MacBook Air M1 battery drain when sleeping

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.

Hi Björn,

Do not waste your time with Macforum Gothenburg. They told me after five days: "The Battery drains somewhat when in sleep mode, but nothing out of the specifications Apple has published. Apple diagnostics report no issue with the battery."

Contact apple support and ask them to send your laptop to Apple service center. It seems there is an Apple service center in Netherland.

Also do not waste your time with reinstalling macOS. I spend two weeks and tried different ways that Apple support told me but I just waste my time.

If you have a return time then just refund it and take the new one.

I have a 2017 MacBook Pro and I have had the same issue. It is Big Sur, I never had this problem on Catalina or previous software versions. With the update to 11.02 on 2/2/2021 it completely resolved the issue, in 12 hours of standby it drained 3% and after 3 hours of use browsing the web, email, Spotify, and YouTube it drained 34%, not bad and that’s better battery life than it got on Catalina, would be approximately 11 hours of use and 16 days of standby. By comparison on 11.01 it was lasting at most 4 hours under similar use and losing around 20% a day in standby. I ordered the new M1 MBA because I thought there was something wrong with my MBP but now I’m thinking of canceling that order. Can anyone confirm if 11.02 fixed your issues?

Precisely the issue I had and the solution to the annoying battery drain problem. Disconnecting USB-C backup drive dramatically improves the overnight battery drain. OK to leave thunderbolt 3 external monitor plugged in.

Having now been using this machine for about 3 months, overall I can't really complain about the battery.

For me, the draining during sleep issue was fully resolved by never leaving anything at all connected to the USB ports during sleep. Not sure if one the recent macOS updates fixed this issue; haven't tried sleeping with something connected recently.

As for the overall battery performance, I'd say it's 'decent' compared to Apple's soaring claims of 15–18 hours, and actually quite stellar by any other standard. The rumours that the battery performance improves after some time (battery needs to go through a certain number of cycles to reach 'optimal' performance or something) seem to have been true in my case. When I'm not doing anything too intensive, I'd say my battery drains on average ~8% (±2%) per hour, which works out to an average of 12.5 hours of autonomy—can't really complain about that. When I'm doing Zoom, it's closer to 10–12% per hour, which works out to 8–10 hours of autonomy. I'll caution again though that if you crank the screen brightness up to three quarters or higher, it does seem to cause the battery to drain noticeably faster.

Finally, I like how it's learned on its own that I keep it plugged into the AC adapter most of the time and has consequently stopped charging the battery past 80% (to improve its lifespan) unless I tell it to.

Hi, update from today - Las night I disconnected my M1 MacBook Air from the hub and work for a while just on the notebook itself and than put it on sleep. I have opened it now after almost 22 hours and the battery went from 91% to 88% even with web browser "running"... :)

So it really seems that anything connected to the USB-C port may cause the battery drain problem...

Mine drains fast with my usb rollerball back lit mouse. I have it plugged in to an Anker external SSD... it is a little hub with memory. I eject it from my desk top, and my mouse passes through.

I spend a lot of time in bed, and my Air sits idle, screensaver short time. I might use it for maybe 30 minutes off and on over 2 hrs or so..

battery lasts longer with nothing plugged in.

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.

A new update has been released today Big Sur 11.2.2.

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/25/apple-releases-macos-big-sur-11-2-2/

It might also fix drain problems as it is directly related with affects of third-party, non-compliant powered USB-C hubs and docks.

I am currently upgrading and I'll let you know.

I have a brand new MacBook Air M1 (had it for 5 days now), upgraded to macOS 11.2.2, and just noticed this same issue—battery drained by ~15% overnight while it was sleeping.

Before this, I noticed it periodically seems to 'forget' that it's plugged into the power adapter. When I'm working at my desk, I have the power adapter plugged in via the Apple VGA multiport adapter along with an external monitor. It's happened several times now over the few days I've had it that at some point I happen to notice it 'thinks' it's running on the battery even though it's still plugged in. I haven't observed exactly when the change occurs (maybe following sleep or screen lock?), but I've noticed it a few times now, and I can get it to re-engage the power adapter by either unplugging the power from the multiport adapter and plugging it back in, or unplugging the multiport adapter from the computer and plugging it back in.

But the last time I noticed this yesterday, I thought to myself maybe it's a deliberate battery health feature that prevents the battery from staying at 100% for too long. So I decided to roll with it and leave it plugged in but running on battery, expecting the power adapter to eventually kick in again, maybe when the battery went down below 80% or so. Well, it's now the next day and the battery is down to 42% and the power adapter still hasn't kicked back in on its own despite still being plugged in. And this 'forgetting' issue doesn't appear to be a wholesale problem with the VGA multiport adapter because the external monitor is still being recognized and working fine.

Not only that, but as many on this thread have reported, the battery drained ~15% overnight while the computer was sleeping, still with the power adapter and external monitor connected via the VGA multiport adapter (but nothing else, i.e. no external hard drive, etc.). That is far worse battery performance during sleep than my late-2013 MacBook Pro that this new MacBook Air M1 is replacing.

I've read through this entire thread, throughout which various 'workarounds' are suggested to limit the battery drain, but clearly the onus shouldn't be on the user to figure out convoluted 'tricks' to prevent terrible battery life on a brand new laptop that's supposed to have amazing battery life. The most collectively convincing evidence I've seen on this thread is that there appears to be an issue with leaving peripherals connected while the computer is sleeping, so I will test again tonight with the multiport adapter disconnected to see if that proves to be the culprit for me as well.

But either way, this overall sounds to me like something Apple is going to have to sort out with a software fix, which I hope they do sooner than later; not just for my sake, but because otherwise word will increasingly spread that Apple's claims of 'unprecedented' battery life on these new MacBooks is complete baloney.

Thank you so much for your sharing, your findings goes along with the explanation I proposed in my comment above, whenever anything is connected to USBC, battery drains drastically while sleep, at an average of 2% per hour, if nothing connected, there is either no drain or less drain (about 2% over night)

And you said, this might be expected from an new device (M1), and a new software (Bigsur), Nevertheless, this isn't accepted, and totally disappointing.

I really wish that it isn't a hardware problem, and I hope that Apple software developers fix it ASAP

I strongly recommend you all to report this issue to Apple (I did), to draw their attention to the size of the problem

Do you or anyone else have apple watch? I have set mine so it's able to unlock my mac.

I noticed that suddenly while my mac has the lid closed my apple watch says it unlocks the macbook, and it does that often, so I think 1 problem to the battery drain we are having is that the macbooks turns the screen on even though its closed..

I was having the same problem and ran a few tests, also went to the Apple store to get some advice. Here's what I've come up with:

-It's best to close all CPU-consuming programs before putting the laptop to sleep.

-If you transferred all of your files from an older MacBook or Apple computer to the M1, it's best to manually transfer your data to the laptop, due to the difference in the operating systems. This may or may not (according to Apple) affect the M1's operating system if you have programs that were transfered from the older version of your Apple product onto the new one.

Until now, I haven't had to manually transfer my data yet. Once I closed all my CPU-consuming programs, and put the laptop to sleep, it seems to be draining a lot less battery than previously anticipated.

Hope this helps.

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.

Hi, just bought a MacBook 4 days ago and i notice a almost 10% drop on the first night, with mail and safari open, which should be about right because probably it was indexing.

One thing that I always turn off in every MacBook I owned is the photolibraryd service. It uses a lot of battery and cpu and just by that the battery drain in the next night was just 1% with lid closed.

Hope that resolves your issue