MacBook Air M1 battery drain when sleeping

I have noticed this with my M1 Macbook Air too. After reading this thread I tried last night disconnecting the small USB C hub I use to connect an external webcam amongst other things and hey presto no battery drain. Left in sleep all last night and this morning 100% battery remaining whereas previously in the same period the battery would have been more than 50% depleted.

Annoying that I will have to remove and reinsert the hub to stop this from happening and certainly shouldnt need to do this but for now at least I can come back after a couple of days away and find my laptop with a still charged battery !

Scott Paterson2 wrote:

I have noticed this with my M1 Macbook Air too. After reading this thread I tried last night disconnecting the small USB C hub I use to connect an external webcam amongst other things and hey presto no battery drain. Left in sleep all last night and this morning 100% battery remaining whereas previously in the same period the battery would have been more than 50% depleted.

Annoying that I will have to remove and reinsert the hub to stop this from happening and certainly shouldnt need to do this but for now at least I can come back after a couple of days away and find my laptop with a still charged battery !

Is the hub powered through the USB-C connection with the MacBook (so it doesn’t have a separate power source)?

Then why wouldn’t you expect the hub to drain your MacBook’s battery?

I was experiencing the same thing with my MacBook Air M1. I would put it asleep with the battery at 100% and 2-3 days later the battery was drained to 0%. Would not even turn on without plugging it into power, then getting the red battery symbol on screen.

I checked Activity Monitor and found that Spotify and WhatsApp were using the most battery power.

I charged the battery back up to 100%, quit Spotify and WhatsApp and put it to sleep. 24 hours later my battery was at 99%. So, it would seem these applications are still active when I think my Air is "asleep". From now on, I will not leave these running. I also turned ON all the options under Settings/Battery/Battery to help further manage my power usage when on batter.

(By the way, it seems that the latest version of macOS no longer specifically has "Power Nap" even though it shows up when you search in Settings.)

Hope that helps someone.

Scott Paterson2:

So long as an attached USB device (webcam, drive, hub, whatever) continues to draw power from the MacBook, whether the MacBook is awake or asleep, the MacBooks battery is going to be drained (unless the MacBook is, itself, being powered by an external source).

Now, perhaps on previous devices, the external USB device was “put to sleep”, or put in some other low power mode, when the host device was “put to sleep”, or put in some other low power mode.

However, unless the external device understands such protocols, as dictated by the new USB 4 standard (which is not completely backward compatible with the older USB standards), it is quite reasonable to expect that the external device may continue to draw its full power.

Unfortunately, I have not researched the power management protocols used in the new USB 4 standard in contrast to the old standards, in order to know where the differences may be leading to such behaviors.

However, I do know that the new USB 4 standard did “throw out” some of the “cruft” of the older standards: it is, definitely, not completely backward compatible with those older standards; it is trying to make a cleaner standard, in preparation for the future.

This power issue is not the only issue that appears to stem from that less than complete backward compatibility.

No its not a powered USB C hub. The power to my Macbook is from a USB C monitor connection.

I have since tested with just the web cam connected by a USB C to USB A adapter and it still drains battery. Then I tested with the USB C hub connected but nothing connected to it and still battery drains. It seems the only way to prevent battery drain is to physically remove connectors when putting the device to sleep which really shouldnt be required, I dont have to do that on any other device ( and I use Windows/Linux as well ). This is definitely a flaw though whether it is hardware with M1 MacBooks or MacOS I cant say.

My MBA is from 5/21. Now it has 56 cycles (many of them because of the self draining) and Battery Health is 91,7% (coconut battery).

i also have some strange audio input/output device issues.

i will contact apple support, because this bad battery experience and SOH after 56 cycles is very bad.

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=/

That’s interesting and makes sense. Thanks for the reply.

Welcome, EJamiesonRussell, to Apple Support Communities!

I expect “Power Nap” to be hardware dependent; perhaps limited to Intel CPUs.

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 :-)