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Yosemite Battery Drain

I have been using Yosemite Beta for about a month. My battery drained incredibly fast using the Beta. I suspected battery issues would improve after updating to the public release of Yosemite yesterday. The issue has not resolved, however. Just in the last minute and a half of typing this question, my battery percentage has dropped 3%!


When you update, you get the notification that you need to optimize your mac to prevent excessive battery drain, but there is no description of how to optimize within Yosemite or on the web. How does one optimize their mac for Yosemite?


Apple, get on this!

MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Oct 17, 2014 6:01 AM

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Mar 2, 2015 5:45 PM in response to wesfromOK

Hi,


I remember back when I had an iBook. The battery lasted all day with constant use. After an update the battery drained in like 2 or 3 hours. At the time, I didn't really need the battery, so just shrugged it off.


As I remember, there were many people with the same problem and even lawsuits I think. What some people did was get new batteries. Currently on this MBP the battery seems to be working fine after the update.


What I would do is take it in to an Apple genius to check it out. You might get a new battery for Free. I remember somebody posted that that happened.


gl,

kel

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Mar 3, 2015 6:16 AM in response to avdheuvel

Hey avdheuvel,


I believe the so-called combo-fix is nothing more than the version 10.10.2 of Yosemite that comes automatically in the "updates" section of the Mac AppStore. The description of the two package are identical. I've been running 10.10.2 for a month now, and I've noticed no improvement whatsoever.

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Mar 3, 2015 1:27 PM in response to moheny

moheny wrote:


Hey guys, Any news with the new 10.10.3 ?


Unfortunately, anyone who would know the answer would not be able to share it as anyone testing a beta is required to abide by an NDA not to discuss anything about it; as well, we are not allowed to discuss beta software here and hosts do remove such posts.

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Mar 3, 2015 2:53 PM in response to babowa

Hey Babowa,

Beta went public, so maybe it's okay to discuss on it, plus people having this problem since the beginning of Yosemite and it might be a solution for them. It's amazing apple team don't give a flying **** about people having this problem, so maybe it's okay for people to discuss on beta version since they don't care. I mean it would be ironic if they care about beta comments and take their time to erase such comments but NOT taking care of the battery issue since they didn't take responsibility.

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Mar 8, 2015 6:52 PM in response to babowa

Hey guys,

Just want to say that whoever has this problem going to be stuck with this unless Apple going to fix it in their later version of Yosemite.

the problem is, that in most macBooks, Yosemite running inefficient.

every app you'll run will consume more power than it usually do, which cause your mac to drain your battery, even just leaving your mac on will consume more power than it used to be..

I'm getting 10 hours with 50% brightness, while in Yosemite i was getting 5-6.

what I've did so far:

* many tests with battery softwares, and analysing the activity monitor ( i've did a table comparison between Mavericks and Yosemite)

* I did clean install, which including formatting my SSD.

* I've reset the PRAM and SMC more than whoever know.

* Tried every trick google has to offer me, nothing really work.


at the end of day, after month of testing I went back to mavericks.

basically I have not problem to stay with this OS, the problem is, suddenly a lot of new softwares not support Mavericks which is a bummer.

Right now my battery did 420 cycles, and i have it only for one year an half, if i'll start to use Yosemite, I will reach the 1000 cycle in 7-8 month.

So no option for me, Hope 10.10.3 will somehow fix it, but my Guess it won't (and i'm **** of a positive guy).

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Mar 8, 2015 7:38 PM in response to moheny

Moheny, I went back to Mevericks too, but the battery problem stills. I have only 89 cycles, so I don´t think I have a problem with the battery. I have only 3 days of warranty left... so I don´t know whatelse I could do... any ideas? By the way, I reset PRAM and SMC a couple minutes ago.

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Mar 11, 2015 8:40 AM in response to msenard

I too was having a problem with my battery draining quickly on Yosemite 10.10.2. I have a late 2011 MacBook Pro. I thought it was an issue with the battery so I replaced it. My previous battery had under 500 cycle counts. New battery now has 7 cycle counts and was doing the same thing. I was only getting about 2 hours of battery time with the screen under 50% brightness on both batteries. I reset the PRAM and SMC and no change. One thing I noticed in my Activity Monitor is that Firefox was using up a lot memory and CPU usage with only a couple tabs open for whatever reason. I completely stopped using Firefox and switched back to Safari which seemed to help a little. I think the one major thing that helped me was reducing the transparency. Under System Preferences - Accessibility - Display, just simply checking the Reduce Transparency box added several hours back to my battery life. I went from 2 hours to probably 5 - 6 hours on battery. It probably could be a little better but at least I can work much longer now without having to plug in all the time.

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Mar 13, 2015 2:13 AM in response to Emalas

I upgraded to 10.10.3 and wait for a couple of days but still my battery is draining very fast (1.30H max). I did also a complete Hardware test and the result is that there are no hardware issues at all on my Macbook.

There are plenty forums where people complain about battery issues after upgrading to Yosemite. Can someone from Apple tell us whether they are working on it!!

I am also considering doing a downgrade to Mavericks as I cannot work efficiently with a 1.30H battery. I tried once but not sure if I did it correctly, is there someone who can help me.


Thanks a lot

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Mar 13, 2015 4:03 AM in response to Fabricedid

Hey, I did a complete testing with 10.10.2 (you can see my older messages), and send them to apple by mail.

I think they know there's a problem, but this problem is not big as the WiFi problem that they use to have, you see I have 2 more friends that have Macs and they don't suffering from the same problem we do.

so since, it's not the majority of people that having this problem I guess apple won't solve it... that' my guess, don't get me wrong, I hope they do but learning from the history it won't happen.

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Mar 13, 2015 5:54 AM in response to wesfromOK

Hello guys. My MBA just got back from the assistence and guess what they said to me? "There's no problem with the duration of your battery Sr. Thiago, maybe waste has been caused by the use of BLUETOOTH". I don't even use bluetooth... anyway, I know that this is not the problem, so I complained with them and they said they will analyse again. Someone already tried send the Mac to the assistence ?

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Mar 14, 2015 5:59 AM in response to Fabricedid

I downgraded yesterday to Mavericks and this time I can confirm that battery drain issue is still there i.e. I believe that Yosemite did change something to my firmware/hardware!!

I do have 4 MacBook/Macbookpro at home and it is only mine that had this problem (Macbookpro 15" mid-2009). It is totally crazy that nobody from Apple can take care of it.

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Mar 16, 2015 10:14 PM in response to wesfromOK

Ok I upgraded from Mavericks to Yosemite and I was amazed of how fast the battery was draining in my 2013 macbook air. I tried playing a you tube video of about an hour and the battery when from 100% to 95% in less than 10 minutes. Now I did something and the battery works awesome again.

What I did was:

1. If you upgrade to Yosemite, Backup all you information on an external disk.

2. Download Yosemite OS from the apple app store and create a USB stick Yosemite Installation Drive with DiskMaker X

3.After you backup all you files restart your computer and press the Option key and select the USB stick Yosemite Installation Drive with DiskMaker X.

4.Before you install Yosemite go to Disk Utility and erase the partition completely, repair and verify disk for errors.

5.Now install Yosemite just be patient and wait.

6. After that, when you are setting up yosemite for the first time it gives you the option to use backup, well connect the disk and restore all your files and apps.

And You are done.

4

I did this and I left a video playlist running continuously in you tube while doing other stuff with screen around 75% or 80% of brightness . I started at 6:30 pm and at around 2 am I still had around 26% which will give me another 3 or 2 hours not sure because I didn't let it died completely.

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Mar 17, 2015 4:46 AM in response to elctronyc

Hi electronyc,


That is pretty much how I upgraded but am definitely seeing poor battery life here.


Glad you're experiencing good battery life. Perhaps you could try some other activities (in addition to watching movies) for a while and report back your findings? I know I see a pretty good drain just surfing the web with Safari, for ex. (no Flash plug-in installed either!)


Cheers

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Mar 17, 2015 7:24 PM in response to JP007

I do not know how good this is it because I usually don't watch movies in my macbook air. I put a 38 GB movie in my macbook air Xmen days of future past, m2ts extension and played in VLC with 90 or 95% of brightness. I watched the whole movie and the credits which is 2:11:35 long, At the end of the movie I had 38% left, So I played the movie again and it played for 45 more minutes until it told me low battery with 5% left. Also, the computer was connected to wifi all the time.

So I guess with a lower brightness setting and a smaller movie file I would get more time? maybe

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Yosemite Battery Drain

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