MacBook Air M1 battery drain when sleeping

(1/2) As a followup to my previous post, I decided to carry out some pseudo-controlled tests over the course of several nights to see if I could gain some insight into what’s causing the battery drain during sleep, primarily aimed at testing whether the ‘connected peripherals’ theory others have reported holds up. Here are my results:

Night 1 - Power adapter + external monitor connected via Apple VGA multiport adapter, but MacBook had ‘forgotten’* that power adapter was connected: battery drained 15% overnight while in sleep (from 86% to 71%).

Night 2 - Nothing connected to either USB-C port: battery drained 1% overnight while in sleep (from 39% to 38%), which seems reasonable.

Night 3 - ***Upgraded to Big Sur 11.2.3***; external monitor connected via Apple VGA multiport adapter (but not power adapter): battery drained 6% overnight while in sleep (from 100% to 94%). Interestingly, the battery did not drain steadily throughout the night, but remained fully charged from 10 PM until ~3 AM and then drained 6% by 7 AM when I woke it up. Evidently Big Sur 11.2.3 has not fixed the issue.

Night 4 - Only the Apple VGA multiport adapter connected (not the external monitor or power adapter): battery drained 9% overnight while in sleep (from 100% to 91%). This time the battery stayed fully charged from 10 PM till ~midnight and then lost the 9% between then and ~8 AM when I woke it up.

Night 5 - Nothing connected to either USB-C port: 0% battery drainage overnight.

Conclusion: Not exactly a scientific-grade sample size, but given that both nights that I left nothing at all connected to the USB-C ports resulted in virtually no battery drainage—whereas there was significant drainage the 3 other nights—it seems reasonable to conclude that there’s indeed an issue with leaving peripherals connected while the computer is sleeping. Even just the Apple VGA multiport adapter on its own, with nothing further connected to it, was associated with significant drainage during sleep.

It seems likely that this isn’t the only thing that causes drainage during sleep—I’ve read some other accounts (including in this thread) indicating that various background processes & software left ‘open’ during sleep could contribute as well. For the record, all of these nights I left a handful of native Apple apps (e.g. Mail, Messages, Safari with a whole bunch of tabs open, etc.) open upon putting the machine to sleep, though I deliberately avoided leaving any third-party apps like MS Office or Chrome open.

It might also be relevant to mention that I didn’t use the Migration Assistant to set up this new MacBook; I simply copied the docs I needed from my home folder on my old MacBook, exported/imported my archived emails, set up my active email & other online accounts from scratch, reinstalled the additional software I need from scratch, etc. So there’s zero superfluous ‘clutter’ accumulated over the years that could have carried over from my old MacBook’s System & Library folders, etc.

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 !

I have found that my new MacBook Pro 13" M1 only drains the battery when I have my Satechi dock (ST-TCMM8PAM) connected during sleep.

If I let the M1 sleep for 10 hours with the Satechi dock connected it will drop in battery like seen in the other screenshots above. Nothing is connected to the dock.

If I disconnect the dock and leave the M1 sleep for 10 hours with nothing else connected it will stay at 100%.

So my M1 holds battery very well without anything connected but not with the dock connected.

I have a 2019 MacBook Pro 15" (Intel) with the same dock connected and there is no abnormal battery drain overnight when it's connected so the problem seems only to be related to the M1.

Update: I have found that leaving my MacBook Pro 13" M1 overnight with just a regular ethernet to USB-C adapter attached (no ethernet cable plugged in just the empty adapter) will drain the battery about 1% per hour.

If I disconnect the adapter and leave the M1 sleep overnight with nothing connected to the USB-C ports then battery will stay at 100%.

So if you experience battery drainage check if anything is connected to your M1 and try letting it sleep without anything connected to see if that helps.

I don't see this on a MacBook Pro 15" Intel so clearly this is a problem with the M1 which Apple need to fix.

I have a MacBook Air M1 as well. I, too, had the same issue with significant battery drain while the laptop was in sleep mode. I RESOLVED THE PROBLEM by disconnecting my Apple USB-C to USB adapter, which I had left connected to the USB-C port of the MacBook Air M1 while the MacBook was asleep. After which, I charged my laptop to 100%, put the MacBook Air to sleep at 10:30PM, the at 6PM the next day when I open the laptop and awoke it, the MacBook Air was still at 100%. Clearly, the sleeping MacBook was "looking" for something connected to the Apple USB-C to USB adapter, continuously using energy.

My suggestion is to have nothing connected to the MacBook Air M1 while it is asleep (other than a charging cable, of course). I hope this helps.

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.

My last update was posted over a month ago. In my case I continue to find that simply refraining from leaving any peripherals connected to the laptop while it's sleeping—including simply an adapter with nothing further connected to it—prevents the significant overnight battery drains that I was initially seeing. It'll usually drain 0–1% overnight when there's nothing connected to it; occasionally 2% max.

Other than that, I continue not to be 'blown away' by the overall battery performance of the laptop, especially in relation to Apple's soaring claims. To be sure, it's not bad, but on the whole I've seen no evidence that it would be possible to get anywhere close to 18 hours as Apple claims. More than anything, it seems to be inconsistent: there have been times when I've watched Netflix for a couple of hours and the battery only drained 15–20%, which seems pretty good; but other times it drains significantly faster than that when all I'm doing is web-browsing, emailing and messaging. Keeping the display brightness modest seems to make a difference. I suspect running Intel apps may also play a role. Overall I continue to believe one of the main issues here is that Apple still has work to do via software updates on this brand new generation of hardware (M1) and software (Big Sur) to optimize battery consumption under a range of specific usage situations.

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.

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.

I have this problem too, I might have figured out something;

My macOS is the latest, battery condition is normal, diagnostic showed no issues, I don’t have chrome, and I don’t leave any app running, I also optimized all battery and DND settings, closed most notifications, and even sometimes shut down WiFi and Bluetooth, and still it drains!

I contacted Apple support multiple times but without any results, they told me to restart, reinstall OS, but none of these helped.

I found that “windowserver” and “powered” prevent my Mac from sleeping, those weren’t present in intel version as fas as I know, and Apple support couldn’t help me with either

What I’ve noticed after many trails is that, whenever anything is connected to the USB-C ports (like flash drive, or external monitor), that drains battery (although when I told that to Apple advisor, he denied that, and told me that it shouldn’t)

This is what I got so far, and I thought of sharing it with you, maybe it would help someone.

I just hope, if these maybe the cause of the issue, (either those apps which prevent sleep, or battery drain because of anything is connected to the USB-C ports) that Apple developers can solve ASAP in an update.

(2/2) Finally, I’ll also add that so far I haven’t been particularly blown away with the battery performance during actual usage either (relative to Apple’s claims of unprecedented battery life). It seems to drain at least 10% per hour even when I’m really not doing anything particularly intensive. I’ve now read a lot of discussion threads—on apple.com and beyond—on this battery drain while sleeping issue as well as the battery generally not performing up to expectations on the MacBook Air M1. One suggested solution that I haven’t tried yet is to let it completely drain (i.e. until the computer shuts down), then charge it all the way back up to 100%, and see from there. So I guess I’ll try that. I’ve also come across a few people claiming that the issues simply went away on their own after some time (i.e. a few days to a few weeks)—possibly something to do with the battery needing a certain number of cycles to fully ‘calibrate’ (and might amount to the equivalent of draining it completely and charging it all the way back up). Others still have reported that the issues have come and gone, whereby things were going well for a few days and they thought all was resolved, only for the issues to randomly come back.

So I’m going to stay calm for now, try draining the battery completely, and then just see how things go over the next few weeks. Based on my own tests and everything I’ve read, I suspect this isn’t a hardware issue (e.g. the logic board or the batteries themselves being faulty), because if that were the case I don’t think there would be all this inconsistency, such as people reporting that their battery performance was amazing for a few days, then not so good, then good again, etc. I’ve also come across a couple of people who reported that they managed to get their machines fully replaced because of this, only to have the replacement machine do the same thing.

Rather, if anything this sounds to me like Apple has some work left to do via software tweaks to optimize energy consumption on these machines. While I don’t doubt that Apple’s own tests under perfect, controlled conditions produced the battery life they claim, now that these new machines are in the hands of the masses and people are using them in endless slightly different ways, inevitably this is revealing a number energy-efficiency weak points that Apple now has to get to work on ironing out. And with these being the first Apple Silicon Macs on the market and Big Sur being the most major macOS revamp in 20 years, it’s probably not terribly surprising that there seem to be more issues than usual for a ‘new’ product.

*The MacBook still periodically forgets that the power adapter is connected; and also seems to periodically forget that the external monitor is connected. This seems to occur upon waking the computer from sleep either after it idled for so long while connected to the power adapter that it automatically went to sleep (currently set to 30 minutes), or after I manually put it to sleep. But it doesn’t happen consistently (i.e. sometimes it still recognizes the power and/or monitor upon waking up), nor does it necessarily forget both at once (i.e. it often forgets one but still recognizes the other). Overall quite odd, and another thing Apple will hopefully be able to fix with a software update.

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 :-)

Guys I found some kind of solution for the drain.

FIrst cancel all scheduled power events via terminal

sudo pmset schedule cancelall

And then change hibernation mode from 3 to 25 via terminal

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25

Also disable screen time because this service constantly wakes up your macbook.

Instant wake won't be available, but since the ssd is fast anyway few more seconds when opening the lid will be nothing compared to losing so much battery while the lid was closed.

If you want to revert back, simply choose hibernatemode 3

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

I had the same issue and had also reported here.

Here is a good news.... that worked for me.

Remove the HDMI cable going to the external monitor. I believe Apple support guys are watching this thread and can report to fix it

Cheers, Ravi