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

New Macs use more battery on day 1 for setup. Give it a full charge cycle and see if it improves in a day or two.

In the meantime:

Check Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities) for power-hungry apps and quit them.

Review Battery Settings (System Preferences > Battery) and enable power-saving features.

Check for macOS updates (the latest version might have battery optimizations).

Try disabling Chrome extensions temporarily.

Learn here How to keep your Mac running at its best for years on end?

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.

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!

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.

what cable are you using to connect the power adapter?

the MagSafe can provide very high power

a commodity USB-C cable may allow only 60 Watts, unless it is a premium cable specified to support 100 Watts power delivery. A premium cable should be specially marked.

There are now super-premium USB-C cables available that allows up to 240 Watts power delivery, it that much were available.

When you have Battery Health Management active, and do not make any strong demands on the battery, the charge level will slowly decline, and stay at about 80 percent charged, and just sit at that level for a very long time. From time to time it may decide to run just on battery for a while, just to stir things up, but I would be surprised if that happened more often than monthly, so it could easily be missed.

When you do anything that causes the battery to run low, you are teaching it that you need more battery capacity, so the default charge level will be reset to a higher level, and can go to nearly 100 percent. if you don't make many demands for a period of time, the charge level will slowly decline back to the best-for-longevity setting of 80 percent again.

<< 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.

<< 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.

DON'T micro-manage the levels, that is a job for a computer.

When AC power is available, Plug it in.

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 am experiencing the same thing. Was your new mac restored with Time Machine or it's setup newly? I was thinking mine was due to the time machine restore that messed up my settings from the M2 Macbook. That is why I am asking.

Anybody sorted this yet or how can we get the promised 15-18 hours? Now I am regretting getting the M3 due to this battery drain issue.

I have a similar issue. My battery last around 8 hours (9 at best) from 100% to 0% (computed) on a macbook pro M3, 18GB. This is somewhat better than what I get on an MBP M1 after 3 years. It's quite ridiculous. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

I've shut it down several times, of course. I don't think that draining the battery is the way to go, as far as I know this was the procedure for old nickel-based batteries. I'm not using a lot of applications, the browser with several tabs open (I don't think there's anything special to it), apple mail, discord, tunnelblick, nextcloud and the likes. There's nothing that stands out in the activity monitor.

Hi Grant,

I also have a new MacBook Pro (M3 Pro) and it is ONLY used plugged in. The battery level keeps dropping and I have no idea why, (80% at the moment). I have been using MacBook Pros for years and I have never seen this happen daily. Is there something I should try?

Thanks for your help.

I am ONLY using the M3 PLUGGED IN and have been having the battery drop. First Apple phone support changed my Low Battery Usage to only when plugged in but asked me to bring my computer to the Genius Bar to check my adapter and ports. They checked them and they appear to be fine. Interesting however, during their tests, it showed I was connected to the Power Adapter when they disconnected to Battery. Last week, I decided to change the Low Battery Usage to Never and that seems to be keeping it @ 100 % (plugged in). I'm still not convinced about all of this...

Thank you for this. Just to understand better, is this new to this MacBook Pro? I have been using MacBook Pros since they first came out and this is the first one that I've had that responds this way. In previous versions, if it was plugged in, it stayed at 100% with a rare drop to 97%.