Battery issues with MacBook Pro

However I notice that repeatedly when my battery gets around or below 20%, my MacBook randomly and abruptly shuts down.

That concerns me. Normally the shutdown should happen below about 5 percent. In other Apple devices, I found that shutdowns at higher charge percentages or short runtimes after a full charge turned out to be due to a failed or failing battery.

Batteries are remarkably reliable devices but, as with any manufactured item, not all issues can be detected by final acceptance testing before the device leaves the factory.

I think your best action is to have Apple evaluate it immediately while you are under warranty.

The whole thing about keeping it between 20 to 80% may be counterproductive.

Really the best thing to do to keep a battery from wearing is to keep it plugged into power where practical and then use it on battery power when required. Accumulating cycles is how batteries wear.

Also, the capacity is really just an estimate and can fluctuate. The estimated capacity is used to determine what’s anywhere from 0 to 100%. Most lithium ion battery systems choose a point within the practical min and max charge so as to keep the battery within a range where it should last longer.

If you’re seeing it go at 20%, that’s not normal functioning and it might be worth getting it evaluated. There’s a chance that there’s some sort of defect and that can be fixed under warranty.

It does sound like a battery failure, but you can try charging the battery to 100% and leave it there overnight. The next day use the laptop and let the battery drain until the laptop powers off. Connect the charger and let the battery charge to 100% again...once more leaving the charger connected for at least several hours. While the Apple batteries should not need this "calibration" procedure, it won't hurt anything since you already seem to have an issue with the battery.

You can try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected. The best time to run the Apple Diagnostic to check the battery health is when the battery is getting low on charge. Option-Click the battery icon on the menu bar to see the battery's health as well to see if it says "Service Recommended" (best to do this when the charge is low). Unfortunately the Apple Diagnostic and the battery condition status within macOS won't detect most battery failures. I did develop a fairly reliable technique for analyzing the health of the batteries on Intel Macs, but Apple changed things with the Apple Silicon Macs so I haven't found a way to do something similar yet.

Also, since an update to macOS 10.15.x+, macOS now has a battery health management feature so you no longer need to worry about leaving the laptop connected to the charger all the time. The battery health management feature will exercise the battery for you to try to keep the battery at optimal health (assuming you have not disabled the battery health management feature).

About battery health management in Mac laptops - Apple Support

Consider downloading and running this little "discovery" utility, Etrecheck. It changes NOTHING. Etrecheck was developed by senior contributor here, and uses system calls to collect often-needed information.

it contains little tests for speeds of devices, CPU utilization, memory usage, energy usage and a digest of recent problems, in one easy to use package. it does not even need to be Installed. Because less can be learned when your Mac is running great, best time to run is when your problems are actually occurring, if possible.

if you follow the directions faithfully, its report (pre-laundered of all personally-identifiable information) can be "Shared" to the system ClipBoard, then Pasted into an ‘Additional Text’ window in a reply on the forums.

How to use Etrecheck pro for free

http://etrecheck.com

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<<. I have installed none of these things. >>

Excellent!

The next most notorious resource hog that is not blatant malware is Google Chrome.

if you are running Chrome, switching to ANY other well-know browser such as FireFox or Safari, will consume far fewer resources, resulting in longer battery life.

¿are you running Chrome?

I have a somewhat different guess:

Your particular Mac is not very good at estimating your battery's fullness at the low end, (possibly due to a battery imperfection there). If the level then unexpectedly fluctuates, it shuts down.

I liken it to an old car that runs out of gas at the 1/4-full mark. In that case, the actual fault is in the gauge, not the fuel source.

if you know its going to do that, you top it off before it gets that low.

By far the easiest way to cause poor performance, instability, overheating and crashing is to install ANY third-party speeder-uppers, Cleaners, Optimizers, or Virus scanners. or a VPN that you installed yourself. The main reason is that they are relentless in scanning your files, non-stop, looking for virus-like patterns in Everything. When completed, they do it all again.

Even if you migrated from a working older Intel Mac to the new Apple Silicon Mac, you may still experience issues. While most Intel apps will work fine with Rosetta, there are probably some apps which may not function properly or quite as well (aka efficiently) due to the different architectures.

Maybe reduce screen brightness a bit. That can greatly affect the amount of energy consumed by the laptop.

Also, with the new battery charging optimizations, the laptop may have the battery charging paused at 80% at times even when the power adapter has been connected all day. The older 2015 laptop does not have this battery charging behavior. This is something that can easily be overlooked and could account for a 20% shorter runtime right off the bat.

If battery charging is paused or on hold on your Mac - Apple Support

Plus Apple's advertised numbers are under laboratory testing conditions meant to maximize those numbers.

Even my M1 & M2 laptops seem to vary how long I have on battery even though I usually keep the same items open all the time. Some days I get an extremely long run time, other times I seem to get much shorter run times. I think screen brightness and certain web pages are the main cause of this difference for me, but I never really investigated. I do know screen brightness does have a good impact.

Please post an EtreCheck report so as suggested by @Grant so we can see if it may contain any clues.

I have current (2023) versions of both the MacBook Pro 14 inch and the MacBook Pro 16 inch. The battery life on the MacBook Pro 14 inch is absolutely horrendous. It drains in about six hours. And I’m not using any video apps or any particularly intensive applications. I would not purchase this unit again. The MacBook air, which I also have is vastly better in terms of battery life, which is a key feature for me.

I have a MacBook Pro 14 inch And it lasted 5 to 6 or 7 hours of Use, I have been testing to watch YouTube and Netflix but it still can hold a charge, I did some work but it Can somehow still hold a charge. But I am not sure why apple lied about the 14 inch MacBook Pro lasting 12 hours of web browsing, and 15 hours of video playback, And I did iMovie editing but the M2 pro chip was so fast! Good for hard working tasks, It is good for editing And It is good For exporting. The display of the MacBook is Great for Working, Watching Content, And Good for video editing, And it has a Promotion Display And also I use This MacBook Pro 14 inch for work, editing, and entertainment purposes! But It can still hold a charge When Your using it. Btw The apple M2 Pro chip is Still going And still good for hard working tasks!

I have a 3 week old 2024 14" MACBOOK PRO M3. My battery is lasting 6hrs max with no videos just a minor amount of web browsing and a few emails. Was expecting up to 18hrs very disappointing. Is this a faulty battery ?

Anything I'm missing here. My partners 2015 15" macbook pro with much more use lasts 10-12 hrs after 9years of daily use. Love the laptop very dissillusioned with the battery performance!

Brotherperception wrote:

My battery is lasting 6hrs max with no videos just a minor amount of web browsing and a few emails.

Web browsing can be very energy consuming regardless of the browser being used. It all depends on specific web pages since some web pages are performing lots of background tasks. Any browser extensions could also be causing a problem. Sometimes it can just be a mix of having two or more web pages loaded simultaneously.....I won't have a problem with any of them individually, but when I load them all into different tabs/windows at the same time they can sometimes cause a browser performance issue....sometimes with just one tab/page, other times it may affect the whole window or the whole browser.

Cloud file syncing services can cause a lot of background activity which can cause the battery to drain more quickly as well.

Do you have external devices connected? If they get their power from the laptop, then that will drain the battery more quickly as well.