macOS Mojave battery drain

I've got the same issue. Mac Pro 13' retina Touch Bar late 2016. Batery life lasts now less than 2 hours. Thanks for upgrade... or maybe downgrade... No more buying apple devices from my side. Too many issues this year or rather 3 years.

You may be right... but I really observed a trend in Apple software. Every year they make more and more mistakes every update... it looks like they ship products that are not tested and analysed. I don't know, maybe programmers that they hire are less and less experienced or they do it on purpose.

Hmm. Except this battery issue, Mojave is the best release since Snow Leopard, in my opinion. Even the beta was rock solid, and funny, there was no battery issue for me. I guess the root cause of issues like that are these stupid yearly update cycles / major releases. Who needs every year a „new“ OS? In my opinion the only people who need yearly updates are those bloggers, press and kiddies to run the latest fancy stuff, while blogging about no innovation. ;) Anyway, have a look to the windows guys, often they can’t boot after updates, get dataloss and other more really bad issues. Of course, „we“ pay a lot to Apple to not facing this kind of issues, but as I said, we always able to boot without dataloss. See the migration from hfs to APFS, other vendors would tell you to reinstall or you got no support anymore. Long story short, for me, Apple is the most less evil vendor. Be sure, sometimes I really hate them, but then.. sometimes a bit late, my issue is fixed and I remember how many unfixed issues I had with other vendors...

After updating 10.14.1 for sure solve the problem. But I suspect that OSX also has the weird issue with iOS after new updates. To solve this, I always do as follows => after charging to 100%, reboot your machine (iPhone, iPad or MacBook ... any device has battery drain problem) with charging cable still attached. After rebooting, check the battery charge % to see if it is still stay on 100%. If it is still 100%, pull the charger, if not, charge to 100% again before pull the charging cable. (no need to reboot this time). Do it several cycle right after any new OS update, then the battery % reading should go back to normal. I suspect that it is the battery % reading messing up after the new updates. Rebooting the device will somehow turn it back to normal.

Besides this method, I also find quit all the app/software before computer sleep does help. With lots app/software opened in sleep mode (7%) drained a little more than without any app/software opened (3%).

My MacBook Air 2017 seems now back to normal. The last charge was at night of the Nov. 10. After charging, I have used about 1 hour of airplay video and the 100% battery had not drop a bit before going into sleep mode. Now it is afternoon of Nov. 12 and I still have 50% of battery left. In between, it has been sleeping through for 2 nights and couple hours of usage on Nov. 11. And I did not have any app/software opened at first night and I did have some app/software left open at the second night.

Hope these tricks can help !

My wife's Macbook 2015 has the same issue.

On 10.14, it would be out of battery after several hour's sleep.

On 10.14.01, it became better, but still be worse compared with 10.13. It lost 30% battery after over night.

The trick did the job : with 10.14.0 I had this issue too. 100% of my batterie drained in about 15 hours (in sleeping mode) ! But I put the hibernatemode to 25 instead of 3 and this night I've lost only 1% (44 to 43%) in about 8 hours.

Today I've done the update to 10.14.1. And tcpkeepalive is back to its original value (1). I'll see tomorrow is the bug is still existing or not.

hibernatemode 25

powernap 1

gpuswitch 2

hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage

highstandbythreshold 50

displaysleep 45

womp 1

networkoversleep 0

sleep 0 (sleep prevented by sharingd, backupd)

tcpkeepalive 1

halfdim 1

But can someone tell me the differences between hibernate mode 3 or 25 ? I've read the man page but it's not very clear to me.

Thank you very much.

bigorno wrote:

The trick did the job : with 10.14.0 I had this issue too. 100% of my batterie drained in about 15 hours (in sleeping mode) ! But I put the hibernatemode to 25 instead of 3 and this night I've lost only 1% (44 to 43%) in about 8 hours.

Today I've done the update to 10.14.1. And tcpkeepalive is back to its original value (1). I'll see tomorrow is the bug is still existing or not.

hibernatemode 25

powernap 1

gpuswitch 2

hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage

highstandbythreshold 50

displaysleep 45

womp 1

networkoversleep 0

sleep 0 (sleep prevented by sharingd, backupd)

tcpkeepalive 1

halfdim 1

But can someone tell me the differences between hibernate mode 3 or 25 ? I've read the man page but it's not very clear to me.

Thank you very much.

The man page ("man pmset" in Terminal) says:

SAFE SLEEP ARGUMENTS

hibernatemode supports values of 0, 3, or 25. Whether or not a hibernation image gets written is also dependent on the values of standby

and autopoweroff

For example, on desktops that support standby a hibernation image will be written after the specified standbydelay time. To disable

hibernation images completely, ensure hibernatemode standby and autopoweroff are all set to 0.

hibernatemode = 0 by default on desktops. The system will not back memory up to persistent storage. The system must wake from the con-

tents of memory; the system will lose context on power loss. This is, historically, plain old sleep.

hibernatemode = 3 by default on portables. The system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and will power memory

during sleep. The system will wake from memory, unless a power loss forces it to restore from hibernate image.

hibernatemode = 25 is only settable via pmset. The system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and will remove

power to memory. The system will restore from disk image. If you want "hibernation" - slower sleeps, slower wakes, and better battery

life, you should use this setting.

Please note that hibernatefile may only point to a file located on the root volume.

This is seriously so frustrating! Has anyone found a solution? My macbook was at 79% before going to bed last night and I opened it today and it was dead. That never happened before the mojave update! Thanks a lot Apple!

Same here... I don’t use my Macbook Pro that much sometimes for months and it has always battery like 80%. After mojave, it drains my battery overnight. Charged it at night the next morning it’s less than 10%, or worse totally drained. This *****, that’s why I don’t want to update. I removed all the notifications, and sounds still the same... this need to be fix. I feel sorry to those who use it everyday for work or school. #APPLE you need to fix this!!!

@AndrewKe11y

Hi Andrew. This problem only occurs with Mojave. It is not related to a system optimizing after the update. I have installed almost every update for the past 20 years, both in macOS/OS X and the earlier Classic Mac OS. There has never been a sudden battery drain as dramatic as this Mojave update causes. The problem doesn't resolve by itself, either. My MBP's battery drain issue is just as severe today as it was when I first booted Mojave two weeks ago.

Some posters on this and other threads have proposed Terminal edits to the OS that they believe successfully patch the Mojave battery drain issue on their systems. I hope to wait until Apple catches up with them and implements patches in a Mojave update. Hopefully soon..

I upgraded my 13"MacBook Pro to Mojave this week. Last night I unplugged the power because of a storm, and this morning I was very surprised to see the flashing battery symbol - zero battery! I couldn't even start it up for a good 10 minutes after plugging in. My battery was playing up before this, but I haven't taken it in for repair yet because Apple say they may need my laptop for up to 2 weeks and I REALLY can't do that because I need it for work.

Now I don't know what to do! 😮

For those experiencing this issue DISABLE “Find My Mac” under iCloud settings in system preferences. This solved my issue 100% on my brand new 13” 2018 MacBook Pro w/TouchBar.

I tried everying; new reload with restoring data, reload without restoring data, macOS downgrade to High Sierra, Apple Genius Bar, finally a total computer return and replacement new purchase. ALL had the same issue. Disabled “Find My Mac” issue resolved! I’ve sent in a bug report with Apple as obviously I’m not alone. Hope this helps others.

for me (late 2013 15" mbp, 2GHz), i have noticed some additional battery drain than previous releases ....

i would say about 3-5% faster drain with the same usage which is fairly constant for me:

i use iTunes to play streams while having a safari browser open for light surfing, and some other non-intensive apps like outlook, calendar, etc .... no heavy/pro software or games running that can drag the power reserve down.

system information is showing my battery cycle count is @ 505, about 1/2 of the approx. life expectancy of my computer's battery.

i'm neither impressed, nor too disappointed. i'd rather be impressed but i suppose that this is the price we are paying to run the same OS version across the board of apple laptops which go back to about 7 years.

i should be thankful that my older model has more battery cells than the newer models which are thinner.

shouldn't apple be looking into newer battery tech by now ?

I have a MBA mid 2013. I had the same issues with my battery,

However a previous post has worked for me :

I updated to 10.14.2 beta (18C48a) last night and this morning I woke up with 0% of battery. So I tried plugged in, and when login to desktop. It said that my battery condition : Replace now. And now, without being plugging in, my Mac Book won't turn on. I don't really understand if this is the MacOS Mojave issues or really my battery issues. I checked my Battery Cycle and it's only 600-ish. My Macbook is MacbookPro Retina (13 inch, Early 2015). Up till now, I'm really frustrated. Should I go replace the battery or is this some kind of Mojave issue. I've tried everything including to reset the SMC, disable the Find the Mac. Still nothing is working. I don't think this is the battery problem. Anyone here experience the same problem?