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My MacBook Air has dropped from 13 hours of battery life to 2.5, what is going on?

I installed Mavericks on my Macbook Air 11 inch which used to get 13 hours of life with my normal useage, is now down to 2.5 hours. I don't think I have had that bad battery life in years. Is apple working on a fix? Is there a fix already?

MacBook Air, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 25, 2013 7:20 PM

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7 replies

Oct 25, 2013 7:22 PM in response to sandrafromhonolulu

You likely have some application which is hogging lots of CPU.


Click on the battery icon in the menu bar and see what applications are listed as using significant memory. Also you can go to Activity Monitor and get a report of the applications that are burning your battery.


It's unlikely this is something that Apple needs to fix; it's likely you have some 3rd party application or extension which has some issues on Mavericks and is chowing down on your battery like a fat guy at a buffet.

Oct 25, 2013 7:28 PM in response to William Lloyd

No, I don't. I have my activity monitor running to check.

I run the same two programs all day long day after day, and have always gotten 13 hours of battery time.

I fly intercontinental with my MacAir all the time, and never had to charge it while writing my reports. Now I can't get thought with more than a few pages, with out the battery crashing.

With everything but Safari closed I lost two 2% just readying your post and writing this one.

Oct 25, 2013 8:54 PM in response to sandrafromhonolulu

Check on the battery stats under "About this Mac" and "Select more Info", then "System Report" and see what it says about your battery health under "Power". There is also a great little app called "Battery Health" on the App Store which provides the same info and a few more stats. How old, how many full charge cycles, current capacity etc.


Check out Notebook Battery Guide and this one on the Apple Support site and see if they can provide answers or solve your issue.

Oct 31, 2013 9:49 AM in response to sandrafromhonolulu

Sandra Again:


I have an update to this post. I have let my battery cycle though twice, and now it seems that rather than getting 2.5 hours batter life, I am up to 7 hours. I cant find the forum again, but somewhere on the net I read that Mavericks takes some time to settle in with it's background energy usage. Maybe that is the problem. I am hoping that my original battery time comes back.

My MacBook Air has dropped from 13 hours of battery life to 2.5, what is going on?

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