CakeyJoe wrote:
However, my battery has only had 650 cycles and still has a max capacity of a little under 4300 mAh. I have a 2019 Macbook Pro that I've been using since I bought it 5 years ago so I thought it was an old battery issue, but these numbers seem to suggest otherwise.
There is more to determining battery health. You do have 650 charge cycles & the battery is 5 years old......this is exactly when I would be suspecting a hardware issue with the battery. While supporting my organization's thousands of Apple laptops, I have developed a method of analyzing the battery health which helps me identify questionable batteries, but I don't have the time right now to write up those instructions. Basically the battery's Full Charge Capacity (FCC) fluctuates even with a new good healthy battery, but these FCC fluctuations become larger as the battery wears & ages. When the system is under heavy load draining the battery quickly is when the FCC fluctuations also become more severe where you may see an instantaneous drop of battery charge....like from 60% to 50% in a second, or when the battery charge drops below 20% and the laptop suddenly powers off.
Just recently I updated to Sonoma and have noticed that the battery drainage has increased significantly. In fact, I've noticed that my battery seems to drain faster when my mac is asleep and closed than when I'm actually using it, however, the battery life while using it has also decreased more since updating. I will frequently take my mac out of my book bag after a few hours of no use and it will be hot to touch and the battery will be 20-30% or more lower than when I stopped using it.
This sounds more like a software or configuration issue. Are you sure all your third party apps are completely up to date? And those third party apps are fully compatible with Sonoma?
I would also look at any cloud based services such as iCloud since it may be syncing files.
You have some options to try to figure out where the problem may be.
Create a new macOS user account. Log out of your main user account, then log into the new macOS user account. Let the laptop sleep overnight to see what difference it makes. Just do not sign into your AppleID or iCloud. Also, do not migrate or restore from a backup. If this improves things, then you know the issue is related to something with your main macOS user account. Possibly a setting, or it may be some service related to your AppleID & iCloud.
You can also try disconnecting the laptop from the network over night. If things are better, then it may be a file syncing issue, or maybe your apps are checking for updates or downloading updates.
Try booting into Safe Mode. Let the laptop sleep overnight to see how things are. If this works, then it may be related to some third party software that is installed.
You can also try an SMC Reset.
Most people don't realize that Macs don't sleep all night. They may wake multiple times while asleep to perform tasks.....many times software checking for updates (Google Chrome is one such app that checks every hour or more).
Edit: You can run EtreCheck and post the report here so we can examine it for possible clues.
