app. Nothing is attached and no programs are running. I have been documenting the usage and battery drain since December 17, 2020. If anything, the problem is getting worse.

Time for Apple to step up here!

What happened between 11am and 4pm? Mac Air M1 sitting on the bed since previous evening, lid closed, nothing plugged in. Suddenly it just decides to drain the battery for no obvious reason. Big Sur 11.2.2. No app updates for several days.

I have similar problem to others. This was my laptop last night, in sleep and top closed. I went to bed at 9:30pm and took it off charge. around 3:30-4pm it started randomly draining. got to work expecting to still have a full laptop but only had 6%.

I have found a solution to the battery drain in my new MacBook Air M1: one has to physically disconnect the Lemorele hub. (One can leave Wi-fi and Bluetooth running on both Mac and the mouse/keyboard.)

Hope Apple patches this. Am convened about long-term wear and tear on the USB-c ports.

Same here. I don't like this at all. If i want the draining to stop I must shut it down (tried everything else from disabling nap notification even wifi is turned off) No new apps installed only factory ones and not a single app was left open. This was my first Apple product and probably last one. So disappointed.