MacBook Air M1 battery drain - anybody else...?!

[shornby]

I am not sure how to read it but mine says:
Total Sleep/Wakes since boot at 2021-02-14 13:29:44 +0100 :8033

I have put it to sleep 12 hrs ago and it lost 1 percent per hour. Don't know how many times it woke during this time but the log file that Terminal displays is huge.

That’s over 8000 wakes since the last boot on 2/14. That’s a lot of wake events. I’ve had about 10 since boot a few days ago and each one is related to opening/closing the MacBook Pro.

Please look in the folders I referenced above:
/Library/Preferences/Launch Agents/
/Library/Preferences/Launch Daemons/
/Users/*YourAccount*/Library/Preferences/Launch Agents/

And tell me what files you have.

Also see this (doesn’t cover launch agents for current user):

macOS: Check Your LaunchAgents for Malicious Software

Your Mac's root-level LaunchAgents folder is a common location for adware to store files. Why is this bad? Well, it could mean that malicious software launches automatically when you log in to any user account on your Mac. Here's how to get there and what to look for!

www.macobserver.com

 

[Tardegard]

That’s over 8000 wakes since the last boot on 2/14. That’s a lot of wake events. I’ve had about 10 since boot a few days ago and each one is related to opening/closing the MacBook Pro.

Please look in the folders I referenced above:
/Library/Preferences/Launch Agents/
/Library/Preferences/Launch Daemons/
/Users/*YourAccount*/Library/Preferences/Launch Agents/

And tell me what files you have.

Also see this (doesn’t cover launch agents for current user):

macOS: Check Your LaunchAgents for Malicious Software

Your Mac's root-level LaunchAgents folder is a common location for adware to store files. Why is this bad? Well, it could mean that malicious software launches automatically when you log in to any user account on your Mac. Here's how to get there and what to look for!

www.macobserver.com

Ok, there was nothing relevant in LaunchAgents.
But I just got rid of some stuff from LauncheDaemons:
com.w0lf.cDock.Injector
com.logitech.vc.LogiVCCoreService
com.bjango.istatmenus.installerhelper
com.axoniclabs.DeepSleepCmd

After that I got 1 percent of loss in 8 hrs.
Thank you, sir.

 

[Tardegard]

That’s over 8000 wakes since the last boot on 2/14. That’s a lot of wake events. I’ve had about 10 since boot a few days ago and each one is related to opening/closing the MacBook Pro.

Please look in the folders I referenced above:
/Library/Preferences/Launch Agents/
/Library/Preferences/Launch Daemons/
/Users/*YourAccount*/Library/Preferences/Launch Agents/

And tell me what files you have.

Also see this (doesn’t cover launch agents for current user):

macOS: Check Your LaunchAgents for Malicious Software

Your Mac's root-level LaunchAgents folder is a common location for adware to store files. Why is this bad? Well, it could mean that malicious software launches automatically when you log in to any user account on your Mac. Here's how to get there and what to look for!

www.macobserver.com

I am afraid I spoke too soon.
My Mac today, after 18 hours of sleep, lost 27 percent.
Not good....
I don't know anymore what to check.

 

[Zazoh]

I am afraid I spoke too soon.
My Mac today, after 18 hours of sleep, lost 27 percent.
Not good....
I don't know anymore what to check.

Oh, wow, ya, that isn't good. I only have base install. Plus
1. Zoom
2. VMWare Horizon
3. Python 3.6

Less than 1% overnight loss. It must be something that was installed beyond base. In other words, I think the 3 things above have no impact, per my machine. Put together a list of non Apple apps and go from there.

 

[Tardegard]

Oh, wow, ya, that isn't good. I only have base install. Plus
1. Zoom
2. VMWare Horizon
3. Python 3.6

Less than 1% overnight loss. It must be something that was installed beyond base. In other words, I think the 3 things above have no impact, per my machine. Put together a list of non Apple apps and go from there.

I have some adobe stuff. Karabiner (a keyboard input modifier) bettertouchtool, and other stuff.
Spoke with Apple genius guy by phone. First thing to try, in order to exclude any hardware damage, is to check how the battery performer with a computer off. So it turned it down yesterday, instead of putting it to sleep, and it lost 0 in 20 hrs. But I was pretty sure that it is not hardware related.

 

[Tardegard]

Oh, wow, ya, that isn't good. I only have base install. Plus
1. Zoom
2. VMWare Horizon
3. Python 3.6

Less than 1% overnight loss. It must be something that was installed beyond base. In other words, I think the 3 things above have no impact, per my machine. Put together a list of non Apple apps and go from there.

I have some adobe stuff, Lightroom CC etc, I have Karabiner (a keyboard input modifier) bettertouchtool, and other stuff that stay there in the menu bar.
Yesterday I spoke with the Apple genius guy by phone. We concluded that the first thing to try, in order to exclude any hardware damage, is to check how the battery performs with the computer off. So I turned it down yesterday, instead of putting it to sleep as I always do, and it actually lost 0 percent after 20 hrs. So hardware seems fine, but I was pretty sure that this was not hardware related.

 

[shornby]

Since installing 11.2.2, everything has improved. No more wakes, and the log result from pmset -g log is about .5% of what it was before. Literally two pages compared to hundreds.
I think the disk usage problem was related to this bug!!

 

[Tardegard]

Since installing 11.2.2, everything has improved. No more wakes, and the log result from pmset -g log is about .5% of what it was before. Literally two pages compared to hundreds.
I think the disk usage problem was related to this bug!!

Ah, amazing, good to know!
I will give it a try
Thanks

 

[Tardegard]

Since installing 11.2.2, everything has improved. No more wakes, and the log result from pmset -g log is about .5% of what it was before. Literally two pages compared to hundreds.
I think the disk usage problem was related to this bug!!

I installed update 11.2.2 and after that put my Mac to sleep for long time, circa 20 hrs, and it actually took only 2 percent of battery life. But if I pmset -g log I still get tons of pages, and
Total Sleep/Wakes since boot at 2021-03-01 08:25:49 +0100 :2931
which is still pretty high.

 

[Tardegard]

my Mac keeps loosing too much in sleep mode, like 30 percent in 24 hrs, and I don't know anymore what to do

 

[Usairem Alamgeer]

Charged my Mac last night and slept after removing from power at a full 100%. Woke up and there was no battery drain thankfully. However I used MS Teams from 8:45 in the morning along with some KiCAD work and also was on Safari using quite a few impactful websites.

It has been like 1:30 hrs and the battery is at 77%.

 

[Brian1230]

I just don't believe the review claims that people can do "2 full days of work" or for casual use "go a week without charging".

I have only charged my m1 MacBook Air 3 times since last Friday when I got it. charged it last night after using it since Sunday night and still had 40% battery remaining, used it all day today and it still has 90% left. likely will not need to charge it again until Monday or Tuesday I'm guessing, and that is amazing. never thought a laptop would be so good with battery life at all.

 

[Tardegard]

My point, after a couple of months of use, is that these Macs and Big Sur do randomly drain battery during sleep mode. And it is really hard to determine what part of the software makes them behave like this. The only way to last for days or even a week without charging is it turn my Mac off instead of sleeping. Switching off my machine is a bit annoying though, as Big Sur is the slowest Os in booting up. But there is no workaround, until Apple will solve this, or reintroduce at least Hibernation, 25 mode.

 

[Tardegard]

Update: I found out that Bettertouchtool, an app for tweaking mouse and trackpad inputs, had to be upgraded.
Indeed it prevented may Mac from sleeping. I did it and no more drain so far.

 

[hunkster]

Update: I found out that Bettertouchtool, an app for tweaking mouse and trackpad inputs, had to be upgraded.
Indeed it prevented may Mac from sleeping. I did it and no more drain so far.

How did you find out it was Bettertouchtool that caused it?

 

[Juzy]

In my Mac both mainboard and touchpad were replaced and now the battery drain issue is gone. This was done under the warranty.

 

[Tardegard]

How did you find out it was Bettertouchtool that caused it?

I saw it in activity monitor app, that better touch tool prevented from sleep...
but getting rid if it didn't fix the issue. Only putting Mac in Hibernation mode (now you can) does help.

 

[ohsnap]

My battery life on my M1 MBA has been bad ever since I got it in January, no matter what I do. I generally get about 5 x 5.5 hrs no matter what I do.

 

[ice29]

This is very strange problem, it happens to me also but pretty randomly.. As someone suggested I uninstalled bettertouchtool and then it seemed to help, but no, today the same again. Closed lid, nothing plugged into M1 Macbook Air, and laptop awake every 45 seconds through the whole night

...
2021-05-28 05:59:10 +0200 DarkWake                DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to NUB.SPMI0Sw3IRQ nub-spmi.0x02 rtc/ Using BATT (Charge:95%) 45 secs
2021-05-28 05:59:56 +0200 DarkWake                DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to NUB.SPMI0Sw3IRQ nub-spmi.0x02 rtc/ Using BATT (Charge:95%) 45 secs
2021-05-28 06:00:42 +0200 DarkWake                DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to NUB.SPMI0Sw3IRQ nub-spmi.0x02 rtc/ Using BATT (Charge:95%) 45 secs
2021-05-28 06:01:28 +0200 DarkWake                DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to NUB.SPMI0Sw3IRQ nub-spmi.0x02 rtc/ Using BATT (Charge:95%) 45 secs
2021-05-28 06:02:14 +0200 DarkWake                DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to NUB.SPMI0Sw3IRQ nub-spmi.0x02 rtc/ Using BATT (Charge:95%) 45 secs
2021-05-28 06:03:00 +0200 DarkWake                DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to NUB.SPMI0Sw3IRQ nub-spmi.0x02 rtc/ Using BATT (Charge:95%) 45 secs
2021-05-28 06:03:46 +0200 DarkWake                DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to NUB.SPMI0Sw3IRQ nub-spmi.0x02 rtc/ Using BATT (Charge:95%) 45 secs
2021-05-28 06:04:32 +0200 DarkWake                DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to NUB.SPMI0Sw3IRQ nub-spmi.0x02 rtc/ Using BATT (Charge:95%) 45 secs
...

 

[Tardegard]

This is very strange problem, it happens to me also but pretty randomly.. As someone suggested I uninstalled bettertouchtool and then it seemed to help, but no, today the same again. Closed lid, nothing plugged into M1 Macbook Air, and laptop awake every 45 seconds through the whole night

...
2021-05-28 05:59:10 +0200 DarkWake                DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to NUB.SPMI0Sw3IRQ nub-spmi.0x02 rtc/ Using BATT (Charge:95%) 45 secs
2021-05-28 05:59:56 +0200 DarkWake                DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to NUB.SPMI0Sw3IRQ nub-spmi.0x02 rtc/ Using BATT (Charge:95%) 45 secs
2021-05-28 06:00:42 +0200 DarkWake                DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to NUB.SPMI0Sw3IRQ nub-spmi.0x02 rtc/ Using BATT (Charge:95%) 45 secs
2021-05-28 06:01:28 +0200 DarkWake                DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to NUB.SPMI0Sw3IRQ nub-spmi.0x02 rtc/ Using BATT (Charge:95%) 45 secs
2021-05-28 06:02:14 +0200 DarkWake                DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to NUB.SPMI0Sw3IRQ nub-spmi.0x02 rtc/ Using BATT (Charge:95%) 45 secs
2021-05-28 06:03:00 +0200 DarkWake                DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to NUB.SPMI0Sw3IRQ nub-spmi.0x02 rtc/ Using BATT (Charge:95%) 45 secs
2021-05-28 06:03:46 +0200 DarkWake                DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to NUB.SPMI0Sw3IRQ nub-spmi.0x02 rtc/ Using BATT (Charge:95%) 45 secs
2021-05-28 06:04:32 +0200 DarkWake                DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to NUB.SPMI0Sw3IRQ nub-spmi.0x02 rtc/ Using BATT (Charge:95%) 45 secs
...

With the latest OS upgrade you can put your Mac in Hibernation mode, and it is the only way I can fix this issue for good. Install Deep Sleep, and you can choose if simply sleep your MacBook (for example when connected to power), or hibernate it when you take it around.

 

[ice29]

Thanks for the suggestion, my issue is less the battery drain (now mostly in home-office anyway) than constant waking up of external screen Hopefully it will be fixed one day..

 

[Parikshit Panwar]

I did some testing on my m1 air, the brightness was at 50%, backlit was turned off, wifi and bluetooth were turned on. I used zoom for around 4 hrs and played a a movie on Netflix at the same time. When the movie finished I opened YouTube and watched videos at 4k and 1080p (mostly at 4k). After those 4 hrs I watched Netflix and YouTube and at the end I got around 14 hrs of battery and 2% was still remaining which I think will give around 12-15 mins more. So according to this I am getting a pretty good battery life.

 

[thingstoponder]

Hi guys,

Received my brand spanking new MA M1 yesterday and it's a great machine indeed. Fast and responsive!

However... I do find that my battery life is much shorter than what everybody have reported? I understand I wouldn't get 16 hours as reported, but I was expecting at least 10...? I will list my observations below.

1. Battery has drained 6% while sleeping - I have read most of you don't have any drain overnight? It was sleeping between midnight and 10am - you can see battery draining on the graph attached.

2. Just running MS outlook and Safari (5 tabs) I would lose around 20% in 1.5 hour. I haven't used Chrome, all of the updates and indexing were done yesterday. I have had computer on for 1.5hr this morning and it went from 83% to 66% in less than 2 hours. I understand Outlook isn't optimised yet, but still it drained more than running benchmarks or using Zoom (the famous thread!).

Anybody else experienced something similar? Any recommendations on "resetting" the battery or anything else I could do?

Strange...

Thanks,
P.

What does the “12 hr power” tab in activity monitor mean? I’ve never seen this in my Intel Mac

 

[tarasis]

I lost 6% over 11 hours.

main culprit seems to be

DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDN] : due to SMC.OutboxNotEmpty smc.70070000 wifibt wlan/ Using BATT (Charge:70%) 45 secs   

2021-07-05 00:11:44 +0100 WakeDetails             DriverReason:SMC.OutboxNotEmpty - DriverDetails:                           
DriverReason:smc.70070000 - DriverDetails:                                 
DriverReason:wifibt - DriverDetails:                                       
DriverReason:wlan - DriverDetails:

and

2021-07-05 00:10:56 +0100 Kernel Client Acks      Delays to Sleep notifications: [AppleBCMWLANCore driver is slow(msg: WillChangeState to 0)(140 ms)]
2021-07-05 00:10:56 +0100 Kernel Client Acks      Delays to Wake notifications: [AppleCS42L83Audio driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(67 ms)] [RTBuddyV2 driver is slow(msg: SetState to 2)(105 ms)] [AppleMultiFunctionManager driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(219 ms)] [AppleConvergedIPCOLYBTControl driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(216 ms)] [AppleBCMWLANCore driver is slow(msg: WillChangeState to 0)(145 ms)] [AppleCS42L83Audio driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(69 ms)] [RTBuddyV2 driver is slow(msg: SetState to 2)(104 ms)] [AppleMultiFunctionManager driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(218 ms)] [AppleConvergedIPCOLYBTControl driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(214 ms)] [AppleBCMWLANCore driver is slow(msg: WillChangeState to 0)(151 ms)] [AppleCS42L83Audio driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(71 ms)] [RTBuddyV2 driver is slow(msg: SetState to 2)(105 ms)] [AppleMultiFunctionManager driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(219 ms)] [AppleConvergedIPCOLYBTControl driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(215 ms)] [AppleBCMWLANCore driver is slow(msg: WillChangeState to 0)(155 ms)] [AppleCS42L83Audio driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(69 ms)] [RTBuddyV2 driver is slow(msg: SetState to 2)(105 ms)] [AppleMultiFunctionManager driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(221 ms)] [AppleConvergedIPCOLYBTControl driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(218 ms)] [AppleBCMWLANCore driver is slow(msg: WillChangeState to 0)(157 ms)] [AppleCS42L83Audio driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(68 ms)] [RTBuddyV2 driver is slow(msg: SetState to 2)(105 ms)] [AppleMultiFunctionManager driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(220 ms)] [AppleConvergedIPCOLYBTControl driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(217 ms)] [AppleBCMWLANCore driver is slow(msg: WillChangeState to 0)(167 ms)] [AppleCS42L83Audio driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(66 ms)] [RTBuddyV2 driver is slow(msg: SetState to 2)(104 ms)] [AppleMultiFunctionManager driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(222 ms)] [AppleConvergedIPCOLYBTControl driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(218 ms)] [AppleBCMWLANCore driver is slow(msg: WillChangeState to 0)(145 ms)] [AppleCS42L83Audio driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(68 ms)] [RTBuddyV2 driver is slow(msg: SetState to 2)(105 ms)] [AppleMultiFunctionManager driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(220 ms)] [AppleConvergedIPCOLYBTControl driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(218 ms)] [AppleBCMWLANCore driver is slow(msg: WillChangeState to 0)(157 ms)] [AppleCS42L83Audio driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(70 ms)] [RTBuddyV2 driver is slow(msg: SetState to 2)(105 ms)] [AppleMultiFunctionManager driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(218 ms)] [AppleConvergedIPCOLYBTControl driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(214 ms)] [AppleBCMWLANCore driver is slow(msg: WillChangeState to 0)(143 ms)] [AppleCS42L83Audio driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(70 ms)] [RTBuddyV2 driver is slow(msg: SetState to 2)(105 ms)] [AppleMultiFunctionManager driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(219 ms)] [AppleConvergedIPCOLYBTControl driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(215 ms)] [AppleBCMWLANCore driver is slow(msg: WillChangeState to 0)(149 ms)] [AppleCS42L83Audio driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(71 ms)] [RTBuddyV2 driver is slow(msg: SetState to 2)(105 ms)] [AppleMultiFunctionManager driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(218 ms)] [AppleConvergedIPCOLYBTControl driver is slow(msg: SetState to 1)(214 ms)]

 

[Tardegard]

Anyone found a real solution guys?
the hibernation workaround is not very handy.
we need something more consistent.