Complete overnight battery drain when in sleep mode

There have been other users with concerns about battery life with ML. Best I can say at this time is keep it plugged in on the charger whenever you can and charge frequently when operating on battery. Apple has heard the concerns and should be working on a fix...we all they are, anyway.

Just an update since my last post since 10.8.2 has come out since then and I read before it came out that it was/may address the battery drain while in sleep/standby mode.

Well it didn't, still having problem with 10.8.2. - Hope 10.8.3 fixes issue.

I'm experiencing this same problem on two macbooks after upgrading to ML, currently on 8.2. This never happened on these machines before I upgraded.

Check this out to see if it solves your problem.

I had the same problem when I upgraded my OS to Lion on my macbook Air. Took me days to figure out the problem. I finally figured out that it's caused by Safari and iCloud. I had bookmark sync on, and it is continuous syncing with the cloud while in sleep. At first it seems to be some bookmarks (non-english) is causing a syncing problem but I am not 100% sure. At the end I turned off iCloud completely and the problem is fixed.

See if it helps.

I am having the same problem, but I am pretty sure that I have iCloud syncing off.

I had 26 percent battery last night when I went to sleep. Woke up 5-6 hours later and my computer was dead.

I don't really use mine without it plugged into power, I have occasionally used it on battery and it seemed like it was draining faster than I'd like it to especially with very light usage and low backlight settings. I might have to try to leave it unplugged tonight and see what its health is in the morning. The support forums have been frequented with sleep related problems with mountain lion so this could be related, I will check in tommorow to see if this thread has updates and I will report my findings on my own machine.

Having same problem on a brand new MBP Retina and 10.8.2. I've turned off Wake For Wifi network access, hoping that's the problem. Very sucky feeling, this situation.

Same pattern here with MBP mid-2012 on ML 10.8.2 UNTIL I managed to have it spend the night asleep with as little as 7% battery drain, from 100% to 93%. (But I'm almost sure my older MBs were doing better than that at energy saving.) Here's the procedure: I went to the Energy Saver pref panel and noticed the Restore Defaults was greyed out. I turned off the Wake for Network Access option, clicked the Restore Defaults, and turned off again the Wake for Network Access option (enabled by default). I then put the MBP to sleep through the Sleep function in the Apple menu, waited for the sleep led to flash accordingly, and closed the lid. At that moment, the led remained steady bright for a few seconds (no clear signs of waking though, like superdrive, cooling fan or hard drive activity), then resumed to sleep flashing mode. Same pattern when I finally unplugged the MBP, which had its first “energy-efficient” night sleep!

This worked PERFECT for me. I have a 15" MBP Retina. Got it in the fall of '12. Mine was losing 10 - 20% every night on sleep. Now I don't think I loose but 1% at the most after a 12 hour sleep. Thanks much!!!!

Yes! +1

This worked also perfectly for me on OS 10.6.8, Snow Leopard.

Thanks!

I read on another board about using pmset through terminal, as root, to basically stop the computer from going to sleep if the lid was up. I didn't feel comfortable with doing that, but I went into system preferences and did the same thing through there - moved both sliders all the way to the right, both for power supply and battery. I charged my MBA 2012 yesterday lunch time, and as soon as it reached 100% I unplugged it. A couple of times during the afternoon I lifted the lid and it still showed 100%. I didn't touch it again until 0830 this morning - it was at 97%! That's the best it's been for weeks! Hope this helps.

Apparently it worked for me too. My MBA early 2012 was loosing as much as 8% per night. For precaution, I reset to defaults in Energy Saver preferences, and also turned off the Wake for Network Access option as suggested by robodiem. Last two nights it spent at most 2% from 11PM until 10 AM. It's an excelent result, considering the former situation. Let's see if it keeps this score from now on!

Well after all it was a false positive: 7% drain in less than 12 hours after this night. Guess I'll have to wait for Mavericks and try a fresh install, restoring only Applications and Users' files. Any other ideas to solve this issue are welcome.

I had the same problem. I left my 2011 Macbook Air on all night and it drained down from a full charge to 4%. I connected the adapter. The adapter would light up with a green or orange light (random color), the Air would show that the power was connected, but would not charge and continue to drain the battery. I tried my Macbook Pro's adapter to test the charging and I was able to charge the Air. So I connected a new Air adapter I had and things started working smoothly. I wasted an entire day trying to solve this.

I have been trying to tell Apple for the past 2-3 years that their adapters are extremely poorly designed and on top of that, very expensive. Every time I buy a macbook, I go through 2-3 adapters in 2-3 years. The thin wire from the adapter to the magsafe port is the biggest problem. They should redesign the adapter with a removable wire with a magsafe pin and make the wire reinforced with a protective mesh like the gecko wires:

Apparently Apple has stopped listening to loyal customers.

I read this in an artice at about.mac. I pararphrase here.

There is a specific reason why the macbook drains while the lid is closed.

There are 3 different hibernate modes:

You can find out which sleep mode your Mac is using by opening the Terminal application, located at

/Applications/Utilities/.

When the Terminal window opens, enter the following at the prompt:

pmset -g | grep hibernatemode

You should see one of the following responses:

hibernatemode 0

hibernatemode 1

hibernatemode 3

0 means normal sleep and is the default for desktops;

1 means hibernate mode and is the default for older portables;

3 means safe sleep and is the default for portables made after 2005

hibernate mode 1 means that the macbook will copy the state of the machine to your hard drive and power down. USB ports will be disabled (if you want to use a USB keyboard to wake up, do not choose this mode), and RAM will also be powered down.

hibernate mode 3 is probably what your macbook is in. RAM remains powered up and the macbook will drain about 1% per hour while asleep.

You can change the sleep mode your Mac is using, but I don't advise it for older (pre-2005) Mac portables.

If you try to force an unsupported sleep mode, it may cause the portable to lose data when sleeping.

Even worse, you may end up with a portable that will not wake up, in which case, you'll have to remove the battery, then reinstall the battery and operating system.

If my portable didn't support Safe Sleep, I'd prefer the reassurance of hibernating over a quicker wakeup from standard sleep mode.

If your Mac isn't a pre-2005 portable, or you want to make the change anyway, the command is:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode X

Replace X with the number 0, 1, or 3, depending on which sleep mode you wish to use.

For best battery life use mode 1.

You will need your administrator password to complete the change.