Updated MacBook Pro to macOS Sonoma, now battery drains quickly

Another step forward in troubleshooting: last night I created a new user account on my computer, restarted it, and left it signed into that account overnight, with wi-fi on and disconnected from power. No battery drain!

The account has all the same apps, including MS Office and Chrome (exception: it appears 1Password is available only to the original user account). The key difference is that I did not sign into an Apple ID within that account, so no iCloud. So, this strongly (albeit not definitively) suggests that the wi-fi usage overnight that's draining the battery is iCloud-related.

This opens up a handful of avenues to proceed. I can deactivate iCloud in the original user account and see if the problem goes away, or I can activate iCloud in the new account and see if the problem reappears. If I can isolate to that then I can try to figure out if it's one particular iCloud feature, or iCloud in general.

kearney273 wrote:

I did a full disk wipe, and reinstalled Sonoma from a USB boot drive and my battery is still markedly worse then Ventura

Did you test the clean install before installing any third party apps or restoring from a backup, or connecting with your AppleID/iCloud? If not, then you most likely just brought the problem back.

iCloud has definitely been implicated as one culprit for battery drain for some people, but any third party app could be at issue as well. Even the default Sonoma wallpaper has been implicated in battery drain so I would suggest turning off the dynamic wallpaper option.

FYI, you can create a new APFS volume and install macOS into that new APFS volume so you can test the system. This will act very much like a clean install for most cases although it won't help if the file system is at fault, or any system related items hidden elsewhere on the boot drive (for the latter, usually only Apple Silicon Macs).

I seem to have cured the problem on my 2020 MacBook Pro. I have done several things. First, turned off all background tasks (System settings - General - Login Items). I have been turning them on again one by one as apps let me know that they need it, but still more than half are off. That made a great improvement, but I still had excessive drain occasionally. Then I reset the PRAM, and since then I have had no trouble whatsoever.

I have a MacBook Pro from 2020. When I updated to Sonoma my battery started to drain like crazy. If I left the computer on sleeping mode for 4 hours and it shut off because there was no more battery.

I went to Apple and asked them to downgrade my laptop to go back to the latest version of Ventura. Since then, my battery is perfectly fine a I can leave my computer on sleeping mode overnight and it's barely drained.

100% Proof that Sonoma has a serious battery problem. Don't upgrade until they fix it in my opinion.

People asking if anyone has the same problem that he has. I also have the same problem. What should we do, wait and do nothing? You keep enjoying Sonoma features!!!

Anyway, I have the same problem despite this guy (ku4fx) doesn't have and enjoying his Sonoma. I checked the activity monitor and iPhone 15 Simulator was using lots of CPU percent. I closed it and then seem to go back to normal as per heat. But battery drain I haven't checked it yet. For my case probably Xcode is causing the problem. We will see.

I have successfully resolved my issue by downgrading to macOS Venture. If you're looking to perform a similar downgrade, let me guide you through the process. If you already have a backup, you can skip the backup creation step. However, if you don't have a backup, you can use a USB pendrive or an external hard drive to create a backup using Time Machine in your system settings. Before you proceed, ensure that you format the pendrive or hard drive.

Here are the steps to downgrade to macOS Venture:

1. Download macOS Venture: Get the macOS Venture installation file from a reliable source.

2. Create a Bootable Drive: You'll need another pendrive to create a bootable drive for the previous macOS. You can find step-by-step instructions on how to do this on YouTube or other online resources.

3. Prepare Your Mac: Shut down your Mac and hold the power button for a few seconds until you see the boot options.

4. Access Disk Utility: In the boot options, choose "Disk Utility" and erase your Mac's hard drive entirely.

5. Install macOS Venture: After erasing the hard drive, hold down the power button again. You'll see various options, including the option to install macOS Venture. Insert the bootable pendrive you created earlier and select this option. Follow the on-screen instructions to install the previous macOS.

6. Restore Your Data: Once the installation is complete, your Mac will be in a fresh state. Open the "Migration Assistant" and insert the pendrive containing your backup. Follow the prompts to restore your settings and files. This will bring your Mac back to its previous state.

I hope this guide proves helpful to someone experiencing a similar issue.

Happened to me after 7-10 days after upgrade to Sonoma. Pretty random one as Activity Monitor shows nothing from drain perspective. And as mentioned by other drain battery in ±2 hours from 100% to 0% on MacBook Pro M1. Restart of the Mac helped and now it's as before :)

Well, I am having an older than yours Intel i7 2018 MBP, after 7 hours on battery it still has 25% power. Work as usual. If the battery state is good, it won't drain that fast. Or, the internal power management is gone haywire. Also, as a consumable product, a battery can go bad all of a sudden. You can also go back to Ventura and check how it goes, for comparison.

It seems you may have missed my previous messages where I mentioned that I reverted to macOS Ventura, and the issue was resolved. Therefore, the problem seems to be with Mac os sonoma. Additionally, I have already submitted a complaint letter to Apple. If you're not experiencing this issue or don't have any solutions to offer, I kindly request that you refrain from sharing irrelevant information here.

Furthermore, as you mentioned earlier, your battery usage is approximately 6 to 7 hours, which, for M1 or M2 users like us, is subpar. on ventura, we were accustomed to enjoying an average battery life of at least 12 hours.

Ouch ... that must be quite painful, what MacBook are you on? I'm on M2, I definitely don't have battery drain issues ... but I'm just interested to know what do you have on your device for it to put such a strain on battery life? Are you sure there aren't any HUGE background tasks that wreck havoc? I'm on the opinion that people with Intel based MacBooks should not update to Sonoma (Sorry) unless you really need the development features that came with Sonoma (you need Sonoma to install GPTK), almost all individuals I met with an intel based MacBook faced madornal issues when updating to Sonoma.

Fire up "Activity Monitor" (you can spotlight it or look for it in ~/Applications/Utilities) and take a look at what's requiring that amount of power, then gently but swiftly swiftly terminate all processes (make sure they aren't system utilities, you could consider downgrading if that's the case).

As a safety precaution I always deactivate any update helper of any software whatsoever and use almost exclusively open source software, as their limited resources push them to include "only what's strictly necessary" for the project to work well so they don't build huge additional programs that manage your installation and that end up being huge background battery suckers in the background. Or I build the programs myself.

Hope this helps, Cheers

UPDATE: Last night, before putting my 2019 Intel Core i9 MacBook Pro running Sonoma to sleep for the night with a 100% battery charge, I unplugged the power adapter, quit all my running apps, turned off just Bluetooth (left WiFi on). As a final step, I ran the "pmset -g | grep -w sleep" command, just to confirm that no processes would impede normal sleep. Nothing came back. I closed the lid and went to bed.

I opened the lid this morning, expecting to find a dead laptop & depleted battery, which has been the case since updating to Sonoma.

My MacBook came back on, with a battery charge at 97%. FIRST TIME this has happened since the switch to Sonoma.

I typically disable both "power nap" & "wake for network access" anyway, so this conforms to your results.

I never had to switch Bluetooth off with Ventura.

I will repeat tonight, but I'm optimistic that this circumvents the battery drain issue for me, until Apple provides a fix for this. Thanks again!

Hi everyone!

After updating my MacBook Pro 16 Touch Bar to Sonoma I had this issue too, during sleep the laptop was overheating and in the morning the battery was drained.

During the past 4 months I have tried every suggestion found on the internet regarding the battery drainage. Several time each method. Nothing worked for me.

Then I decided to reset my Mac and clean install Sonoma. That worked, the battery is fine again, not draining anymore during sleep and I can work 4-6 hours unplugged, depending on the complexity of the project.

I hope this will help some of you having the same issue.

Best!

Glad you brought this up because it's something I mentioned in a previous post. Signing into Chrome is the only thing I've noticed to be related to this problem. It may not happen right away, though and it's frustrating. Sometimes, if I'm not signed in, I can work for hours or stream video for a long time. And here's the weird part: sometimes, even when I'm signed in, things are normal for a long time (like today, for example). But, suddenly, something triggers this odd behavior: the laptop starts heating up badly and losing power at a fast pace. The only thing to prevent it from shutting down is to quit Chrome. Why the incompatibility? Is it Apple? Is it Google? Is it Apple trying to force us to use Safari (which, by the way, I tried and failed: when streaming video, the laptop would go to sleep as per normal energy preferences, which does not happen with other browsers (the idea is that you can watch video uninterruptedly, no?). Anyway, going back to Ventura might be the temporary solution. One can use Recovery to install previous OS versions without having to wipe out the entire disk.

Update 14.2.1 seems to fix the problem

same here. i'm chatting with support to see if they have any typa boot-time solutions. but i'm pretty sure this is probably something apple will need to release an update fix for. it's probably buried deep in the system code somewhere.

#Update:

they mentioned that after an update, there's a 4-day window where processes will drain batter faster. then, it should return to normal. but if it's been longer than that, it doesn't apply to u.