Yosemite Battery Drain

Create a new Time Machine backup before doing anything else, since the report indicates your last Time Machine backup is about a month old. It may take some time, perhaps an hour or so, given that it has to back up an entirely new operating system.

After it finishes the Time Machine menu will indicate the time of the last backup. Wait until then.

Then, determine if your Mac is suffering the same battery drain in Safe Mode (you will need to temporarily disable FileVault to boot Safe Mode, which will also take some time):

• Safe Mode or "Safe Boot" is a troubleshooting mode that bypasses all third party system extensions and loads only required system components. Read about it: Starting up in Safe Mode
• You must disable FileVault before you can start your Mac in Safe Mode.
• Starting your Mac in Safe Mode will take longer than usual, graphics will not render smoothly, audio is disabled on some Macs, and some programs (iTunes for example) may not work at all.
• Merely starting your Mac in Safe Mode is not intended to resolve the problem, it's to observe its performance without certain additional components.
• To end Safe Mode restart your Mac normally. Shutdown will take longer as well.

It's not your fault that this thread degenerated into the state that it has. It's just an unfortunate fact of life that people tend to pile on with their own problems. It does make your own question difficult to concentrate on, so if you perceive you aren't getting the attention you need it's OK to post a new one. If you decide to do that, it is perfectly appropriate to reply to your own question containing a link to the new question, along with something like "closed but not solved" and mark it "This solved my question".

That procedure is not recommended for all unibody Macs, do not do it. All it achieves is the waste of a cycle.

Charge the battery before it gets below 20% (if possible), a full discharge is bad for it. Repeated full discharges are very bad for it.

Portables with built-in batteries

Current Apple portable computer batteries are pre-calibrated and do not require the calibration procedure outlined in this article. These computers use batteries that shouldbe replaced only by an Apple Authorized Service Provider.

MacBook

MacBook (13-inch, Late 2009) and later

MacBook Air

MacBook Air (all models)

MacBook Pro

• MacBook Pro with Retina display (all models)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009) and later
• MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009) and later
• MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2009) and later

Hello Moheny,

Thanks for your valuable time comparing Yosemite and Mavericks battery performance, I would appreciate if you can share me your report (through PM or on this thread). If you have your MAC since 1 year and a half, I consider that it is a macbook end-2013, in that case, could you :

Collect your battery specs time : Technical Specifications (ie. for Mac 15", apple is mentionning "Up to 8 hours wireless web")

Then go to a genius bar :

1. First show them your battery technical specifications
2. Show them your battery performance report, after your fresh installation of yosemite and of course after the roll back on Mavericks (to confirm that your battery is running fine if they doubt).
3. Inform them about software compatibility, which is the main reason why you and most of us wants/needs to upgrade to Yosemite.
4. Ask them for a clear solution to get Yosemite on your MAC RESPECTING battery specs previously presented.

Let them run some testing on your MAC or whatever if they need but please after all the job you have done, ask them for a clear solution.

If they do not have any solution, ask to ESCALATE the case internally, or ask for a manager if they can't.

Additionally, you can remind them a funny thing : one of the apple tips to optimize battery is to upgrade OS :-) (see https://www.apple.com/batteries/maximizing-performance/)

Best of luck, keep us posted.

Thanks.

Hello...I too am experiencing a quicker battery drain on my MacBook Air 13". The upper right hand corner also gets very hot. A fan actually came on at one point...didn't even know the Air had a fan....

I just did the PRAM & SMC reset (in that order), now the battery is going super; 11 hours remaining at 93% which is the most amazing time ever since I bought this MacBook Pro 17" (late 2011) almost 3 years ago. The longest time was 8:55 hours when it was new (Mountain Lion). Kind of strange for this ageing battery eh?

The recharging process is also seems to take longer than before, it need 30 minutes to top-up from 93%.

Let's see how its going!

Maybe this battery issue is caused by Wifi... Try charge to 100% then turn off wifi and bluetooth and just open some PDF. When I did this, I get 17 hours of battery at 50% of brightness ! 😀 I don't know if it is a some bug or no ...

(16 hours and 15 mis remaining and I used macbook from 9:00 am) ... Good isn' t it ? 🙂

DiDinko wrote:

Maybe this battery issue is caused by Wifi... Try charge to 100% then turn off wifi and bluetooth and just open some PDF. When I did this, I get 17 hours of battery at 50% of brightness ! 😀 I don't know if it is a some bug or no ...

(16 hours and 15 mis remaining and I used macbook from 9:00 am) ... Good isn' t it ? 🙂

Estimates are no use, they're just estimates. Run it until it shuts down then you will know how long it lasts. We don't need more guesses estimates so post back with the actual figure.

Well.. the prior estimated time of 11 hours after resetting PRAM & SMC is gone and the final estimated time were 9:19 (just like new)!

I let my MacBook Pro 17" (late 2011) running on battery last night until it died itself (with sleep disabled using Caffeine app).

and the actual usage was 9:37 !!

Please note that no activities were done during the night, with no other app beside Activity Monitor. Bluetooth & WiFi turned on but it's not connected to anything. Brightness at the lowest level.

The actual usage time will be definitely shorter if it was used to i.e. browse with Safari, etc.

I can confirm that the estimation is true, now I'll recharge (2:30 until full), shut down & restart the MacBook (fingers crossed)!

This is weird.. after I fully charged it in the morning and restarted the MacBook, it is now impossible to reach that amazing time again (9 hours).. it says I only have 5:13 hours (at 97%) ...

And after 10 minutes the battery percentage was down to 95% and the time estimation settled to 6:17 hours and going down... ..

How on Earth I managed to pull a 9 hours straight of battery juice last night?? I'm losing 3 hours of battery due to restarting.

The PRAM & SMC reset must be temporarily kill the culprit and it is somehow revived again by restarting the OS.

This is absolutely a software issue! #Hello Apple?

Guys, there is a point that is very hard for me to understand. Just look at the screenshot I've attached. It is 0:39 with 11% battery life (It is in Turkish, never mind). So only by looking at this, one can say that I have no problem with the battery drain. It would be true to assume that way because If you got 0:39 with 11%, it means that you could have around 6:30 hours of battery life with a full battery. But in reality, I only have around 5-5:30 with a fully charged battery. So is it anything to do with the so called 'Estimated' battery life thing? Any comments?

Activity Monitor was wrong. With AM the only thing on I ran the screen saver with only a few checks of how it was proceeding. With just that I was at 5% after 5.5 hours. No other use during that time. Battery graph over 12 hours shows steep decline for about 2/3 of the time, then a moderate decline for awhile followed by another steep decline to the end. Spike is when I put the power cord back on.

This is what I got with a rMBP from late 2013. First screenshot shows regular usage (browsing, using word and iTunes). Then I tried to check the 'reduce transparency thing', fully charge the macbook and then reset PRAM and SMC. Second screen is the result for the same duration of usage. There really is an improvement on that side (even in terms of performances).

Next thing I'll try to push it hard with a Virtual Machine running and several applications to see how much I'd get (on Mavericks, I could work an entire day of at least 8 hours - with an hour break - without having to charge it and I'd end up with 20%).

Looks like 10.10.3 has fixed the battery drain issue. This is the estimate I'm getting on my 2013 MacBook Air. Of course it's inaccurate, but now I can hope for 10 hours at least. 🙂 It is important to note that this is only an estimate, I will post an update with real world battery performance later.

It didn't work for me either. Photos is using a lot of resources but I guess I'll give it time to do its thing before judging too quickly. Nonetheless, this is what I got, full charged, only browsing with Safari and listening to music with iTunes, headphones on. You can imagine my frustration since I have a late 2013 rMBP 13" that is supposed to last at least 8 hours...

PS: I lost 6% writing this post and it literally took me 5 min to write...

Hello Rajniipr,

Mine mba mid 2013 (os X El capitan, version 10.11.2) with 218 cycle count, does come back to better sentiments.

So now, after update from Yosemite to El capitan my battery comes back to 10-12 hours, after 4 hours on Yosemite and 10-12 on mavericks. I didn't a clean install, just update and I have the same app's like before.

Just before the update, I did a reset of pram and smc, following the steps on the apple support.

I hope that my battery it will stay like on the picture below and I hope that you will reach the same result like me.

I follow this topic from more than 1 year and now i get my battery back only after this update. I didn't the update to el capitan till now, because I was afraid that some app will stop.

What I can see with this version of os, is that the cooler doesn't start so frequently like before.

Hope it helps my reply.

All the best!