MacBook Pro is dying overnight

Question

Level 1

4 points

MacBook Pro is dying overnight

My Macbook Pro, 2018, 13 inch (Intel i5, currently on Sonoma 14.4.1) has been running very smoothly and trouble free for more than 5 years now.

In the last couple months, I've been noticing that the laptop's battery occasionally dies overnight or sometimes even lesser (say, 2-3 hours) when the screen is down and the laptop is sleeping. The problem is, this happens intermittently and isn't a regular thing which, if true, could've been attributed to poor battery health or something else. The laptop and the battery performance seems fine on most days. The battery drops by no more than 5-10% overnight most the nights except for when it dies (100% to 0%).

I have installed the latest updates from Apple but it didn't change this occasional occurrence.

I don't have any USB keyboard or mouse.
I watch videos on Netflix, Disney, Prime video and Youtube and sometimes all are open in chrome and that leads to high CPU/fan. But that's not new and I've been doing the exact same for years now and this particular usage of Chrome and Firefox was never an issue.
I've been keeping an eye on Activity Monitor as well. Usually, it's both the browsers and the WindowServer process hogging the CPU and leading the Energy consumption which again isn't new. Earlier, it never led to the laptop dying while sleeping.
I notice that some core processes like airportd, kernel_task, coreduetd, powerUIAgent and more also hog high CPU from time to time.
Could it be that the sleep mode isn't putting all processes to sleep as it should? Any settings change needed there?
Is there a need for malware check or a complete re-install of OS?

I wonder if others are facing the same issue. I am ok with a deteriorating battery health being the reason but this laptop-completely-dying occurrence is intermittent which baffles and concerns me.

Thanks to people chipping in with their thoughts.

Posted on Apr 26, 2024 9:29 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 26, 2024 9:39 AM in response to abshk

closing the lid is a REQUEST for your Mac to sleep. We are seeing reports that sometime a Mac does not actually sleep, but continues to run with the lid closed.

If that is the only issue, choose Sleep off the  Menu rather than closing the lid.

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

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.

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

55,958 points

Apr 27, 2024 9:52 PM in response to abshk

For intermittent issues.....most likely it is some software running maintenance tasks. A lot of times it can be associated with cloud file syncing services such as iCloud. Or it could be macOS or even third party software checking for updates and possibly even installing updates.

It can be difficult to track down the issue since the macOS logs are full of nonsense (some of it looks scary) that can be extremely hard to parse & make sense. macOS does not always sleep like people expect even when sleep mode is successfully triggered.

The normal System logs are rarely useful for troubleshooting these days. On occasion I have utilized the command line "log" utility, but it also is nearly worthless since there are even more lines to parse (literally thousands of lines) which contain repeating, cryptic, nonsensical & scary sounding items....many times after hours of parsing those entries you will still end up with no definitive answer.

I would follow @Grant's advice whenever possible as that is the easiest solution for an intermittent issue and will help keep your sanity which you will most likely lose trying to parse macOS system logs.

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Answer 3

steve626

Level 6

10,061 points

Apr 27, 2024 10:09 PM in response to abshk

I would close all the browsers overnight. Yes, you have been using it the way you have for years but note that browsers get updates and change their behaviors over time. So patterns could change not due to anything you did yourself. I am especially suspicious about Chrome, a known resource hog and Chrome updates itself in the background.

A few other things you can do:

(1) Shut down (power off) the Mac overnight. This is not a bad practice because it will clear out memory and other things, and starting a modern Mac from scratch does not take much longer than waking from sleep nowadays.

(2) As others suggested, just connect it to a power supply overnight.

(3) Make sure you don't have any thing like antivirus or "efficiency" or "cleaner" utilities installed.

(4) Check the health of your battery.

(5) Do you have "power nap" or "wake for network access" active in your settings? In fact, check all those "advanced" settings under "Battery."

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Answer 4

abshk Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 26, 2024 10:17 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks for your response. I think the issue is deeper than that. I have been putting it to sleep properly using the Apple menu but that hasn't stopped the laptop from dying intermittently.

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