M3 battery drains very quickly, dropping by around 2 minutes per use

Good morning everyone.

I hope these suggestions can help you optimize battery life, and I have reached 24 hours of autonomy (see attached screenshots) while connected to Wi-Fi.

By working on battery optimization (which is very important to me, more so than performance), I have achieved consumption between 3.5 and 5 watts. What did I do?

• Activated power saving mode whenever I’m not plugged into a power outlet
• Installed Al Dente Pro to increase battery lifespan and monitor instant consumption. Specifically, I set the maximum charge to 75%, enabled sailing mode from 50%, and disabled charging when the battery exceeds 35°C to increase battery duration. I charge the Mac to 100% only if I know I will be out for work and won’t have a power outlet at hand
• Used Activity Monitor to identify what consumed the most
• Removed all energy-hungry applications like Google Drive and Chrome. The only one I can’t eliminate is Edge; Safari is unbearable
• Activated Edge’s power saving mode
• In Edge, I only installed the strictly necessary extensions: Wappalyzer (the one that consumes the most), 1Password, AdBlock, Awesome Screen Recorder
• Avoided installing applications that required Rosetta (make sure in Activity Monitor, under the Kind column, everything is "Apple")
• Disabled Siri
• Replaced Spotlight with Raycast
• Kept screen brightness between 40% and 75%
• Background applications: CleanMyMac, Bartender, AlDentePro, Yoink, 1Password, Mosaic, Raycast
• Static wallpaper and screensaver

My usage is that of an executive dealing with sales and business plan creation: typically, I have thirty Edge tabs open and make extensive use of Google Sheets and Google Docs (I don’t use Microsoft or Apple’s office suites), ChatGPT, Midjourney, and other corporate web apps. Occasionally, I engage in video editing, photo editing, and web programming as needed. Nothing extraordinary.

Notes:

1. Using Safari (without having Edge installed), I can achieve up to 28 hours of autonomy, but since I can't use it well, I preferred to give up a few hours of battery life and install Edge
2. For those using CleanMyMac, it's possible to further reduce battery usage by disabling malware protection, notifications, and any periodic scans to disable the "CleanMyMac X HealthMonitor" process. I haven’t done this myself
3. Unfortunately, very few apps are compatible with "App Nap"; currently, no process on my system supports it, which is quite annoying
4. iCloud and various synchronizations with Apple services remain active, along with Geolocation, Find My, Private Relay, Advanced Data Protection, File Vault, AirDrop

My Mac:

• Model Name: MacBook Pro
• Model Identifier: Mac15,6
• Model Number: MRX33T/A
• Chip: Apple M3 Pro
• Total Number of Cores: 11 (5 performance and 6 efficiency)
• Memory: 18 GB
• macOS Sonoma 14.5

I hope this has been helpful.

I had the same issue. The first few days the battery lasted as advertised, then it suddenly started draining in 6-8 hours.

I noticed that I had Microsoft OneDrive enabled all the time. I set the OneDrive app to not start at login, I quit it and the battery now lasts as advertised, again.

I rarely use OneDrive, and now I keep it running only as I download/upload files.

This also happened with the Facebook app on my iPhone 15. It was using 40% of my battery, even if I used it only 1-2 times a day. I uninstalled it, I started to use Facebook on Safari and now the battery lasts almost twice as much.

I suggest you always keep an eye on what apps you have installed. Some apps coming from the non-Apple world are very bad.

<< I primarily use Chrome with only 4 tabs open. >>

google chrome is by far THE most resource hungry Browser for any platform.

If you can use almost ANY other Browser, your battery run-time will be FAR longer.

Many suggest restart and it helped me as well. In fact it was the first restart of the Air since I got it... I don't think I can squeeze advertised 18 hrs from that, but now it's 1-2 % every 10 minutes or so.

I hope this helps for those you are experiencing this issue.

My mac's battery seems to be performing better now than before.

What I did:

1) Full discharge the existing battery load.

2) I plugged the charger and did SMC Reset to power it up.

3) Shut down the machine while charging.

4) checked after couple of hours if it was 100%.

5) Once fully charged, I full shutdown the mac again. Did another SMC reset.

Now using it as normal. I hope this method helps you. It made mine better.

Cheers!

Had the same issue, but the software update and restart fixed it for me.

<< from 100% and attand my zoom class just around 3 hour and the battery is only 12% left. ??? >>

The video coming and going has to be compressed and decompressed to fit across an Internet connection. This is very intensive usage, and should ALWAYS be done with external power applied.

Apple no longer recommends manally running your battery low.

The entire rest of your procedure is recommended.

there was an article that essentially said:

power off and charge overnight.

in the morning, reset the SMC. (For Apple-silicon Macs, starting from power off, double-click the power button)

<<. Sometimes it drains down to 70%-80% >>

That is what it will do automatically for maximum battery longevity, when you have enabled Battery Health Management.

But it will only continue to do that when you demonstrate, by your usage patterns, that you do NOT need longer battery run-times.

If that seems to be going too low, uncheck that settings, and it will go back to the old way of holding charge levels above about 92 percent or so.

<< Apple advertised 16-18hrs, and it should be just that without the need to do all these tinkering. >>

Apple did a tightly-controlled experiment is a laboratory environment with Nothing else running, half brightness, and every other power-hogging feature turned OFF. This was disclosed in their marketing materials to demonstrate the UPPER LIMITS of what could be accomplished under absolute BEST CASE conditions.

Real world run-times WILL be lower. Casual use where you do not take steps to control power usage by deliberately disabling features will be SUBSTANTIALLY lower.

That computer is a battery-CAPABLE device. It is not optimized as a battery-operated device. (It is NOT an iPhone.)

Your computer performs best when connected to AC power. It can use the full output of the Power Adapter AND when doing especially challenging work will also freely "borrow" power from the battery. In some cases, even with the power adapter connected, the charged state may decline during stressful work.

When used only on battery, your computer has no extra cushion of power, and may perform more slowly. However, for ordinary non-stressful tasks this may not be objectionable (possibly not even noticeable.)

In general, you should ALWAYS connect AC power when it is possible to do so, and only run on batteries (which could be somewhat slower) when no AC sources are at hand. Your Mac will NEVER over-charge.

<< any advice is greatly appreciated >>

PLUG IT IN!

That computer is a battery-CAPABLE device. It is not optimized as a battery-operated device. (It is NOT an iPhone.)

Your computer performs best when connected to AC power. It can use the full output of the Power Adapter AND when doing especially challenging work will also freely "borrow" power from the battery. In some cases, even with the power adapter connected, the charged state may decline during stressful work.

When used only on battery, your computer has no extra cushion of power, and may perform more slowly. However, for ordinary non-stressful tasks this may not be objectionable (possibly not even noticeable.)

In general, you should ALWAYS connect AC power when it is possible to do so, and only run on batteries (which could be somewhat slower) when no AC sources are at hand. Your Mac will NEVER over-charge.

That computer is a battery-CAPABLE device. It is not optimized as a battery-operated device. (It is NOT an iPhone.)

When used only on battery, your computer has no extra cushion of power, and may perform more slowly. However, for ordinary non-stressful tasks this may not be objectionable (possibly not even noticeable.)

In general, you should ALWAYS connect AC power when it is possible to do so, and only run on batteries (which could be somewhat slower) when no AC sources are at hand. Your Mac will NEVER over-charge.

That computer is a battery-CAPABLE device. It is not optimized as a battery-operated device. (It is NOT an iPhone.)

When used only on battery, your computer has no extra cushion of power, and may perform more slowly. However, for ordinary non-stressful tasks this may not be objectionable (possibly not even noticeable.)

In general, you should ALWAYS connect AC power when it is possible to do so, and only run on batteries (which could be somewhat slower) when no AC sources are at hand. Your Mac will NEVER over-charge.

The Charger is inside the computer. That external thing is very deliberately called a Power Adapter, NOT a charger. Plugged in is Not necessarily actively charging. There is substantial hardware and software cooperating on battery and charging issues. Connected power sources simply 'offer' their power sourcing ability, and the computer decides what to accept and when. Simply asserting a charging voltage against one of the interface(s) will NOT successfully charge your MacBook Pro.

There is something wrong with this. I bought an M3 1TB around last Christmas when it was released. It worked completely fine. When I closed the lid, it did not lose any battery. I took it to school and worked with it all day, maybe around 1-2 days without charging it.

Now, I believe that after the Sonoma update, it is losing 1-2% battery when closed in sleep mode. From 100%, I wake up to around 80%. I can’t go a whole day without charging. A lot of people are reporting the same thing. I had it checked by Apple support, and the hardware and battery are fine. They tested it outside my OS and couldn’t find any errors. I have factory reset my computer, and it’s the same issue. I believe it’s a bug in the new Sonoma; something in the background is draining the battery without showing in any log.

<< it is losing 1-2% battery when closed in sleep mode. >>

Some of these users are discovering that there are other things keeping their REQUEST for sleep (closing the lid) from being executed.. The battery level drops a lot because the computer is not actually sleeping, it is awake with the lid closed.