macOS Mojave battery drain

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*

Same issue on a 2015 MBpro 15" retina; usually got +/- 10hrs on a full charge in Sierra or High Sierra. Even clean install of Mojave, resetting PRAM etc, I got less than 6 hrs. Waiting a few days for indexing to stop, but battery life didn't improve. Found some "workarounds" like "turn this off", "don't use that app" ... sorry, show stopper for me. Drain while sleep did sometimes take 5% over night, sometimes less than 2%.

Went back to High Sierra and et voila, 10:52 on a full charge.

I liked the dark-mode of Mojave, but can't sacrifice 4+ hrs of battery life.

I've recently purchased the 2018 15 inches MacBook Pro with TouchBar (i7, 16GB, 512GB) and updated to Mojave about a week later since the official release. I'm now experiencing a slightly worse battery life. As I'm reading this post I noticed some serious battery issues with Mojave, does anyone know whether Apple officially addressed this problem?

The drain issue still happens once a while, even though I turned off the location services, so it is not as easy as I thought. After struggling for a week, I finally reinstalled the masOS from an erased disk.

If this issue continues on and off, or bothers you, just like it bothers me and scares me into placing my MacBook on the desk, used to be in my backpack, overnight everyday, I suggest backing up all your files and having a clean installation, or turning off your laptop before bed.

After five months of happy time using a MacBook and a major update, I can't believe I need to turn off my laptop and reinstall the OS just like using Windows. [sigh] I only installed 7 apps on this laptop for light work.😟

I’m having the same issue with my mid-2014 13” MacBook Pro running 10.14.

I’ve tried the pmset -g suggestion back a few pages, but nothing showed up as a possible culprit.

This battery drain is absolutely ridiculous though. Mine drains a lot faster than it used to while using it and while it’s sleeping. Very disappointing.

Edit: Those instructions aren’t correct. You’re supposed to enter:

pmset -g assertions

I did that and mine shows three causes.

- sharingd

- hidd

- VLC

I also went into Activity Monitor. Under “Preventing Sleep” shows hidd and VLC. I’m not sure if either of those affect sleep when I close the lid, but everything should be put to sleep when I close the lid.

The obvious one to address first is VLC, so I’ll quit that app before putting my machine to sleep and see if that helps. I have my doubts it will.

Apple are not monitoring this forum. I suggest everyone here to take the case to Twitter, mentioning @AppleSupport, at least they respond there. In short, they don't admit that there is any problem with Mojave and they say that its probably third party apps, which is a total ******** so it seems, judging by the comments in this forum.

It does work for me. I do have the same model.

The clean installation, I meant, copy all and only your documents onto a thumb drive or cloud drive, erase the disk by Mac's Disk Utility. I haven't used Time Machine, since I only installed 7 Apps (Office OneNote、OneDrive、Filezilla、Affinity Pro、Phonto Scapre Pro、Eudic、Firefox) and a total erase did not hurt much to me. Also, I misplaced my trust in Apple, so this time I treat Apple as Microsoft. I don't recommend using Time Machine, because I don't want any old settings back to influece the system.

I reinstalled the OS on Sunday night and I didn't install any apps or software to test performance. I went to bed with my laptop on the desk on full charge. (I turned on Wifi, disabled Bluetooth, Location Services, iCloud)*. The next morning was still 100%. I did't use it for the whole day, only checked the battery meter by opening the lid. When I returned home, I opened it again and it was 98%. I started to reinstall all my apps and software and left the laptop with 75% on the desk again before bed. This morning it was 72%. It seems to me the energy comsuption is back to normal. I will try it for more days.

* I disabled iCloud was because I didn't want my MacBook to be in sync with my other devices.

Same here. Mac Book Pro Retina Late 2013 i7, 16GB RAM and 1TB. It drains fast and drains while it is suppose to be sleeping. They need to research this. This battery drain is happening on all MacBooks. I have three in the family and it is happening on all of them.

I did have the same problem... downgraded to High Sierra.

Downgrade get copy High Sierra on a USB Stick or with Time Machine. Then: https://www.imore.com/how-downgrade-macos

That solved the battery drain but my battery isn't charging any more. 😮

Apple Support contacted and gave me case number true Twitter.

I have to go to an Authorized Service Provider. I've been there with my White iMac. 😠

They said I had to talk to them about how much money it will cost.

Sorry... but here's the line I have to draw... Apple screws up, I have to pay for it. 😝

I'm done, I give up... going back to Windows. I can pick and choose what I want.

Else Hack - in -tosh then I screw it up. 😁

forsythsteve wrote:

I have the same issue with McBook pro 2015 - Apple better get their finger out and sort! Biggest tech company and they do this...?!?!?

Do... what?

Let us say that a hundred users in this thread have a "battery drain".

So there must be an egregious bug in Mojave, right?

Then why do millions not see it?

Luis Sequeira1 wrote:

Do... what?

Let us say that a hundred users in this thread have a "battery drain".

So there must be an egregious bug in Mojave, right?

Then why do millions not see it?

I agree with you, there should be more people with the same issue. As you can see at the first post, about 1000 people reported they got the same behaviour after install Mojave. For most people, this sounds like a bug. But if you prefer, we can call it a strange behaviour in some special cases with maybe the use of some special applications. Anyway, since this behaviour happens after installing macOS Mojave and not with Sierra, High Sierra etc., something happens while the upgrade which triggers this issue. Or would you say hundreds of people are to stupid to use their devices, or got a hardware issue at the same time? Another question is, how many people do really report this issue? For me, I got one friend who got the same issue but doesn't report it here because his company takes care of his MacBook...

But don't get me wrong, all this mimimi about Mojave is a terrible OS, Apple is a bad company etc. etc. is more annoying than this battery drain issue. ;-)

cheers,

Ole

@olemole

Why do people complain?

Because they can work on there MacBook a couple hours instead. You pay premium prices, then it should work correctly.

Or when battery isn't charging any more after the update. That is a nice laptop?

Clearly in the Apple bubble!

Mate, cool down. I didn’t said they shouldn’t complain. If you scroll up, you’ll see I’m facing this issue and complaining about it. What I mean is that people always complain in theirs Apple hating mode and do not think about how complex it is to build an OS and take care of millions of different use cases. And yeah of course, I want to get this issue fixed asap, but I do not hate apple because I got an issue with an OS that is on the market for a month now. If you look at other companies, they all got issues. In my opinion the root cause of the more less quality relish in this stupid one year release cycles the customers want. So yeah, please complain about issues, but do not always do that so hateful.

Apple experts offcourse have tested this new OS on their own Mac and surely

they quickly noticed this draining issue. The question is why they proceed?

And it's quite unusual that nobody in the tech group is answering our

queries. I speculate that its data mining related. Probably, they are

testing or experimenting on something. Not bad to hypothesize!!!

On Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 3:45 PM Apple Support Communities <

I'm seeing the battery drain issue on an early 2015 13" Macbook Pro. I used to be able to leave it for days on end without it needing to be on charge and it would barely lose any power. Since upgrading to Mojave I'm seeing the battery almost empty if I leave it overnight.