Level 1

8 points

High Sierra - battery drain (Safari browser)

Hi. I noticed that Safari in my Macbook Air (2017) drains a lot of power. I paste an activity monitor screenshot. "Average Energy Impact" is above 20 points on this screenshot. Now it is 52,14. It is not normal value I think. I don't have any idea what is going on. When I bought my new laptop it was able to work for about 10-12 hours. Now it shows 5-6... Any idea? It is brand new laptop with about 14 battery charge cycles (macOs High Sierra 10.13.2).

MacBook Air, macOS High Sierra (10.13.2)

Posted on Dec 10, 2017 4:01 PM

Top-ranking reply

Mac_slide

Level 3

623 points

Posted on Dec 11, 2017 11:31 AM

This Safari has been pretty good, sounds like the website is misbehaving & is probably the culprit; and I would also turn off all extensions until resolved.

Besides doing what John says below, if it does not totally fix the issue... Got to Safari Tab, click Preferences and go to the autofill tab and deselect all items. While there check your extensions that there all off.

Those two have caused me issues in the past with excessive battery drain, especially autofill.

If it's still an issue, go back to Safari tab in your browser and click clear history. If you have Developer enabled - go to that tab and remove Cache. If it is turned off and you have no menu then select from the Safari Menu, preferences and go to the sprocket ADVANCED setting and go to bottom and tick on the developer tab.

If that's still not resolving things, then from the desktop, click once to get then up at top of screen in Finder - move to the GO tab, and scroll down to Go to folder and enter ~/Library/Preferences/

Remove: com.apple.Safari.plist

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21 replies

jundymek Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 11, 2017 12:03 PM in response to Mac_slide

I did everything you mentioned without any result result... Udemy, Netflix, any website with video use huge amount of cpu, energy. I think that is not normal behavior. Few days ago (I think before last mac os update) it worked normal way...

jundymek Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 11, 2017 12:23 PM in response to John Galt

John Galt wrote:

Determine if the problem persists while using Safari in that mode. After that, restart your Mac normally, and reply with your observations.

Back up your Mac prior to making any changes to its file system. To learn how to use Time Machine please read How to use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac - Apple Support.

I can't run Netflix or Udemy in safe mode because there are no Safari required extensions here (flash or silverlight). There is no activity monitor in that mode...

jundymek Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 11, 2017 1:10 PM in response to John Galt

John Galt wrote:

If you require either one of them to use that site, then your Mac will consume a lot of energy while you use it. Neither Adobe nor Microsoft are known to write efficient software, so if you are required to use them then you must accept their inefficiencies as a consequence.

Ok. I understand but I already mentionded problem is since yesterday morning. Two, three days ago I normally watched Udemy without that battery problems. It is not normal. I'll try to reinstall mac os high sierra (directly from App Store). Is it good idea to reinstalling os?

jundymek Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 11, 2017 1:54 PM in response to jundymek

Hmm. Maybe it is UDEMY issue... I opened two tabs in my Safari browser - Udemy Video (paused) and Youtube Video (running). Below are screens from activity monitor.

Youtube (running video)

UDEMY (paused video)

What are proper "energy impact" values for watching video (Youtube, Netflix and similar)?

By the way - sorry for my language mistakes.

jundymek Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 11, 2017 11:00 AM in response to John Galt

It didn't help... CPU usage is still around 100% on Udemy site...

jundymek Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 11, 2017 12:05 PM in response to Mac_slide

Mac_slide wrote:

Some websites will do that with my usage too.

If you must use that website, try either another browser entirely or give Technology Preview a shot... I know in the past, there were problem with some sites that worked better there... than in safari for some reason.

As I mentioned earlier everything worked fine till yesterday... Should I reinstall my Mac OS?

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High Sierra - battery drain (Safari browser)