2020 MacBook Pro Battery Draining While Plugged In

[RoyalScam]

Woo hoo! I finally found some others with the same issue. I rarely post in forums since almost all my answers are found first but this time I've been searching and searching and searching for the past few weeks trying find some kind of answer. I'm running Mojave (10.14.5) on a 2018 15" MBP (purchased 4/2019, it seems to be the upgraded version with the flex cable and keyboard 'fix'). I use the Mac almost every day and keep it plugged it whenever possible.

Here's my scenario:
Ever since the May 2020 update for Mojave (at least that is when I began noticing this) at around 1 PM the battery percentage on the battery icon begins to slowly drop from 100% until it gets to around 89 to 91%. When I click on the icon it says either 'Battery is charged - Power source: Power adapter' or 'Battery is not charged - Power source: Power adapter.' When it reaches the end of its discharge period it first gives 'calculating time until full' but the time it eventually shows is waaay off, like in the range of 4-5 hours and lately 'more than 10 hours' (which it displayed unchanged until full) rather than the actual time of around 25-30 minutes. I tried resetting the SMC twice but no change to the calculated recharge time.

I was thinking, too, that it must be the new power management feature but when I read some of the descriptions it didn't seem to fit what was happening here and it never mentioned any kind of fixed discharge period like this. Also, nowhere did I find that it would be sent to anything but Catalina systems.

Secondly, I don't have the ability to turn it off or on again in System Preferences. Did I get only an incomplete update (or were we (non-Catalina users) not supposed to have received it at all)?

The other thing that I noticed is that my battery health has not improved so far. How long should it take before I might see an increase?

Also while I'm on the subject, wouldn't this regular discharge procedure increase the number of cycles in the battery's life and thereby reduce its lifespan sooner (since they only have around 1000 cycles on avg.) rather than help it last longer?

------------------

6-14-20 Update:
Since it has been quiet around here I thought I'd give an update.

After searching around a little more, I found other Mojave users with the same 'issue.' Over on Reddit there is a thread that describes the same thing that is found here. Of course they have no answer or solution to the inability to turn it off on Mojave either.

I personally don't mind this happening periodically since the battery does need some stimulation, but once every day??

I now found that 1 pm is just the base starting point. If I have the computer sleeping during this time then it will start the discharging routine shortly after waking later in the day.

I checked PMSET with terminal but there was no change or additions as far as the Battery Health Management update goes.

I'm curious if anyone pre-Mojave might have quietly received this update, too.

YES! I started a similar thread on Reddit as well (not the one you linked to), and kept getting the same "Battery Health Management" responses, but kept replying I was on Mojave, not Catalina! Finally, I drew the same exact conclusion as you did: I traced the timing of the start of the issue back to the installation of "Security Update 2020-003" around May 31st.

They MUST have subversively installed that Battery Health Management "feature" on Mojave machines with that update and not given us the actual user setting in the Energy Saver system prefs.

For me, I have my 2019 15" MBP i7 connected to a CalDigit TS3 Plus dock, getting 85W of passthrough. Working from home, I cannot live without the dock as I use it in Clamshell mode all the time. Never had this battery drain issue until the May security update. Goes down to around 90% according to Mac's own stats (less according to Turbo Boost Pro...even LESS according to Coconut Battery) before charging back up to 100%. This happens to me close to when I wake up/log on around 10am each day. Today, it was already at 93% on wake.

I don't mind if they added the feature...but give us an option to disable if we want!

Hello all,
new guy here who stumbled upon this thread having the same problem.

Do you notice an increase in cycle count caused by the frequent recharge episodes?
It's not entirely clear to me why a system ostensibly designed to protect the battery apparently intensifies its usage and leads to a quicker expiry of its designed lifespan?

I'm still not completely reassured about this behaviour....

I did not notice an increase in Cycle Count...until this morning. It had been at 28 for me while I've started paying attention to this issue last week. Today, I'm at 29.

 

[Jaimbo]

Just to give an update here on my end....

I haven't had time to poke around the Net more about what others are saying on this but nothing has changed on my end:

-It faithfully does its discharge thing for an hour each day. Typically at around 1 PM EST or whenever I reconnect the MBK to a power source later in the day. (I usually put the unit on sleep and pack it up when I'm done each day or when I travel from place to place.)
-The time left on the recharge period is still stating hours to go when the actual time is only around 30 minutes (although once time when I checked it was very close to the actual time, go figure ?).
-My cycles were at 39-40 when this update was applied, they are now at 46.
-Battery was at 94-95% prior to this update it is now at 90-91%. Coconut Battery app used to display my battery, in its online comparison chart, at above average on all accounts but now it shows it just below average in the first graph and plummeting on the second. This could be a coincidence for the sake of the argument, but I'm a bit leery.
While a not so direct comparison, my late 2011 17" model (although I don't use it anymore due to the infamous discreet graphics chip solder issue) had no less that 88-89% when I checked it many months ago. I know these are, in essence, two different styles of batteries so I'm not going to put full weight on this, but still...
-The latest Security Update was installed a few days ago when it came out, with no change to this issue (although to Apple's credit it was never mentioned in the description anyway).

I finally got around to filing a bug report on this issue (although I'm sure they have had plenty come in on it already) so we'll see...

Very likely I will upgrade to Catalina, since most of my 32-bit concerns have been resolved but if I can hold off through some resolution on their part, I will.

It still seems like there should be something that could be accomplished in Terminal as a short term fix but that is beyond by my time and expertise to figure out on my own.

 

[macpot]

I love this feature! my old Macbook Air held only 92% of original capacity after only 120 cycles, so I'd happily sacrifice 10% of battery any time to just keep it healthy.

Also, this appears to start only after your Battery Health is below 100%,
My "Battery Health" was somehow at 102% (of original capacity) since I bought the Macbook, and this just started happening tonight after my Battery Health dropped to 99%.

Battery charge went to 90% and then started charging.

The only issue is it currently estimates it will take 10 hours! to charge, but I just got from 90% to 95% in about 15 minutes so it is not accurate.

I hope apple brings an optional "Low Performance Mode" next, which disables CPU boost, etc. when we need to preserve battery power.

 

[BellaB]

Hi everyone!

I've been experiencing a nearly identical battery drain feature. My 2020 MBP 13" i5/16/1TB has used up 5 charge cycles in 30 days while fully plugged in. I have done SMC resets once a week and today officially turned off the battery health management. The only pattern I noticed is when the macbook decides to charge while plugged in, the Amperage in terminal shows a negative number.

Has anyone brought in their Macbook for servicing? I am concerned that it would a be colossal misuse of our time given that Genius Bar will be performing troubleshooting steps A - Z while we will be without a computer. Hopefully disabling battery health management does the trick. Otherwise reinstalling macOS Catalina and restoring a time machine backup would be the last resort before going to the Genius Bar.

 

[macpot]

Hi everyone!

I've been experiencing a nearly identical battery drain feature. My 2020 MBP 13" i5/16/1TB has used up 5 charge cycles in 30 days while fully plugged in. I have done SMC resets once a week and today officially turned off the battery health management. The only pattern I noticed is when the macbook decides to charge while plugged in, the Amperage in terminal shows a negative number.

Has anyone brought in their Macbook for servicing? I am concerned that it would a be colossal misuse of our time given that Genius Bar will be performing troubleshooting steps A - Z while we will be without a computer. Hopefully disabling battery health management does the trick. Otherwise reinstalling macOS Catalina and restoring a time machine backup would be the last resort before going to the Genius Bar.

Hi there,

Previously I had an app called "FruitJuice", it reminded me to use battery for a short while "every day", and also do a Maintenance Cycle (use battery down to 20%) monthly.

I believe this is essential to keep the battery healthy and avoid losing the capacity too quickly!

I had also another app called "Better Battery 2" with the exact same daily usage suggestion, so in my opinion, what macOS is doing with the Battery Health is actually a good thing and you shouldn't disable it.

Below is a screenshot of FruitJuice which recommends to use the battery every day:

 

[djbuddha]

So here's one for you guys.

I live stream on Twitch playing Music Videos for a bunch of bigger channels.

I have an almost maxed out MacBook Pro with the AMD Radeon 5600M (only thing not topped out is the hard drive, I opted for a 4 TB, not 8 TB). I've had it for about 2-3 weeks now. This machine was a replacement unit I got from Apple for a myriad of reasons stemming from the keyboard issue (3 repairs plus a bunch of other issues, but that's a story for another day). Before anybody asks, I paid to do a bunch of upgrades- I didn't get this machine for free.

When streaming with a single computer at 1440p / 60 frames per second while streaming music videos, I use about half of my entire system's resources (this is expected).

Here's the part that makes no sense:

Before my 1.5 hour stream earlier, I was using the computer upstairs unplugged and the battery was hovering around 30%. I try not to plug it in unless I absolutely have to these days (I used to use my older 2017 Macbook w/ a Thunderbolt 3 dock, but because it was always plugged in, the battery was a hot mess by the time the machine got EOL'd)

I came downstairs and plugged it in and then did my stream here's what's connected:

• 96W Power Adapter (original/ one that came with the computer) connected directly to the port closest to the rear on the left side of the machine
• USB-C to Lightning going to my iPhone XS Max to run OBS Camera (for my DJ controller overhead shot)
• USB-A to USB-C Apple Branded dongle attaching my Pioneer DDJ-1000 SRT to DJ with
• Hyper USC-C dock with the following connected:

• Gigabit Ethernet
• Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 for seperate mic input to talk over during the broadcast
• DJI Osmo Mobile 3 (mainly to charge it while it keeps my camera angles as I need them- so it doesn't randomly fall over while I'm playing lol)

So I started the stream and the computer was at 30%. Total system usage maxed out around 50%, wasn't running very hot by any means (surprisingly - I'm offloading the stream video encoding to the AMD graphics).

I finished my stream an hour and a half later, and the battery was at 7%

I have the battery health management disabled in System Preferences -> Energy Saver.

So a few questions:

• Will the computer just die if it drops to 0%?
• Is this normal behaviour? The same thing happened 2 nights ago when I had battery management enabled, so it seems to have made no difference disabling it

I'm aware that I probably should have it fully charged just in case before I start the stream, but this is dis-heartening. What's hilarious as a side note, I can do this stream successfully while running Windows 10 in a Parallell's Window w/ 16 GB allocated to it and 8 threads (4 cores) going to it while running Prime 95 and I STILL have 20% usage leftover ??

The computer is a beast, I just want this power issue sorted.

 

[jerryk]

So here's one for you guys.

I live stream on Twitch playing Music Videos for a bunch of bigger channels.

I have an almost maxed out MacBook Pro with the AMD Radeon 5600M (only thing not topped out is the hard drive, I opted for a 4 TB, not 8 TB). I've had it for about 2-3 weeks now. This machine was a replacement unit I got from Apple for a myriad of reasons stemming from the keyboard issue (3 repairs plus a bunch of other issues, but that's a story for another day). Before anybody asks, I paid to do a bunch of upgrades- I didn't get this machine for free.

When streaming with a single computer at 1440p / 60 frames per second while streaming music videos, I use about half of my entire system's resources (this is expected).

Here's the part that makes no sense:

Before my 1.5 hour stream earlier, I was using the computer upstairs unplugged and the battery was hovering around 30%. I try not to plug it in unless I absolutely have to these days (I used to use my older 2017 Macbook w/ a Thunderbolt 3 dock, but because it was always plugged in, the battery was a hot mess by the time the machine got EOL'd)

I came downstairs and plugged it in and then did my stream here's what's connected:

• 96W Power Adapter (original/ one that came with the computer) connected directly to the port closest to the rear on the left side of the machine
• USB-C to Lightning going to my iPhone XS Max to run OBS Camera (for my DJ controller overhead shot)
• USB-A to USB-C Apple Branded dongle attaching my Pioneer DDJ-1000 SRT to DJ with
• Hyper USC-C dock with the following connected:

• Gigabit Ethernet
• Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 for seperate mic input to talk over during the broadcast
• DJI Osmo Mobile 3 (mainly to charge it while it keeps my camera angles as I need them- so it doesn't randomly fall over while I'm playing lol)

So I started the stream and the computer was at 30%. Total system usage maxed out around 50%, wasn't running very hot by any means (surprisingly - I'm offloading the stream video encoding to the AMD graphics).

I finished my stream an hour and a half later, and the battery was at 7%

I have the battery health management disabled in System Preferences -> Energy Saver.

So a few questions:

• Will the computer just die if it drops to 0%?
• Is this normal behaviour? The same thing happened 2 nights ago when I had battery management enabled, so it seems to have made no difference disabling it

I'm aware that I probably should have it fully charged just in case before I start the stream, but this is dis-heartening. What's hilarious as a side note, I can do this stream successfully while running Windows 10 in a Parallell's Window w/ 16 GB allocated to it and 8 threads (4 cores) going to it while running Prime 95 and I STILL have 20% usage leftover ??

The computer is a beast, I just want this power issue sorted.

It will die if it it goes to 0%, maybe even a little before.

Be careful with that you power via USB-C. Use powered adapters to offload the amount of energy you are pulling from the MacBook. Also, running an external monitor can easily consume 20-40 of the 96 watts available since it utilizes the DGPU for external monitors, regardless of what you are doing on the external monitor.

 

[djbuddha]

It will die if it it goes to 0%, maybe even a little before.

Be careful with that you power via USB-C. Use powered adapters to offload the amount of energy you are pulling from the MacBook. Also, running an external monitor can easily consume 20-40 of the 96 watts available since it utilizes the DGPU for external monitors, regardless of what you are doing on the external monitor.

The only thing that’s unnecessary to be plugged into the computer is the gimbal. I’m not using an external monitor either- so I don’t think the external powering of things will apply here. It’s only my phone charging and the data coming off the phone that might be it.... but, I am only using half of my CPU’s limit, so why it’s falling is beyond me, with battery management turned off or on at that.

I did a PRAM / SMC reset and I’m going to try again with power management on and power management off. Testing both when the computer is plugged in with 30% left. (Won’t have time til Sunday). I’ll update in this thread.

After reading through this thread, I’m wondering if it is SMC / PRAM related. It should have charged when it was under 30% in both scenarios and should never got gotten as low as 7%

3 week old computer- I really hope I don’t need to go through the AppleCare thing again. Without getting into it too deep, it started in the beginning of June with my old computer, between really absurd and bad customer service and some other major issues I won’t disclose, I emailed someone that’s been mentioned in articles on Macrumours and then got an email from an executive liaison on this person’s behalf (it wasn’t Tim, but he’s very popular, I’ll say that much).

It took over a month to get this dealt with after sending it out 2 additional times after the first repair and even then, it got replaced. I really REALLY don’t want a similar experience again. It even got me to a point where I debated cutting my losses and switching back to Windows after a decade (I’m a somewhat new Mac user compared to my PC days).

The battery management tool is a great concept (especially for those who use Thunderbolt 3 docks)- as long as it doesn’t break some basic functionality which Apple is known to have happen as a result.

In another thread here on MR- I referred to them as Jenga. Take something out of the foundation to add to the top, while crippling the stability of their creation.

Thaaaaaaaaat’s Apple

 

[gatesbuster]

I have the same issue on my MacBook Pro 13" 3020. Weird; I unplug it and replug and it charges again. I thought originally maybe because I was running lightroom which can be heavy load

 

[Jaimbo]

Okay, here's my latest update and quirk, too.

Little has changed on the discharge/recharge cycle except that it moved its cycle up one hour and my battery health is at 89% with 49 cycles. Coconut Battery's comparison graphs show my battery under 'Battery capacity over time' as now below average and 'Battery capacity based on loadcycles' dropping like a rock since all of this began.

The quirk is that now at some time in the middle of the night the computer does something to drain the battery. Normally I just unplug the computer, close the lid, and let it go into standby for the night. Then the following day I plug it in, open it up, and start my day with the battery percentage at around 98-99%.
Yet a few days ago when I opened the Mac it showed 88%. Last night I decided to shut the computer down (battery at 100%) and this afternoon when I opened it the percentage showed 79%! This was not a standby mode, I genuinely watched the system shut down and the keyboard lights go off before I closed the lid.

Is this normal for BHM (or BHM on Mojave) or do I have some rogue form of it that is starting up the computer in the wee hours, running it for a while and then restoring it to its previous shutdown state?

I'm very likely to move up soon to Catalina, at least with the expectation that I could try turning this 'feature' off and see what happens unless someone is able to find a means through Terminal or something that would 'kill' this action temporarily for testing purposes.

I still wonder if BHM (or maybe BHM for Mojave) was the 'straw that broke the camel's back' for my battery.

Sometimes I feel like I'm on a subscription plan with Apple, where I give them $1200+ a year for the use of their computers. I don't truly own them, I just use them at their mercy (No rant intended, just a note of frustration ).

Edit (strike-through added): The quirk resolved itself when I restarted the computer. What tipped me off to restart was shortly after I posted this update I pulled up the Energy Saver Pref Pane on System Preferences and found that nothing could be changed. It was like the Mac had locked up, but only on that preference adjustment. After restarting all is well and the Mac showed 100% after being closed up all night and on battery power.

2nd edit (strike-through removed): Well, the quirk returned. After the Mac being closed up and on standby overnight until late this afternoon the battery percentage was at 82% when I opened it up. I double checked Energy Saver and it was responding normally this time.

 

[ElteHupkes]

I'm not sure that my issue has to do with this new Battery Health feature, but it started recently (who knows when really, I don't really keep a close eye on battery level throughout the day) so I figured I'd share it anyway: my battery is also occasionally draining itself while plugged into a power source - but it definitely doesn't always stop at 90%. Like @Jaimbo it also seems to be happening in standby / sleep mode, which is really disturbing. Last Sunday I arrived home to find my Mac completely unresponsive; turns out it had drained its battery completely, in Sleep Mode, while being plugged in. Yesterday evening, after having it plugged in for hours, I wanted to take it off power to do watch something in the living room, only to find I had just 8% charge left. Really weird stuff.

Like I said, no idea if this is related or a completely different issue, but I only started to experience this for the first time 2 or 3 weeks ago. Didn't think much off it the first time, thought I just maybe hadn't plugged it in correctly, but it kept on happening since. I've disabled Battery Health now, let's see if it makes a difference over the coming days.

UPDATE: Nope, still a problem with Battery Health disabled. Now that I'm paying attention to it I noticed it starting to happen a few hours ago. Adapter plugged in and the battery indicator also showing a plugged in state. Let it drain down to 73%, then I unplugged the power adapter and plugged it back in - now it's charging again. No idea what voodoo is going on here but it isn't good.

 

[Jaimbo]

Well, this boosts my confidence! I was going to upgrade to Catalina sometime in the next few weeks in the hopes of at least turning off BHM and giving my battery a break but now I'll hold off. Currently my system only discharges when it is on standby or shut off. If I keep it powered it holds fine otherwise it will be on 66% or so by the next afternoon and maybe a little higher on shutdown. Who knows if I were to keep it 'off' for several days. The daily discharge cycle at around 1 pm and then 2 pm no longer happens.

It is the discharge on shutdown that bothers me. Just what do I have to do to completely turn the Mac off and keep it off . It is like my old Sony Walkman MP3 player, it never truly shuts off but instead goes into a very low power mode until you press any buttons.

My only other thought is that there is a batch of bad batteries that are being 'exposed' by BHM and I, among others, have one of them. I'm still able to use my old 2011 Macbook Pro (if I can keep the discreet graphics card off) on its original battery and the health is around 89%. The one I writing this on just crept down to 88% recently.

Does anyone know if this 'activity' shows up in Console? Since the update several years ago I have a very difficult time trying to understand what is being displayed. I was wondering if maybe a log file might exist that would give some kind of indication of what is happening when this discharge cycle is occurring.

Also would filing another bug report with this latest problem of discharging when in standby/shutdown help?

I've thought about going the Genius Bar route rather than calling Support but all of our stores are still closed.


UPDATE: I have found one log that shows the Mac waking up a few times after 6 am each day for what appears to be network related but the battery level is still down 20% before this happens and nothing else occurs between standby and this wake up period.

For those interested:

Type in on Terminal:

pmset -g log

 

[jswebsteve]

You all seem so convinced this is part of Apples battery management, I can assure you it isn't. I experienced this exact same problem on a late 2018 MacBook Pro i9 2.9GHz with Vega 20 GPU. Even with OSX only running on the machine, running open GL tests in Safari, Terminal commands to load the cpu, and computer vs computer chess games to further load the system the battery would deplete to the point where the computer would become almost unresponsive and eventually shut down. This is due to USB-C having a maximum power delivery of 100 watts and the CPU/GPU combination exceeding that power requirement. Apple took the design decision to allow the system to throttle charging so that 100% of the available power from the AC adapter could be used to run the system, and under extreme loads, allow the battery to supply additional current when required.
I spent 6 months fighting Apple over this as their design choices meant that a 5000€ laptop couldn't be reliably left to perform intensive tasks overnight as it would shut down once the battery was depleted even on external power.
They eventually agreed to replace it with a 2020 16" MacBook Pro with an i9 2.4GHZ CPU and 5600M GPU. I had hoped that the slower clock speed CPU would improve the situation, but observed the same behaviour again today, with the battery percentage dipping as low as 50% before I shut down the system to go out for a few hours.
This should not just be accepted as 'normal' behaviour for a computer costing many thousands of euros/dollars/pounds.
I will be discussing the matter with customer relations on Monday as this replacement computer was only delivered on Wednesday afternoon.

 

[djbuddha]

You all seem so convinced this is part of Apples battery management, I can assure you it isn't. I experienced this exact same problem on a late 2018 MacBook Pro i9 2.9GHz with Vega 20 GPU. Even with OSX only running on the machine, running open GL tests in Safari, Terminal commands to load the cpu, and computer vs computer chess games to further load the system the battery would deplete to the point where the computer would become almost unresponsive and eventually shut down. This is due to USB-C having a maximum power delivery of 100 watts and the CPU/GPU combination exceeding that power requirement. Apple took the design decision to allow the system to throttle charging so that 100% of the available power from the AC adapter could be used to run the system, and under extreme loads, allow the battery to supply additional current when required.
I spent 6 months fighting Apple over this as their design choices meant that a 5000€ laptop couldn't be reliably left to perform intensive tasks overnight as it would shut down once the battery was depleted even on external power.
They eventually agreed to replace it with a 2020 16" MacBook Pro with an i9 2.4GHZ CPU and 5600M GPU. I had hoped that the slower clock speed CPU would improve the situation, but observed the same behaviour again today, with the battery percentage dipping as low as 50% before I shut down the system to go out for a few hours.
This should not just be accepted as 'normal' behaviour for a computer costing many thousands of euros/dollars/pounds.
I will be discussing the matter with customer relations on Monday as this replacement computer was only delivered on Wednesday afternoon.

The issue with mine is weird. My maxed out 2017 could do the stream I mentioned above fine without losing any battery charge for the hour.

Fun fact, working with a specialist and an executive liaison who is talking to engineering directly and last week they suggest I buy an iMac.

So this is fun ...

 

[jswebsteve]

I’m seriously considering just asking for a full refund and ditching Apple entirely. I’m tired of the whole debacle after spending six months fighting with them to get the 15” replaced.
As for their suggestion that you just “buy an iMac”, that’s ludicrous.
How about they actually make a design choice to use a power supply that can actually supply sufficient wattage. Dell makes a computer that matched the configuration of my 15” and it comes with a 130watt psu. Apple’s decision to use USB-C for charging caps them at 100w maximum, so they will never get sufficient for higher spec machines.

 

[djbuddha]

I’m seriously considering just asking for a full refund and ditching Apple entirely. I’m tired of the whole debacle after spending six months fighting with them to get the 15” replaced.
As for their suggestion that you just “buy an iMac”, that’s ludicrous.
How about they actually make a design choice to use a power supply that can actually supply sufficient wattage. Dell makes a computer that matched the configuration of my 15” and it comes with a 130watt psu. Apple’s decision to use USB-C for charging caps them at 100w maximum, so they will never get sufficient for higher spec machines.

I agree with most of this, except what I don't understand is, if my power brick on my 2017 is 87 W vs 98 W on the new machine, and if my 2017 with much lower specs can do the same job without draining the battery under Mojave, why can't they fix this in Catalina?

And here's the bonus part for Apple. They won't fix it in Catalina if they fix it at all... Big Sur is dropping soon, so any fixes for things like this won't get pushed to Catalina anymore. We'll only be getting security updates (I've seen in very rare cases that they actually fix something on a 'completed' run of an OS ... but I'm not holding my breath). I don't deploy new OS's to my DJ / work machine until I've had time to test. In a very strange way, it's a weird blessing that I'm not DJ'ing events right now. Imagine going to a large scale event and trying this DJ setup thinking I have all the power in the world to do a normal show w/ streaming that I've done with my 2017, to then have the computer die after a few hours. My client would fire me- and Apple doesn't care, because: "i sHoULd hAvE bOuGHt aN iMAc"

 

[jswebsteve]

I suspect the total current draw on the older CPU/GPU combination is lower, so it doesn't need to rely on the battery for supplemental power. It's not OS related as my 15" had the same problem regardless of whether it was running Mojave or Catalina.

 

[Jaimbo]

@jswebsteve, you do have an intriguing way of loading your system. I think the problem many of us are experiencing is Design, Engineering, Marketing, and Us (the end-user) are all in conflict. We have an idea of how things should be, Design has another, Engineering has third, Marketing has a fourth, and we, after all is said and done, end up with the results ...but that is fully another discussion.

Anyway, I have to disagree with you in that (1) the battery discharge issue of the OP and subsequent replies, including myself, began only after the one update Apple sent down a few months ago that introduced BHM to Catalina users. (2) There is not much load being put on the system at least not to the point that the battery would be used while plugged in. In fact, on mine it happens whether it is fully in use or completely idle with no apps active.

But in my case and many others, Mojave seems to have received some or most of it, too, except that, unlike Catalina, we can't turn it off. Now it appears, in my situation, to have moved from a scheduled drain during the day (or when the Mac is turned on afterward) to when it is turned off (or least SUPPOSED to be off) or on standby and the power disconnected. While I have not had it off long enough to see I think it will drain to 0% within 24 hours. The part that irks me is that I can't stop it from happening. I don't see much going on in the pmset logs that would cause a drain, and when the unit is off there is nothing showing in the logs during that time.

I wondering now if the battery is at fault or was borderline at fault and BHM sent it over the edge. I'm sure if I took it to the store (if they were open) they would run their tests and then say everything is fine, with the comment "This is normal." Thankfully I still have plenty of time on Applecare to wait things out.

 

[sixtydashone]

The behavior seems too methodical to be load-based, imo. Once you have settled into a rhythm with the machine, using it similarly on a daily basis, the drain happens around the same time each day, and down to exactly 90% before going back up to 100%. It's pretty consistent, so it doesn't appear load-based to me. It's not like I'm doing anything more intensive at that specific time every day than I am at any other time of day.

 

[GordonMcD]

So I just had this happen to me this morning on my 2019 MBP. Battery was at 100% and plugged in, and over the course of 2 hours it dropped to 2% and says not charging. What on earth.

 

[Jaimbo]

I just thought I'd break the silence here and give an update. Since I last posted, outside of two separate times, I have not had any of the scheduled discharges mentioned earlier. I currently keep the Mac plugged in unless I have to relocate since it still discharges when its unplugged (standby or powered down). I also have one usb-c port dead on the right hand side. It used to only handle charging and almost no data transfer, now it does nothing. I tried several times the SMC reset with no improvement, I might try the NVRAM reset later but I don't have high hopes for that either.

My battery health went down as low as 79% but since I've been keeping it plugged in with the short term discharges during the time I'm relocating, etc. it has gone up to 88% sometimes 89% . Maybe I'm inadvertently doing my own BHM or Mac's BHM is adaptive based on my usage, IDK ?. Then again that bad usb port could be main culprit for all of this.

It is 'funny' that all of these problems including the usb port occurred right after the BHM update from Apple (which Mojave wasn't specifically supposed to receive).

My next step, unless somebody has a discovered something here, is to make the reluctant trek to the Genius Bar sometime early next year.

 

[TBoneMac]

Mine has been doing exactly the same thing and started charging again at 90%. Must be the new battery management system.

Hmmm, I have a 2017 macbook pro 15 inch, I had mine plugged in at around 80% and it drained all the way down to 5% (until I noticed it) .. It didn't start charging until I stopped gaming for a second and unplugged then plugged the charge cable back into the macbook.. Is this abnormal? Normally when I am gaming it charges until it reaches full.

 

[JLBOOK]

Anybody else noticing this? I've been using my new 2020 MacBook Pro 10th gen i7/16/512 to work from home this week and last. The laptop stays plugged into the (factory) power adapter all day when I'm working. The past few days I noticed a couple occasions where I glanced at the power level and it was around 97% and charging, meaning it's somehow losing charge while plugged in. Right now it's at 92% and says "Battery Is Not Charging" as well as "Power Source: Power Adapter". This is the third Macbook I've owned and the fifth that I've used regularly, and never seen one do this until now. Any ideas? Is this intentional to get the battery some cycles, or a software bug or what?

Edit: I let it keep draining (didn't close any apps or anything), and when it reached 90% it went into "Calculating time until full", and it is now charging back up. Kinda seems intentional, but this is not a behavior I'm familiar with.

I solved this by closing the macbook for a few minutes (2-5 mins)while the charger was plugged in, opened it again and it started charging correctly.

 

[ReggieJ]

I currently own a MacbookPro 15" 2019 and was using Mojave, I have encountered a problem with my battery: after every time I use my MBP on battery then when I plug the power in, the power will not charge even though the charging sign in still shown on the menu bar (please see the attached images). This happens even when I don't use any app takes high performances such as Photoshop.

I always need to reset the SMC by holding Shift + Control + Option + Power Button, this only fix the problem temporarily. This issue will eventually repeat after I use my MBP on battery and the plug the cable in again. The technician told me it was because of Mojave, but this still happens after I update it to Catalina.

Is there any permanent solution for this issue?

 

[henryseiden]

My 15" MBP 2019 was sent back for repair for bad battery in May, 2021 (premature failure to discharge properly) and was returned promptly with a replacement battery tray but with even worse problems that developed over a month! First, the battery manufacture dates says it's a 10.4 year old model (yikes!).
Second, the battery, weekly it seems since coming back, now discharges down to 2% (double yikes) while on charge. This ain't right!! Battery Management and Optimization circuits which are supposed to handle the charge and discharge while attached to power do NOT work properly (nothing to do with SMC) AND updated the replacement battery's cycle count. It's now up to 31 cycles in 2 months and weekly I have to recharge it for 2 hours off line (powered down).
So, it's off to Apple Store I go (a 40 minute one way ride).