Macbook Battery life useless since El Capitan

Apps can affect Mac performance, battery runtime, temperature, and fan activity - Apple Support

Try a SMC reset:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

Ciao.

I have been using mac book for more than 2 years. Suddenly i am getting only two hour battery. Otherwise i have not added any new app. my general usage is following :

chrome

vmwarefusion - pause mode

one java program.

Fan is always on and i really donot now which app is using so much cpu and generates heat.

regards, Partha

Hi OGELTHORPE,

So I assume your battery life is okay after El Capitan?

I'm really wondering if it's just me.... my Macbook Air mid 2013's battery life just went down to 3 hours from around 7 hours.

Unforunately, SMC reset didn't work.

This was taken after I had reset my SMC. Sad.

Hi,

I too am facing the same issue. My MacBook Air (13", 128GB 2014 model) used to run for 10 - 12 hours on a single charge. With the El Capitan upgrade, it is struggling to maintain 3 - 4 hours. Apart from this I even lost many of my tags in Finder. How could Apple even push out a such a horrible upgrade? :-/

Bring the MBA to an Apple store genius bar and have the battery examined. The evaluation will be FREE,

Ciao.

Same problem here MacBook Air down to 4.5 hours. Only change was I upgraded to El Capitan. Done all the usual requested junk a (SMC etc.)number of times.

I also have a MacBook retina same issue and just purchased a new iMac Retina it's is constantly freezing (needs power off to fix) or the stupid colour wheel is on for minutes.

Absolutely the worst OS upgrade I have experienced after working for Apple and using their products since 1984. I'm VERY disappointed with my Apple products.

Apple needs the get their act together and pull out all stops the get El Capitan fixed ASAP.

My 2014 MacBook Air having the same issue also, and very sure this is after the El Capitan upgrade. Same usage but battery last only 3 hours down from 8 hours.

Tried reset SMC but no improvement. Checked Activity Monitor and didn't find any suspicious apps draining power abnormally.

Same issue here. MacBook Air mid 2012. System diagnostic tool shows 98% battery health, iStat shows 1% battery health !!!! after 450 cycles. At first I had about 20% of battery capacity. Now I can't even turn it on with out charger. I have tried to reset SMC and other advices. No results. And yes it shows service battery.

1) Why did battery capacity fall so rapidly fast? OK->OK->OK-> 2 hours of battery life? how is that possible?

2) Why system diagnostic data and iStat data differ?

3) Why it can no longer calculate remaining battery life?

This problem started in my mid 2013 macbook air before i upgraded to El capitan.

I noticed little drain in Yosemite but with el capitan, battery really lost at least half of its performance.

Went to genius, checked it everything was fine. Tried all the ways to decrease my battery usage. no result. my 10 hour long battery dropped to 5 sometimes 4 when i watched movies online.

After reading all these comments here, finally decided that this is not about my machine, but older macs obviously cannot keep up with new el capitan and obviously apple does not read any of these complaints here.

Finally, i did a clean reinstall to mountain lion(which came with the machine), and got my battery life back.

it is unbelievable after months of bad battery life, in the last 1,5 hour it came down to 85% though i kept downloading programmes, resetting everything.

It is like on its first weeks now.

I know el capitan has all the continuity, and new tricks that are practical, but the sole purpose of buying this laptop was having a light, long lasting computer with me without carrying stupid chargers. That is why i traded my up to date system with battery life.

And recommend it for people who don't think they would lose so many things by going back to original OSX on their laptops.

I followed these steps: (though this is for going back to yosemite, you can go back to anything that was your original system)

http://osxdaily.com/2014/10/18/clean-install-os-x-yosemite/

I have a macbook air 11 inc(With El Captain) and I have had it for a 1.5 month.For first times , I used 10 hours , but after the updating El captain I used for a 5 hours max.With considering this experience , I think problem not in the system , it is in the update.

Mythrandir, regrettably I have to agree with your statement and assessment.

I too have had huge anomalies with battery life and battery reporting. As an example when I started this post the battery monitor showed 72% @ 2.5hr now a few hours later (Okay I had to stop and take care of critters & dinner) the meter shows 61% @ 4.6hr ***? Review of the activity monitor for both time periods, shows no apps using excessive power or CPU. I have a mid 2012 MBP 15 Retina and Coconut battery shows my battery capacity at 88% which is well above the normal operation status of similar age & type of battery.

As you point out the issue isn't necessarily with hardware, or applications but with the OS itself. I would hope the discussion group and Apple would begin to provide direct answers to these type of questions.

Just a follow up. Today with just Safari open and full charge not 60min ago. I'm down to 64% battery life & the monitor claims 1:30min run time left. Really, even at this stage in the life cycle my battery is good for only 2 & half hours?

This doesn't even make sense. Linc, as one of the best long time contributors any ideas?

Same issues with my early 2015 MBP. No apps running after full charge avg of 5 hr battery life.