Battery draining in macOS Monterey - M1 MacBook Air

Reporting back: I took the time to test my MBP performance in the weeks prior to and after my Genius Bar appointment recording battery life percentage every hour during my workday, screen brightness, apps in use, duration of use, peripherals connected etc. so took a bit longer to reply this time.

I completely wiped and did a fresh macOS install, zero apps installed prior to appointment to get a baseline.

Good news and bad news after appointment :

• Apple ran a diagnostic and could see something wasn’t right immediately as reported battery life was about 1/4 less than they expected despite battery health and reported hardware condition being optimal
• Had to leave my Mac overnight for fresh firmware reinstall for t2 chip etc and for further testing

The result of all firmware updates was… mixed. I restored my Mac with time machine when I got it back and have observed the following in the past 3 weeks since my appointment:

• I don’t get battery drain overnight anymore but that was fixed during 12.2 for me so the firmware reinstall wasn’t responsible for this
• increase in battery life (approx 3hours greater) during ordinary browsing, YouTube streaming, music app etc however macOS 12.3 installed halfway through testing period so I can’t be certain that this increase in battery life was solely due to firmware update
• no change to poor battery life when using the MBP for work. Still average about 8 hours use before I hit 20% battery time remaining.
• When using my partners identical machine with identical apps, I achieved 50% remaining after 8 hours use. When she used my machine she was left with approx 20% - so battery life isn’t down to individual use patterns

Not sure how to explain this one. I seem to get improved battery life during casual use so that’s a plus. The zero change for productivity is a bit of a bummer.

Considering the amount of people getting similar battery life to me I’m putting this down as normal and expected performance for the MBP 14, and suspect my partners MBP battery performance is the outlier here and a simply a case of her having won the silicon lottery.

I’ll still keep the machine. It’s an impressive little thing and I’m hoping future updates to macOS and to third party apps claws back some of that battery life.

I had to reformat my MacBook Pro M1 2020 to install Big Sur. The battery drain issue is resolved. I'll hold off upgrading to Montery until Apple addresses the issue on the next release.

Delete Dropbox and google drive apps

I have the same issue with my Macbook Air M1 2020. I have searched a lot and no solution was found. I did downgrade to the BigSur and the issue is fixed now.

I am expecting Apple to fix this messy issue. I cannot tolerate such a fast battery draining on my brand new M1 Mac.

I reinstalled Monterey from the setup menu. Battery life seems to be a lot better than it was. I'll give it a few days to see if it is as good as it Big Sur. If not, I'll bite the bullet and reset my Macbook Pro to its out-of-the-box state.

Because of all of this messing around with Monterey battery life, I took my Surface Pro with me on my last all-day trip. If I have to take a power adapter because I'm worred about batter life, I might as well take a ligher device!

Exectly the same experience here on the same model. A reinstall of Monterey has made things a lot better but bettery life is still not what it was. Seriously thinking about going back to Big Sur.

How was this missed and where is the aknowledgement?

I gave up on Google sync on Intel Macs let alone M1. Absolutely killed my machine. Woke up this morning from fully charged at 5pm last night to 35% battery capacity this morning and my MacBook Pro M1 was warm in my bag so clearly it had been working out of hours. According to the stats, Safari and Spotlight were the culprit. Why are these apps still active when the MBP is asleep, it is just not necessary. Can guarantee that I will shutdown tonight at 5pm be back in the office on Monday and it will be flat again. It has lost 65% in 14 hours whilst ASLEEP. I always put the machine to sleep and not just close the lid because I use my machine connected to a screen in the office so have no need to have it open.

I wouldn't hold my breath on a fix. It's not just the battery, Monterey is problematic with many apps; Chrome, Dropbox, Drive, Preview, VPNs, etc, all have problems! Simple solution, return to BigSur. Apple will not fix this.

Apple continue to disregard this issue, with thousands of posts and comments from apple product users going back to 2016-2017 splayed out across the 'discussions' apple site and various other forums. It seems these issues are related to a number of 'wake-up' commands from Apple's "Enhanced" push notifications, bluetooth devices and the 'find my' feature, in that affected devices continuously wake up during sleep and connect to networks/process data etc. This issues seems to come and go with software updates and I can find no consistent theme...

I am running an early 2015 13" MBP on MacOS 12.2 Monterey and experience these same issues. The most insulting suggestion from Apple support staff is that we should turn off wifi and bluetooth before entering sleep mode (to avoid the battery being excessively drained by flawed software). How absurd! Do I need to disconnect my fuel tank to stop my car turning over of its own accord?

One of the greatest features of a mac laptop for years has been the ability to enter sleep mode, remain charged, and be ready for use at a moments notice. Unfortunately, this isn't the case when my poor mac has been forced to stay up all night pinging Apple News for the latest articles. I want my laptop back, not this useless 13" phone that it has apparently become.

Further to this.... how many of my device's battery cycles can be attributed to Apple's software failures? Will Apple be providing me with a replacement as compensation? I suspect not, given they aren't interested in solving the problem in the first instance. Grr!

I had this issue as well. I downgraded to Big Sur on my M1 MBP and the battery life immediately got better, I would suggest the same to anyone experiencing this issue. Gonna wait a very long time until updating to Monterey.

I have the same problem. My M1 MacBook Air battery capacity is currently at 100%;

when it was running on BigSur the battery lasted for days,

but now after downloading Monterey

battery drains from 100% to 75% after about 2 hours of use...

I really hope Apple fixes this issue soon, great battery life was one of the biggest advantages of the new Air for me.

With low power mode selected and all app auto-updates turned off, I'd say I'm getting about half the battery life too. It's a pain but I think I'll need reset my MacBook to it's orignal out-of-the-box state with Big Sur..

Since the upgrade to Monterey on a MacBook Pro 13" 2020 Intel i7 a few days ago , there is a process in the background called WindowServer that overloads the Mac. Even without any apps open, apart from the system relevant ones, this process loads the processors well over 100%. As a result, it gets very hot and the fans run almost continuously. With Big Sur I had the fans only when working with CAD and 3d models - now they run almost non-stop. The battery now lasts just over an hour just browsing and I have to carry the power supply with me everywhere. I find that unacceptable for a 3,000 euro Mac and I hope Apple will quickly eliminate this problem.

My MacBook Pro 14" M1 drained again to nothing over the weekend from a full charge. Its charged 8 hours a day in a dock whilst in the office. Come to fire it up in the office this morning and totally flat.

I don't have any services running that I know of that could cause this issue. My 6 year old Intel MBP which I traded for this new machine didn't have this issue and my 2014 MBAir still holds battery as good as ever.

Come on Apple there is something seriously amiss here. Definitely think Monterey is the culprit and the older machines were running Big Sur.

I don't want to speak too soon but my M1 Macbook Pro seems to be getting better. I've got low power enabled and it is saying I'll get 14:55 hours from 76% battery charge. This a couple of weeks after reinstalling Monterey over the top of the previous upgrade (which was drainig batter like crazy). We will see...