macOS Mojave battery drain

As I continued observing, my battery during sleep/hibernate mode (default)... looks like the battery draining issue solved on my mbpro 13 retina. only consumed 3-5% max on overnight.

macOS High Sierra v10.13.6 updated via appstore to macOS Mojave v10.14.1, I did:

- reduce motion in accessibility/Display

- stop auto update on appstore

- turn off location services

- untick auto adjust brightness

and this works on my side...

But, normal usage battery draining issue still remains the same. from 100% to 5% in 4hrs max... mostly safari and messages apps using significant energy.

Informing Apple via tweeter and they always give me this link: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204054?cid=tw_sr

Don't even bother telling "Apple is working in it, blah blah blah... nothing from them"

Over the last weeks I have tried several things to get rid of the sleep battery drain. Sometimes I thought it was fixed and then I would have another night where there was big drain.

Latest thing I tried is changing the hibernate mode setting to 25. Yes, it means there is a little lag in opening up the lid and getting going but overnight drain seems to be under control (I say seems to be - I need to give a few more days to see what happens). Tentatively optimistic, but I am disappointed in Apple and their response to this. I have never had an issue upgrading before but this time seems to have brought several problems.

Hi all,

please contact Apple support like I did. They need more information about this issue. As far as I know, apple is not monitoring this boards. As the name says, it’s an user community! I contacted apple support via twitter and after some chat session I got called from a really good senior advisor. So please please get in touch with Apple Support to let them know there is a real issue!

Best,

Ole

do you know what your battery’s cycle count is ?

about once a month its a good idea to let the battery drain down below 20% then full recharge after.

i normally plug in above 50%, so i dont tax the battery cells too much.

but mojave does seem to be working internals a little harder than sierra and high sierra. probably in the areas of graphics.

@adelemitch

@ScatteredFrog

Yes, I noticed this thread has bifurcated into two separate issues. Both are battery drain problems caused by the Mojave upgrade, but one is during sleep ("SLEEP DRAIN") and the other is during normal use ("WAKE DRAIN").

The upgrade from High Sierra to Mojave instantly cut battery life by worse than half on my MacBook Pro "13-inch, Mid-2012", which I purchased directly from Apple little more than one year ago. That's the WAKE DRAIN problem. I don't seem to have the SLEEP DRAIN problem, except that the WAKE DRAIN problem seems to reduce battery life universally across both wake and sleep modes.

As I read through recent posts on this thread, I see posters with SLEEP DRAIN beginning to agree on a patch that works. It involves changing hibernate settings, and a number of posters confirm that it works.

If I'm not mistaken, no reasonable patch has yet been suggested on this thread for WAKE DRAIN that other posters confirm to be effective.

Turning off useful features (as some have suggested) is not a reasonable patch. Turning them off doesn't fix the bug but only shuffles the bug around by reducing system functionality in other ways. If I have to turn off "Find my Mac" to restore battery life, for instance, then the new problem is that my hardware is exposed by the Mojave upgrade...

I have recovered a stolen iPhone because I tracked it on another device and called police. The perp was caught, and I'm now a solid believer in "Find my Mac" on all hardware. An effective patch will fix the WAKE DRAIN without reducing functionality.

This thread has been discussing two possibly related issues, one is battery drain while asleep, and another is excessive battery drain when working. Your suggestion to check running Apps is a sensible thing to check for excessive battery drain when working, but (obviously) not an option for when the system is asleep.

My system was suffering from 'sleep drain', and I also feel that the battery drain when working is also a problem, but it' less quantifiable.

My hunch, and it's only a hunch, is that Spotlight is using more power than I'd expect it to. It's often highlighted as a significant use of battery power. Apple Mail is pretty bad too. Obviously, these are the latest versions (not old apps) as they both get updated when the system is updated.

I've 'fixed' my system by setting the tcpkeepalive value to zero (it's mentioned in many posts in this thread). This is not a great solution as it disables 'Find My Mac' which has saved me several times before. I'm unhappy about going on public transport with my Mac without that feature!

i think this is because the RAM is constantly working in the hibernation mode. you need to change the hibernation mode from 3 to 25 to make sure every thing is off during hibernation mode. i tried this and it has helped considerably. at least in hibernation the power loss is slow, however while using it power still drains like crazy. apple really needs to work on it. the worst part is when we talk to apple representative over the chat they behave as if this issue does not exist. they act totally unaware of this issue. apple should acknowledge when so many mac users are reporting an issue.

Well i know changing the hibernation setting to 25 may not help. But it will help may be a little. May be it depends upon on the machine version. I am using 2015 13” retina. I noticed some improvement. But not as good as it was with older version of macOS. i had a shattered screen and my mac was lying in the corner for 6 months. Even after this much time it had some 20% of power left. So hibernation setting may give some relief but not final solution

Thank you! Waiting for others to test out the same thing to see if its just me.

Update on disabled content cache: 18hours since last charge and battery was 99% when i opened lid just now.

laptop ( battery) is 5 years old.

Y'all can check your battery status: (OPTION KEY + APPLE IN THE CORNER TOP -> SystemInformation (first option) -> battery (third option) ) check your mAh and post it?, look my cycles only 87 and i cant believe that i have about 2 hours of battery life, more than $2000usd in my loved one third world country for this???

Anybody has try the preview of 10.14.4?

BTW: i just test the next one, its so annoying but when i use the keyboard my battery life decrease, i dont know why, i read that the new mbp keyboard and the battery are together but it doesnt have any sense that improve when i click nothing but read a web for example.

I have tried everything: SMC reset, PRAM reset, clean install of Mojave, clean install of High Sierra... my MacBook Pro 15-inch 2018 won't actually "sleep" when I close the lid. It goes to sleep (and doesn't loose battery power) when I actually click "sleep" (or "shutdown") before closing the lid. This is odd and annoying.

Final update.....

New MBPro with Mojave native just as bad as new with HS and Mojave upgrade. Battery drain is so significant that AppleCare has concluded that I have tried and done everything possible. Therefore, I am returning today for a full refund. This 'tacit' understanding by Apple (Senior level) without even doing any diagnostics, confirms that Apple knows that there is no fix at this time. I will revert to my 2013 MacBook Air and suffer for a while with the slower processing of my photo editing software. When this is fixed, whether through software or new hardware; I'll return for another laptop.

For those of you who have purchased a new MacBookPro; there is no solution to this problem at this time. As much as I like the speed and performance with my applications; I refuse to accept this faulty equipment--even in running only HS. Therefore, if there is any possibility that you can return and get a refund; then do it asap. Otherwise, you will ultimately be part of a class action claim and resolution that will not return close to what you have spent; in time and money.

I am disappointed with Apple, but not abandoning them. I trust that a solution will be forthcoming.

Just do a backup of all files you may need and restore your mac to default OS. Than install high sierra (google install file) and stick with that ! everythin might take a while to complete but once you have done that youre all set BTW !!! IMPORTANT !!! do not install any new OS UPDATES I did that while ago and dont have a problem anymore (just keep a copy of your old OS on seperate drive and in case if you may need some of files just copy them over - at same time you wil free up alot of space on your drive)

I've read the entire thread and from my take from these 2 replies...

(@pduke 7 on 4/29/19 As far as i could understand the battery drain while sleep was fixed and we were left with a major general battery drain while using mojave. AND @ED in PA on 4/29/19 I believe you're right. The wake drain problem has never been solved by the thousands of people who visited this thread after Mojave hobbled their healthy batteries.)

the batteries were damaged/drained from a Mojave issue but the fix could NOT reverse the damage already inflicted. Therefore if you have a newer MBA , your battery was probably damaged but not to the extent that you cannot use your computer without it being plugged in so you wouldn't notice anything wrong. My MBA, which was about 3 years old at the time of the Mojave update and my mother's 2 year-old MBA were inflicted with enough damage to the battery that it now needs replacing.

Apple will not admit this. I've taken my computer into the store twice and have spoken over the phone with tech support hoping to get the battery replaced at a discounted cost considering the issue (going over both computer and their battery issues occurring within the same time frame). No luck!

@ Yunrazzy

A promising lead, but to no avail in my case. There is no process called "qemu system x86_64 mac" in my library or system. The CPU is not being overloaded by anything in particular, but still the battery drain (awake drain) issue persists on my MacBook Pro, and has continued since the day I installed Mojave.

Qemu has caused problems for users of Mac OS. It does hog almost 100% of the CPU for some people. For the curious, search the Apple discussions site for the term "qemu," but, a warning about searching for "qemu system x86_64 mac" on Google. It turns up very sketchy looking sites that may do more harm than good. QEMU (abbreviation for Quick Emulator) is an open source virtual machine hardware emulation hypervisor that performs hardware virtualization; that is, a Linux emulator used to create virtual machines. QEMU virtual machines emulate all devices needed to run a VM Guest.

I don't know how it ends up in unsuspecting users' systems but I'm glad it's not in mine.