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

I recently purchased a MacBook M3 16/512, 14-inch model. However, I've noticed that the battery drains very quickly, dropping by around 2 minutes per use. This results in a total battery life of only about 4 hours, which is significantly less than the advertised 18 hours claimed by Apple.

I primarily use Chrome with only 4 tabs open, and the brightness is set to less than 50%. Despite these measures, the battery life is still unacceptably short. As it's my first day of using the MacBook, I'm concerned about this issue. Could you please advise me on what steps I can take to improve the battery life?

Thank you for your assistance.



MacBook Pro 13″

Posted on Mar 4, 2024 12:56 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 3, 2024 4:37 AM

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.



Similar questions

53 replies

Sep 9, 2024 9:30 PM in response to AhsanCheema

I have tries almost everything, I have turned it in, adjuster the battery settings, and changed the options in the terminal and nothing works!

Its not a hardware problem so it most be a software issue.

As far I read online it most often corrolets to a update within the latest OS.

I'm hopeful now when they release the new os in September, apple must be aware of this issue.

Mar 23, 2024 2:22 AM in response to AhsanCheema

I'm having the same issue. I have started seeing the battery draining out too fast since day one. It's been just 12 days since I bought it. I thought the stock Mac OS update wasn't optimized or something and did the update to 14.4 as well. And not much improvement. The overall battery backup is about 6 to 8 hours max, with only Google Chrome usage, maybe with 15 tabs open. I was expecting around 12 to 16 hours. Totally disappointed, not sure what is the issue. Looking forward to a solution here.

May 18, 2024 1:51 PM in response to AhsanCheema

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.

Jun 17, 2024 12:43 PM in response to AhsanCheema

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.

Jun 17, 2024 7:26 PM in response to 72dpi

The classic way to brute-force improve battery longevity was to create a hysteresis -- to postpone staring a charge cycle until the charged state had declined to a lower level, such as 92 percent, and when topping off, stop before 99 percent. 


Catalina software 10.15.5 and later for MacBook Pro with T2 chip (2018 models and later) includes a new feature called Battery Health Management. Now, based on your usage patterns, this widens the hysteresis to initiate a charge cycle at a lower level, and stop well before 99 percent. 


About battery health management in Mac notebooks - Apple Support

About battery health management in Mac laptops - Apple Support


Battery Health Management further relaxes the set points around re-charging (based on your usage patterns) and can improve long term battery lifetimes. When active, recharging may stop short of 100 percent charged. Recharging may only begin at a lower level than the previous "normal" threshold of 92 percent or less, typically around 80 percent.


Aug 1, 2024 10:09 AM in response to Paul-Mateescu

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...

Aug 1, 2024 10:52 AM in response to 72dpi

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.

Aug 1, 2024 11:23 AM in response to 72dpi

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.

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

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