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scintoon Author

Level 1

5 points

Mavericks MacBook Air 2013 Battery Draining

Hello,

I recently installed Mavericks onto my Macbook Air 2013, Haswell, 128GB i5 model

I find that the battery drains very quickly; in general it only shows an estimate of less than 6 hours with just Chrome open. Before it used to be 10-12 hours+. I used to not notice when the battery percentage would go down; now every few minutes I notice it slowly decreasing.

I read that the computer needs time to index the hard drive but I do not see the Spotlight indexing.

What is going on? Does the computer need to go through one cycle of almost draining the battery from full in order to accurately preserve energy?

The computer went from 100% to around 78% over the span of around 2 hours... not good.

Why is my computer showing a decrease in battery life when Mavericks is supposed to increase it dramatically? Typing this message in a span of 10 minutes already dropped my battery life around 1-2%. (No hardware problems; flawless on Mountain Lion)

Thanks,

Sam

MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 9:43 AM

361 replies

Nov 13, 2013 6:05 PM in response to Jask05

I have a similar issue regarding the fan: when i play a game, i have the fan whirring a lot then it just freezes after an hr and a half or so. I get the beach ball of death due to it, and i love my game! Some might be familiar with red crucible 2, and i'm having issues just running it!

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

Nov 14, 2013 12:10 AM in response to Jask05

How did you see the fan speed? Can you run an Etrecheck list for me?

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

Nov 14, 2013 12:13 AM in response to n1tut

No it is not the same: % is how much is in it at this moment, which is a real value. Time remaining is a prediction on a vague basis of assumptions.

jhhng

Level 1

0 points

Nov 14, 2013 2:06 AM in response to scintoon

Did SMC and PRAM reset and reinstalled maverick and my laptop still has the sampe problem. Fully charged mba only last for 5 hours instead of 13 hours when it was running on mountain lion. And the heat coming out from the laptop is unbearable.

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

Nov 14, 2013 2:27 AM in response to jhhng

Better start a new thread as this one is already too long. Put an Etrecheck list in it also.

McRoger

Level 1

24 points

Nov 14, 2013 5:18 PM in response to Lexiepex

Did a clean re-install and then used the migration assistant to retrieve data, apps and settings from my backup.

Initially, the remaining time seems OK.

But after a while, the estimation drops again.

Nov 15, 2013 12:38 AM in response to scintoon

For me, I think it was the mail app.

the mac mail app is super terrible, I stopped using it and my data usage dropped and my battery life is extended by a few hours.

I think it was still downloading and indexing all my mail. my mail folders had reached 50GB and there was no way in the app to exclude my archive folders from downloading with IMAP, so I just trashed everything it had downloaded, disabled my accounts in the app, removed it from my quicklaunch bar and now it seems much better.

Still not what I'd like it to be, but not 6 hours anymore - now just over 10 hours.

Mail app wasn't showing up in the activity monitor as using a lot of energy. But since I stopped using it, everything seems much better.

Tx.

Steve

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

Nov 15, 2013 12:39 AM in response to McRoger

In my post read the part about % and time-remaing.

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

Nov 15, 2013 12:40 AM in response to Steviedeehook

The Mail app could well be the cause because in the first period after upgrading it does a lot more than after a while, like Spotlight.

Nov 15, 2013 12:43 AM in response to Lexiepex

I don't really use time remaining - I just use the macbook all day - 9 or 10 hours at work - and see how long before hometime it warns me to plug it in. If I can take it home and still use it there a bit too before plugging it in - I can tell there's a difference. If I go out to lunch or to a meeting and leave it sleeping, I'll expect it survive a bit longer.

Steve

Jask05

Level 1

0 points

Nov 15, 2013 1:12 AM in response to Lexiepex

Sorry, I have no longer Maverick, I returned to ML 😟

McRoger

Level 1

24 points

Nov 15, 2013 2:11 AM in response to Lexiepex

Nope. It does not last long enough after an upgrade/reinstallation to be the cause IMO.

On my MBA, no particular activity spotted from Mail.app in the Activity Monitor and iStat.

Nov 15, 2013 2:21 AM in response to McRoger

my air is only like 2 weeks old. I don't even know if mail had finished downloading yet or not - I just saw that it was 50GB and freaked out and trasjed the mail folders and disabled the accounts. I also didn't see heavy energy use by mail in my activity monitor - in fact according to the activity monitor hardly anything was using any energy but my battery still wasn't lasthing a work day - not even close.

Steve