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imejh

macrumors member
Mar 4, 2013
56
9
How is everyones Battery Life on El Capitan compared to Yosemite?

Has anyone noticed anything?

I did the same as user below, and I'm seeing the same results over the last few days using my '12 rMBP. Although I'm at about 7+ hours now, but seeing a solid 30-45min. improvement over anything Yosemite had been offering lately.

I then formatted the drive, reset the SMC and PRAM, and then did a clean install. After roughly a day (I'm assuming this spotlight finished indexing during this time) my battery life actually seems to be slightly better than it was with Yosemite by ~30 minutes- 1 hour. All in all, I seem to get 6+ hours for most tasks, so I'm very pleased.
 

tivoboy

macrumors 601
May 15, 2005
4,052
853
I'm having the issue that in the morning i'll wake up the 15" 2012 rMBP from sleep, battery will say 30%, I open some web browser windows, safari AND chrome and then the computer will shut down and flash the dead battery icon on the screen.

ill plug it in to power and it comes right back to life, and shows 35% battery.. what is THAT?
 
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bahndoos

macrumors 6502
Jul 9, 2010
345
197
El Cap started out showing an apparent reduction in battery life for me, dropping to 5-6 hours on average, compared to consistently getting 9-10 hours with regular light use on Mavericks/Yosemite on my rMBP 13" (Late 2013) which I got in Jan 2014. However, after a few battery cycles of draining to zero, its seems to be on par with Yosemite now. YMMV.
Screen Shot 2015-10-20 at 7.21.16 PM.png
 
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Queen6

macrumors G4
After the outright disaster 10.11 has been for me on my 2014 2.8/512 13" rMBP I am keeping my other Mac`s on 10.10.5. if 10.11.1 does not rectify the 13" I will revert that also back to 10.10 .Upgrade, clean install the same issues reoccur, nor are they related to third party hardware or software.

battery life on 10.11 was equal or slightly less than what I was seeing on 10.10.5

Q-6
 
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Private_Joker

macrumors newbie
Oct 21, 2015
3
0
Hi everyone.
I would really appreciate if, in a couple of days I guess, someone running 10.11.1 could tell us something about battery life with the new update. I still use Mavericks in my 2013 MBP and I am pretty happy. However, I was thinking on updating to El Cap', but reading in several forums I am worried about battery performance.

Thanks in advance for any help!!
 

rwilliams

macrumors 68040
Apr 8, 2009
3,847
1,222
Raleigh, NC
Well I'm glad to see this thread and realize that it's not just me. I have an 11" Air from 2013, and while my battery life is still good, it's not as good as it was with Yosemite. It's been bugging me for a couple of weeks now.
 

Fancuku

macrumors 65816
Oct 8, 2015
1,023
2,663
PA, USA
Same here on my mid 2014 MBP. I am getting 1.5-2 hours less on El Capitan.
Yosemite 10.10.5 was the best for battery time.
 

Chicane-UK

macrumors 6502
Apr 26, 2008
444
1,085
Well I'm glad to see this thread and realize that it's not just me. I have an 11" Air from 2013, and while my battery life is still good, it's not as good as it was with Yosemite. It's been bugging me for a couple of weeks now.

Likewise - 11" 2013 Macbook Air and since I've had El Capitan installed (which was a clean install, not upgrade) there's just been this nagging realisation that battery life just isn't as strong as it was all of a sudden. I seem to glance up and notice that I've fallen below the 50% mark quite often which just rarely used to happen on Yosemite.

I don't have any stats to back it up as I don't watch my utilisation that closely, and I certainly don't have a routine in terms of when my Macbook is mains connected or running on battery - just a gut feeling. Which seems to be backed up with similar comments like this.
 

dogslobber

macrumors 601
Oct 19, 2014
4,670
7,809
Apple Campus, Cupertino CA
Noooooo!!! It's noticeably worse!!!!! I was getting like 8 hours on Yosemite on average and now I'm getting just under 6. I'm pretty sure I'm going back to Yosemite and staying there.

You should try to root cause why it is less than throwing your arms up in defeat. Did you look at the battery drop down menu to see what apps are using significant energy? What is Activity Monitor doing? A little investigation will resolve your issue.
 

DanGoh

macrumors 6502
Apr 6, 2014
366
506
That was like 2-3 weeks ago. My problem was actually the Ad-block Safari extension. I'm running El Capitan and getting close to the same battery life.
 

DanGoh

macrumors 6502
Apr 6, 2014
366
506
You should try to root cause why it is less than throwing your arms up in defeat. Did you look at the battery drop down menu to see what apps are using significant energy? What is Activity Monitor doing? A little investigation will resolve your issue.

That was like 2-3 weeks ago. My problem was actually the Ad-block Safari extension. I'm running El Capitan and getting close to the same battery life.
 

iBug2

macrumors 601
Jun 12, 2005
4,540
863
My 2012 15" rMBP shows 5 hours after a full charge. So it went down quite a bit since Mountain Lion. I don't know if all this drop happened with El Capitan though.
 

vidarmas

macrumors newbie
Nov 11, 2015
2
0
I have a MBA Mid 2011. Had original OS, Lion, before upgrading now. Battery was getting weak despite less than 400 cycle counts, but it would hold for 1-1.5 hours.

After upgrade it started drop really fast and last maybe 15-30 minutes. I also instantly got the Service message on battery status. I can also see that now it is charging really fast so it is just as the whole battery is not used any longer.

So the OS change definitely did bad things with battery life for me.

I have ordered a new battery so I hope this will get me back to a "new" computer battery life.
 

tjechura

macrumors newbie
Jan 28, 2016
1
0
My battery life is much worse now that I upgraded to 10.11.3. I used to get 10+ hours from my MacBook Air, now I am down to 8 max. I was getting the 10 hours with Safari, Spotify, Word, and Excel all running. None of them would even show up as "using significant energy".

Currently to get 8 hours my screen brightness has to be at only 1/3 and have Safari sitting on this forum. It is categorized as "using significant energy" if its my only app open and the lone tab is on Google. Wth Apple???

For reference I'm running a Macbook Air 11-inch (mid-2013, purchased in 2014). OS X 10.11.3
 

Woodcrest64

macrumors 65816
Aug 14, 2006
1,310
526
can't compare to Yosemite, since I upgraded from Maverick, but on my 4 years old MBP Im still above 6 hrs of web browsing. Amazing since I have 508 charge cycles on it. Still at 94% of original capacity.

WOW! That's great. My 2012 Macbook Pro Retina gets 3 hours now. When the battery percentage hits between 30-40% the Macbook Pro shuts off. It was saying the battery needed to be serviced but that message is gone now for some reason. Still having the issue even with a PRAM and SMC reset. My battery's heath is 77% with 669 cycles on it. Going to get it replaced soon as I'd like to keep this machine for another 2 years.
 

Fancuku

macrumors 65816
Oct 8, 2015
1,023
2,663
PA, USA
My battery life is much worse now that I upgraded to 10.11.3. I used to get 10+ hours from my MacBook Air, now I am down to 8 max.
I think you are on to something. I have noticed that I get at least 20-30% less battery life on 10.11.3. The best battery life was on the last Yosemite 10.10.5. I am thinking of going back to it for that same reason.
 

iBug2

macrumors 601
Jun 12, 2005
4,540
863
My 2012 rMBP dropped from 7 hours to 4 hours, but I cannot say if all this happened with El Capitan. I just remember with Mountain Lion I used to get 7 hours. The battery is at 95% capacity so there's nothing wrong with the battery itself.
 

Mollan

macrumors regular
Jul 29, 2013
117
76
The Netherlands/Italy
My 2012 rMBP dropped from 7 hours to 4 hours, but I cannot say if all this happened with El Capitan. I just remember with Mountain Lion I used to get 7 hours. The battery is at 95% capacity so there's nothing wrong with the battery itself.

Did anyone reach a solution? I spoke with Apple engineers via feedback centre but they were not able to give me a solution other than: "try the latest β". Yesterday I did a clean install of the OS but the battery problem remained. 4:11 minutes with 90% of charge on a 15" MBPr Mid 2014.

This is really embarrassing...and in June they will present another OS before fixing the huge bugs of this one... :-|
 
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Queen6

macrumors G4
Did anyone reach a solution? I spoke with Apple engineers via feedback centre but they were not able to give me a solution other than: "try the latest β". Yesterday I did a clean install of the OS but the battery problem remained. 4:11 minutes with 90% of charge on a 15" MBPr Mid 2014.

This is really embarrassing...and in June they will present another OS before fixing the huge bugs of this one... :-|

Problem is everything Apple is dominated by IOS, as a direct result the desktop OS is just following. The current OS X development cycle is clearly far too short, if we are lucky issues are resolved at the very end of the 12 months, if not they just role on to the next half-baked release, or worse ignored.

As someone who relies on their hardware for a living rolling the dice with OS X is becoming less attractive with each new release. Disappointing to say the very least...

Q-6
 
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