Mavericks MacBook Air 2013 Battery Draining

Same problem here.

Have new 2013 Macbook Air and since installing Mavericks battery has been draining while asleep with the lid closed and rapid draining whie in use.

Glad I found this thread as i seemed to have huge issues with my 2013 mba .. all gut feel but it feel like it had dropped to half normal life since mavericks (which by the way crashed on install after moaning about my keychain ... somehow seemed to get away with this.. and fyi very little software installed since new as havent used it enough)

i think smc reset has done the trick for me... but only been on bluetooth today

I had some high total cpu for an apple id related process and remembering the noise during the install i went and explicitly updated the password for my login key chain to be the same as my account - i think this was just superstition

thus far using bluetooth only i have had 4-5 hours of light usage and only dropped to 10h left although yes you can see the algorithm trying to extrapolate time left and varying wildly! maybe its more than 10 .. spin the wheel ... maybe it will go back up again

will be back on wifi later

note that i am also suspicious of the wifi firmware which i believe was recently updated just after mavericks was installed. for a few days even when right next to my AP it had no bars as if very low signal (even at -41 gain) so I wonder if the wifi was running at full power or something. this seems to be resolved (maybe the smc reset) but watching out for it again.

woke it up .. battery percentage has i think dropped maybe 3 % or so to 87% whilst asleep, however i think I will now have to record that more carefully, but time remaining is back up to 11h44 ..! and rising .. 11h54 ... if this is real, then the SMC reset is most likely what helped

...

strangely though, whilst the time left just went up yet again to 12h04, the battery dropped another percent to 86%

...

now its 12h24.... wow and still climbing, battery at 86% and only running Safari

...

Wifi icon is now correctly showing 4 bars for an rssi of -61

...

Now up to 13h + expected life

I think my MBA has developed an edge of optimism whilst it was asleep ! Either way as PlotinusV says the battery life calculator is not to be trusted .. or is it ? I decided to track the time taken to drop 1% and I see it is in the 10-15 minute region -- that would suggest that yes, the calculation needs to revise itself upwards, perhaps with some damping.

Some further notes:

- 2013 MBA 128

- Mavericks install was not clean. It crashed after asking me for a keychain password but I couldn't figure out the password. Impact was to hang forever on the "less than 1 minute remaining screen" for HOURS to the point that even having read the posts advising me to wait, I had to reboot the thing manually

- Definitely had very fast battery drop until today, but I also noticed an issue with wifi signal strength not registering in the icon on the menu bar (but was fine if holding down command+clicking the wifi signal ; the menu said rssi of -41 when right next to the AP)

- Performed SMC reset per the instructions today (PERHAPS the Mavericks install would have done this, had it not crashed/locked ...)

- I did also reset my keychain passwords as noted , not sure if this is relevant or if the reset did anything

- I am NOT running Activity Monitor ... I am deliberately staying away from it for now since it did seem to have some untold overhead

....

now up to 14h44 remaining, with 85% battery

....

now 15h24

now 15h44

seems to be leveling out just south of 16h for now

Obviously now much happier. The prospect of my MBA starting to drop to 6 hours battery life was not an acceptable one in the short term and I am rather enjoying the "all day" effect that I bought it for !

I will track the sleep state behaviour properly now

Has anybody heard of any update to Mavericks in the works by Apple since it seems to be causing battery issues to many?

May be worth while checking your Energy Saver Preferences.

It had changed my display on battery from 10 mins to Never.

tut

I echo the the same problems everyone is experiencing with the Mavericks upgrade. Over the weekend I downgraded back to Mountain Lion and I now everything seems to be back to "normal" battery does not drain fast while in use, fans are not cosntantly running, battery barely drains when in sleep mode for extended periods of time, and overall stays cooler.

Downgrade back to Mountain Lion or Lion and wait until Apple addresses this issues, seems as it has effected EVERYONE who has done the upgrade. Spotlight indexing and resource intensive apps are not the problem here, its the software. I have barely any apps on my MBA, only what I need for Djing so I run a barebones system (can't afford issues during a live set).

For MBA users who don't have a copy of their old OS X, backup everything you want (apps/files), restart in recovery mode, wipe the Macintosh HD, restart in internet recovery mode, and reinstall....

thats good to hear Tap. ill do the same then...

Hey everyone,

I experienced the same problems with battery drain yesterday after updating my mid 2010 Macbook pro 13" to Mavericks.

During the install process the progress bar hung around 10 min or even longer on the "less than 1 minute remaining screen". After rebooting I wasn´t asked for Apple ID, iColud or Keychain. It just booted into the login screen. After Spotlight did its indexing, I unplugged the power supply to see, if the battery life was better than before, as promised for the Mavericks update. But as you can imagine it didn´t improve, instead it fell from around 8-9 hours at its peak to 5-6 hours at full charge.I did the SMC reset. No improvement.

Today I decided to reinstall Mavericks from the Appstore. After downloading and installing it I now was asked for Apple ID, iCloud etc.. So Spotlight did its indexing and I again checked Battery time remaining after Spotlight was finshed. It didn´t improve at first to yesterday. But after a few minutes it rose to around 9h+ or even 10h+. Currently at 9:43 at 94% charge, only running Safari. Battery health is at around 86%.

So I guess either the install process was in some kind of way corrupted yesterday or the mavericks install file was damaged from the start. Nevertheless it runs smoothly now and battery life is great.

So I´d recommend reinstalling it from the Appstore.

Cheers

Hi,

What do you want to say "from the Apple store"? You can do an update from Apple Store or download the OS and put in a flash drive. I tried this two ways but It didn't work. I had the same problems therefore I've reinstalled ML.

Regards

I also had problems with my MBA i7 256Gb 8Gb from 09-26-2013 after installing Mavericks. Every night a battery drain! Now I have the last 2 nights no battery drain and this is the way I solved it:

1. reset SCM and Pram, didn't work

2. reinstall system, didn't work

3. did this: http://support.apple.com/kb/ph14243?viewlocale=en_US

4. from back-up with Migration-assistant I reinstalled my settings, programs and data

After 2 nights without battery drain it looks that this work-around is succesfull, hope it will stay that way!

Plotinus said:

quote

"even a broken clock is right 2 times a day" ,...almost such is the case here, rely on %, and NOT on "time remaining" (hours / mins.) currently.

Endless testing shows that accurate time remaining will present itself, for a short time, after a SMC reset, but this is often very short lived.

unquote.

THIS WILL NEVER BE SOLVED.

It is the same as in your car: "miles remaining", this is based on the calculation of a average consumption in the last xx minutes (10 in car brand X, 15 in car brand Y....), and as soon as you change the consumption, after that last xx minutes you will see a different "milage remaining". Unluckily I have this consumption change when I just passed the last Gas station...

The only usable indication is percentage full.

Yes I know all battery time remaining is a collective generalization, obviously.

what WILL be solved is a much more accurate estimation, or at least as 'accurate' as ML was/is

reporting 20 hours remaining on a 60% charge on 2 diff. MacAir isnt in the same ballpark as an estimation.

Im not concerned at all....Actual batt life is higher for myself with Mavericks and boot time went from 21 seconds to 7 seconds.

~~~~All time remaining software should be averaged from sample snapshots over 1 hour with that of mAh at each sample point

Well I Just went to the App Store and downloaded OS X again by clicking on the "download" or translated from german "load" button. I didn´t put it in a flash drive and didn´t install it from the there. The App Store just reloaded the 5 Gigs and asked me if i wanted to install OS X again. So I went on and OS X was installed on top of the current OS X. I don´t know wether only certain files were replaced or the whole OS got installed again. But for me it seems to have fixed the problem with battery draining and "time remaining" indication so far.

But as Plotinus said, don´t take "time remaining" to serious. It´s the % that matters and how time flies by while the charge in % decreases. Judging you battery life by relating percentage of battery charge and time of laptop in use is probably the safest way to see of anything has changed after the Update.

Ok, I understand, but my concern is also about fan. When I had using Maverick I could see the fan started when I was surfing with Safari or when I was writing an email, with ML I have not problem. I can feel the fan fastest than usual when I play a game or use a couple of virtual machines at the same time ... In Maveric it's quite common this behavior, or at least in my case.

Seems simple to me, the battery life is what it is regardless of % or time remaining.

Just time it from 100% on a clock if you want to know what it really is.

tut