Why does my MacBook Air battery drain so much while in sleep mode?

Question

Why does my MacBook Air battery drain so much while in sleep mode?

Recently, my MacBook Air doesn't hold charge for even only 10 hours (overnight), even if in sleep mode with the lid closed. I charge it up to 100%, and it is "dead" (must be plugged in for a while and then only shows 1% charge) only 10 hours later. I checked battery health - the result comes back "normal". I looked for top apps in CPU% and Energy - nothing that seems to be using anything much, and no "hidden" apps that aren't plain vanilla MacOS apps. Even if I quit all apps, this happens. IF I shut DOWN, there is no loss of charge at all for many hours, so it is clearly not just a bad battery. I also set all the "battery settings" to low usage, e.g. NO "Enable Power Nap". I'm running Monterey 12.7.4., and the MacBook Air is a "Retina 13" 2020). My same-age MacBook Pro does not have this problem at all.

I looked through previous similar questions, but there has been nothing new since over a year, and none of the answers given seems to address my situation. Any suggestions? Thanks!

MacBook Air (2018 – 2020)

Posted on Mar 30, 2024 1:06 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Sebastian Kuhn Author

Level 1

72 points

Mar 31, 2024 1:16 PM in response to Sebastian Kuhn

I found the culprit: I had the web page of my University department:

https://www.odu.edu/physics

open in a tab, and as soon as I closed that tab, the MacBook Air reverted to (more) reasonable performance: Losing only 5% of charge in over 5 hours of sleep mode.

In hindsight, I should have suspected that right away - this is the same web page that fails to properly render in Safari (most of the images appear as grey or empty spaces instead of photos) and takes unreasonably long just to scroll. To be sure, this is a problem how SAFARI handles this website - it renders totally normally and fast on Google Chrome or Firefox, running on the SAME Macbook Air. SO this is either a Safari bug where it endlessly TRIES to render these photos but fails, or a "feature" of the arrogant Apple attitude "if your website doesn't conform to our expectations, too bad for you" - no matter that other software has no problem with the coding of that website.

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Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

250,673 points

Mar 30, 2024 2:33 PM in response to Sebastian Kuhn

Are you running any VPN, Anti-Virus, or Cleaning apps?

We need to see what all is running, a report from this will not display any personal info...

Using EtreCheck - Apple Community

EtreCheck is a FREE simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

Thanks for Old Toad’s etrecheck instructions…

Slow iMac 2017 - Apple Community

Use the Note tool on the bottom of this editor's toolbar, as shown in the image, to copy and paste the output from EtreCheck. In a Reply before you click post, look for this to add longer texts...

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Answer 3

Mar 31, 2024 7:35 AM in response to BDAqua

Thanks for your suggestions. No, I am not running any "behind-the-scenes" apps (VPN, Anti-Virus...) - only Apple Apps. However, I did find the obvious culprit: Safari! If I quite Safari before putting my MacBook Air into sleep mode, it loses a lot less charge - more than 61% remaining after 16 hours of sleep (and even some light email work in between). So, now I need to find out which of the tabs I have open on a regular basis is such an energy hog that even putting the Mac to sleep will not stop it from doing "something". I will report back when I find out more.

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