macOS Mojave battery drain

I spoke to Apple support, suggested resetting the battery/memory by holding down the control, shift, option and power keys then release the first three at the same time. Also noted this update will take time to configure the file structure. It does this while sleeping and takes a incredible amount of resource. It took three days but my Mac has returned to normal all on its own or maybe the reset helped. Give it a try, sometimes waiting does pay off.

Copied from another post - seems to work for me:

The problem is the macOS continues to check for updates (including email, software, news, etc.) while your MacBook is asleep. This means it's very quick to get up and running, but it also means your battery goes down.

To fix it, you can tell you MacBook to disconnect from the Internet while it's a sleep.

To do this, you need to set the

tcpkeepalive

0

Open up Terminal and type:

sudo pmset -b tcpkeepalive 0

After you enter your password for sudo it gives you a warning saying some features may not work properly. This is fine, it simply disables Internet access during sleep.

You can check it is set correctly by running:

pmset -g

Which should show "

tcpkeepalive 0

And you can of course reverse it at any time by running:

sudo pmset -b tcpkeepalive 1

Simple!

Note: You can also force your Mac not to connect to the Internet when it's asleep even when connected to a power supply, if you like:

sudo pmset -a tcpkeepalive 0

-b

Also note: The results from

pmset -g

tcpkeepalive

The following worked for me though as usual YMMV depending on hardware and other OS configurations.

Initially, my 2017 MacBook Air (High Sierra) would lose around 2% battery while sleeping overnight. I upgraded to Mojave and was irked (to put it politely) that my machine would now lose around 25-30% over the same nightly time period. Personally, my CPU/horsepower requirement are modest. The main reason I purchased an Air was battery longevity. The 10.14.1 update did nothing to rectify this issue, so I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I found this thread and have been monitoring possible solutions…

I did the following:

Opened terminal and ran the following commands:

sudo pmset -b tcpkeepalive 0

sudo pmset hibernatemode 25

Opened Preferences>iCloud and deactivated 'Find My Mac'*.

*I appreciate that the latter step may be worrisome for some. However, my own circumstances render this functionality more or less superfluous …which I do hope is not famous last words! 😉

(Oh, just for the record, I don't have Power Nap enabled).

I've now been using my newly configured machine for around two weeks.

Result?

Battery performance is now better than I was ever getting with High Sierra.

I am now seeing zero percent power loss overnight.

What's made me even happier is that I've had the machine sleeping over entire weekends (Friday evening 5:00pm until Monday morning 9:00am) only to find 100% still on the battery. The same duration would have seen around 5-6% drain in High Sierra. I don't see this as a glitch/anomaly either as battery is still draining as I'd expect during normal working hours. I'm easily getting an entire working day (and then some!) from my machine without going anywhere near a charger.

Issues?

None to report.

Again, I can't promise this will work for you, all I can say for sure is that it has worked for me.

I also agree that while it would be nice to see Apple acknowledge the issue and post an official fix, as a long-time and now slightly cynical Mac user (though this could be purely down to age! 😉) it's sometimes best to be proactive than to wait.

Hi guys,

You know, I used to have the same problems on Mojave a few days ago. My new MacBook Pro had last only 3 hours after the update. I tried to reset power settings (SMC), NVRAM, geolocation, etc., but nothing helped. However, I came up with an idea to clean install OS, so:

1) I erased the hard drive and reinstalled Mojave

2) After first boot on the clean OS I reset power settings (SMC), and it resolved the issue.

Now my battery shows more than 15 hours while reading books and more than 10 hours while browsing with Safari.

Mac Book Pro 15, 2018 - https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/15-inch-space-gray-2.2ghz-6-core-256gb#

NVRAM - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

Power settings (SMC) - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

I hope it will help you! ):(

Peace!

Ok, so i solved this problem on my MacBook Pro 13'' (Early 2015). It turned out that battery drain was caused by fully loaded CPU (almost 100%). So, you can check this out, just open Activity Monitor (Finder - Apps - Utilities) and then look up for CPU tab. And then just watch which apps and processes uses your CPU. You can also check out other tabs and overall system and CPU load.

So it turned out that my CPU was used by the process called "qemu system x86_64 mac" and this was the reason my MacBook Pro had zero battery after about 3 hours after full charge. If you have the same process, just google the name of it and then you'll find the link to the thread on Apple Community on how to delete it (it's not that simple tho).

It really worked for me so my macbook works fine right now.

I am from India, updated my MacBook Air yesterday which is 1 week old, Mojave was draining battery like smartphone from 2015, the battery died in 4 hours against 10 hours on High Sierra with similar usage. Used time machine and back to High Sierra, now its back to normal.

For anyone having battery problems, usually the first thing to do is to reset the SMC:

How to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support

Second, if this does not fix it, is try and see what programs are using a lot of energy.

Look at Activity Monitor's energy pane; or click the battery menu in the menu bar.

Then I would run Applications -> Utilities -> Activity Monitor and look for anything that may be using an abnormally high amount of "Energy."

Sometimes old applications or daemons from previous operating systems don't play well with the new one and spin and use a lot of power.

djrob1010 wrote:

(...) I noticed it was warm to the touch. It was in the bag for about 3 hours before I used it. The battery had drained to 40%. I used my Mac normally.

Today I plugged in my Mac overnight and normally it’s cool to the touch at 100% but it was warm to the touch.

Same-same here - with MacBook 12": It feels cool with the lid closed - but after the update to 10.14, first time I experinced some warm bottom-side on my Mac while sleeping. Well, the reason seems that it obviously wasn't sleeping at all - but idle only. Check your current power management settings (Console => pmset -g) and pay attention to the "standbydelayhigh" value!!! In my case, it was set to "86400" (seconds) 😝

Cheers, Meshua.n

On a fresh install, Mojave seems to go a little nuts with Spotlight indexing. That means a tremendous amount of disk access, possibly even while your portable is "sleeping". There's a lot of disk I/O going on in Mojave behind the scenes, and I have some reason to think it doesn't handle corrupt files particularly well, so that could be contributing to your problem. Also, Mojave defrags in the background. Previous releases did as well, but combine that with its apparent difficulty accessing files it thinks are corrupted, and you might end up with the drive being hit even more than usually.

So best bet, for a portable, is to leave it plugged in for a day or two, at all times, after install.

(I put up a fairly lengthy discussion here; some of the issues I've found may be related to what you're experiencing: Frequent system hangs and freezes in macOS Mojave 10.14: Notes, reproducible errors, and possible workarounds)

I can't begin to imagine how @Michal_Banas figured to do this or what the effect is but can confirm this has fixed the battery drain issue for now.

Resetting the PRAM and SMC didn't change a thing but turning off the bluetooth - removing the magic mouse from my devices and also turning off the address book sync has returned things to normal.

I put my MacBook to sleep before going to bed and in the morning it had just used 1%. So far at work I'm using 20% every hour whereas previously i burned 100% in less than 3.

Thanks

Disable acrobat cloud sync settings, and reset PRAM & SMC, Then reboot in safe mode and select startup disk and run first aid, for me its resolved.. (MacBook pro 15" with touch bar).

See the following link to reset PRAM, SMC & SAFE MODE

Reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac - Apple Support

How to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support

Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac - Apple Support

Hope problem resolve..

I had this problem with a clean install of Mojave, and I tried zapping PRAM and resetting SMC and that didn't help. But now I think I found the problem—and a solution.

In Terminal, type

pmset -g

I was seeing

sleep 1 (sleep prevented by AddressBookSourceSync)

There's the culprit. I had Contacts syncing enabled on my two Google accounts, so there must be some problem syncing with Google Contacts. I removed *all* of the accounts in System Preferences > Internet Accounts, restarted the computer, and added them back. Eventually after stuff finished syncing, I no longer saw "sleep prevented by AddressBookSourceSync". *fingers crossed*

Hi everyone, I kind of solved the Mojave battery draining problem.

I have a MacBook Pro 13" with Touch Bar 2017 and since I updated to Mojave my battery started draining drastically, when I stoped charging, at night, before I go to sleep, it always had 100% of battery and then in the following day, when I turned on the macbook it only had 60% of battery, or less.

I've been watching the answers on this topic since the beginning of the week, to see if someone had a solution; two days ago I saw a reply who said "does it have anything to do with the dark mode?". Initially I thought it had nothing to do with the dark mode, moreover the "dark mode" should economize battery since IN OLED DISPLAYS the dark pixels are "turned off".

I investigated about the macbook screens and realized that even if they are great and have 4K, 5K, bla, bla, bla, they aren't OLED displays so the dark pixels aren't turned off and they are still setting their RGB values. What affects battery life is the luminance the display sets these RGB values at; all RGB values combinations require the same amount of battery life to display. In fact the dark value (0,0,0) requires even more energy than "normal values". I learnt it here.

Two nights ago I turned off the dark mode and when I turned off the Mac it had 41% of the battery remaining. Today, one hour before now (46 hours after turning off the Mac), when I turned on the Mac, I had even more battery, 46% to be more precise. It's like if the dark mode was also affecting the software and so, the numbers appearing in the top bar weren't "real". Now (one hour of usage after I turned on the Mac) I have exactly 39% of battery remaining.

In conclusion, the dark mode would be great for battery life saving only if Macs had OLED displays. However, the displays used on iPhone X and the new apple watches, which have OLED technology, power pixels as an as-needed basis, leaving black pixels in a totally "off" state.

Although this isn't neither a permanent solution, nor a normal thing to happen with "Dark Modes", even if the dark values require more energy, it isn't that much energy and it shouldn't drain macbook's battery like that.

APPLE HAS TO FIND A PERMANENT SOLUTION FOR THIS PROBLEM

Best regards,

Tiago Silva.

Well, might not be what everyone would call a solution but mine seems to now be fixed!! Apple talked me through wiping my hard drive and reinstalling Mojave last night. I was told not to sign with my iCloud just yet and see how it is performing. Was put into sleep mode at 2000hrs with 100% battery last night and woke this morning at 0800, with still 100% battery! then I signed into my iCloud and put to sleep for 2.5hrs, STILL 100% battery. Finally I reinstalled my time machine backup so my Mac was now in the same condition before I installed Mojave (I didn't really change much after installing it) put to sleep for 5hrs and I still have 100% battery!!! I have no idea if this will continue but I know I would never have lasted 19.5hrs battery on how Mojave was performing before. Apple did say to me that it sounded as though it had not installed properly and that was what was causing the battery drain. I got to this by phoning Apple Support and them talking me through this, maybe if enough people do this as well, they might take notice that there is a serious problem. Hope that this helps.