MAJOR battery disappointment. What am I doing wrong?

[petestein1]

So I set up my new M1 Macbook Air Tuesday night and started using it Wednesday morning. I figured Wednesday and maybe Thursday battery life would be impacted by all the indexing and such.

But Friday I was shocxked to see I went through ~75% of a fully charged battery in 80 minutes of light use. Nothing but Firefox, Mac Mail, and MS Word.

Granted I had the screen on FULL brightness (which was a bit of a mistake -- eye strain) but still, does the screen brightness make that much of a difference? My older Macbook Air is usually near full brightness and does about as well.

Opinions? Experience?

 

[acidfast7_redux]

List everything involved in your "setting up?"

Software installs, etc...

I downloaded 11.0.1 and installed it and it took about an hour and used about 10% of battery.

 

[Quackers]

Not enough information really.
Have you looked in Activity Monitor for any clues?

 

[cycling_pete]

Something doesn't seem right here... I have a M1 MBP and it goes through ~75% batter after a FULL DAYS use of a mix of light and heavy use. Brightness will not make that much of a difference. I installed about 15 programs and download ~100GB of data from Dropbox and lost about 20% battery.

The only thing I can think of is Firefox not being optimized and sucking a lot of power. Try using Safari or Chrome for a day and see what happens?

 

[snakes-]

Firefox not M1 optimized wait for version 84 december 15 and try again. Reduce brightness 3 tabs this will be fine help too.

 

[zhenya]

In Activity Monitor there is a column that allows you to sort by energy use. This will tell you everything you need to know.

 

[petestein1]

List everything involved in your "setting up?"

Software installs, etc...

I downloaded 11.0.1 and installed it and it took about an hour and used about 10% of battery.

My setup was literally nothing more than using Migration Assistant to clone my old machine.

I set Dropbox to Smart Sync so it wouldn't fill my SSD up with a ton of shared files from my colleagues I'll never use.

I use:

Firefox
Word
Apple's Mail
Excel
Slack
A bit of Chrome
A bit of Safari
1Password
a bunch of minor Apple apps like TextEdit, Calculator, Contacts, Preview, System Monitor

I do have Evernote, Dropbox, Loom and 1Password installed in the Nav bar...

None of this is any different than the way I used my last machine other than I had the screen a lot brighter.

I suppose Firefox could be a much bigger battery hog on M1 machines but that seems unlikely.

I checked Activity Monitor and see the CPU is 75% at almost all times. (BTW, got a 16 gig machine). Though I do see "FirefoxCP WebExtensions is reads ~98% in the "% CPU" column. The only extensions i have installed in Firefox are Ghostery, 1Password and Evernote.

Ah! Found this in another forum:

I have similar Firefox problems. The root cause appears to be addons: running the current release version in safe mode works perfectly.​

​

During the misbehavior, the process "firefoxcp webextensions" pegs one CPU core at 100% [0]. Amusingly, this is very hard to notice because the M1 neither slows down nor gets hot!​

​

While Firefox beta does not lock up irrecoverably for me, extensions still don't work right, often showing a blank popover when clicked. So, I'm living adventurously on Nightly where everything works perfectly.​

​

...maybe I'll try the nightly build of Firefox and see if it's better. Or go a day in Safari instead (it'll be hard -- so much of my work is all shortcut-ed and bookmarked and saved into Firefox. I've been using Firefox for... 17 years?)

Happy to hear other suggestions though.

 

[petestein1]

In Activity Monitor there is a column that allows you to sort by energy use. This will tell you everything you need to know.

Just looked. The "12 hour power" for Firefox is 113. Nothing else is over 10. It also says that with my battery at 42% it estimates I only have 1 hour, 49 minutes left. Yikes! What "12 hour power" actually means is not clear. The popup says "Average energy impact in the last 12 hours or since the Mac started." That's not a very clear statement. (Also, there was a little "i" info icon that led to that popup that disappeared the first time I moused over it. I restarted the app. It did not come back. Big Sur is a pile of steaming garbage.)

Oh, and by the way, since i typed that last paragraph the battery has dropped from 42% to 39% and is now down to 1 hour 34 minutes.

 

[zhenya]

Just looked. The "12 hour power" for Firefox is 113. Nothing else is over 10. It also says that with my battery at 42% it estimates I only have 1 hour, 49 minutes left. Yikes! What "12 hour power" actually means is not clear. The popup says "Average energy impact in the last 12 hours or since the Mac started." That's not a very clear statement. (Also, there was a little "i" info icon that led to that popup that disappeared the first time I moused over it. I restarted the app. It did not come back. Big Sur is a pile of steaming garbage.)

Oh, and by the way, since i typed that last paragraph the battery has dropped from 42% to 39% and is now down to 1 hour 34 minutes.

Yes, Apple is not clear on what that value means, however it is believed to be a weighted value of some sort including CPU and GPU use, wakeup frequency, etc.

In any case, 113 is VERY high, and correlates to your other post indicating Firefox is using nearly 100% cpu. That’s your issue. Either FireFox in general, or more likely, one of your extensions. Close FireFox and you should have about normal battery life.

 

[acidfast7_redux]

I think every single complaint about M1 battery usage is related to a browser extension.

Can't stand them, especially the AdBlocking variants. Probably what this is as well.

 

[petestein1]

Yes, Apple is not clear on what that value means, however it is believed to be a weighted value of some sort including CPU and GPU use, wakeup frequency, etc.

In any case, 113 is VERY high, and correlates to your other post indicating Firefox is using nearly 100% cpu. That’s your issue. Either FireFox in general, or more likely, one of your extensions. Close FireFox and you should have about normal battery life.

Just installed the Firefox Beta, v84. Allegedly works better for M1. Browsing the NYTimes for 15 seconds sends the Energy impact up to 45. So better, not much better.

 

[Moakesy]

Whilst it’s clear Firefox is the major culprit, I had a similar issue with my non-M1 MBP and battery life.

After much messing around, including Activity monitor analysis, I ended up contacting Apple support. It turned out to be having Dropbox always running in the bar at the top of screen. It was eating my battery in about 2 hours flat. Closed it down and went to around 9 hours per charge.

As I say, mine is an Intel machine and not M1, but thought I’d mention it in case this is also a factor for you.

 

[petestein1]

I think every single complaint about M1 battery usage is related to a browser extension.

Can't stand them, especially the AdBlocking variants. Probably what this is as well.

I only have 3 extensions running:

1Password
Evernote
Ghostery

I could live without Ghostery as there are not a lot of ads or tracking on the sites I frequent anyway AND Firefox now has a lot of clicking built in.

Evernote is always a steaming heap of trash and I could likely remove it as I use it maybe once a week.

1Password is non-negotiable.

Why do you hate extensions? Is it just that they so frequently cause problems?

 

[acidfast7_redux]

Whilst it’s clear Firefox is the major culprit, I had a similar issue with my non-M1 MBP and battery life.

After much messing around, including Activity monitor analysis, I ended up contacting Apple support. It turned out to be having Dropbox always running in the bar at the top of screen. It was eating my battery in about 2 hours flat. Closed it down and went to around 9 hours per charge.

As I say, mine is an Intel machine and not M1, but thought I’d mention it in case this is also a factor for you.

To be fair, I always have Dropbox running and still get 8-14h battery life, depending on using and I sync files between machines all day long.

 

[petestein1]

Whilst it’s clear Firefox is the major culprit, I had a similar issue with my non-M1 MBP and battery life.

After much messing around, including Activity monitor analysis, I ended up contacting Apple support. It turned out to be having Dropbox always running in the bar at the top of screen. It was eating my battery in about 2 hours flat. Closed it down and went to around 9 hours per charge.

As I say, mine is an Intel machine and not M1, but thought I’d mention it in case this is also a factor for you.

Thanks. Dropbox has always been a major resource hog and would cause problems on my older MacBook Air. It's been fine on the M1. I just looked and while it comes 9th on the "12 hour power" chart it's only 1.55.

 

[acidfast7_redux]

I only have 3 extensions running:

1Password
Evernote
Ghostery

I could live without Ghostery as there are not a lot of ads or tracking on the sites I frequent anyway AND Firefox now has a lot of clicking built in.

Evernote is always a steaming heap of trash and I could likely remove it as I use it maybe once a week.

1Password is non-negotiable.

Why do you hate extensions? Is it just that they so frequently cause problems?

Yes, and their value is somewhat dubious.

I also only use Firefox for certain activities through VPN. I use Chrome only for Google Meet as it's terrible on Safari. And, I've switched totally to Safari since the M1 purchase.

 

[petestein1]

And while I have all you helpful and smart people here, does anyone know a quick and painless way for me to point the new Firefox Beta to all my old saved passwords, and open tabs and bookmarks and browsing history and such?

 

[petestein1]

I've switched totally to Safari since the M1 purchase.

I might have to rip off the band-aid and do the same. I was trying to minimize the disruption of moving to a new machine. It's bad enough adjusting to all the horrible changes Apple made to Mail in Big Sur. It's pushing me to Spark I think (unless there are other recommendations from all of you.)

 

[Quackers]

It's been a while as icloud does that kind of thing now but I think you can export bookmarks from FF to a particular file type and then import those to Safari.
Though things could have changed nowadays

 

[petestein1]

It's been a while as icloud does that kind of thing now but I think you can export bookmarks from FF to a particular file type and then import those to Safari.
Though things could have changed nowadays

Yeah, I know I can export and import bookmarks. I was hoping someone knew how to point the beta at all the resource files of the previous version so it just slurps everything in with no muss, no fuss. Tried Googling it a bit and no clear answer but didn't look very hard.

 

[Moakesy]

Thanks. Dropbox has always been a major resource hog and would cause problems on my older MacBook Air. It's been fine on the M1. I just looked and while it comes 9th on the "12 hour power" chart it's only 1.55.

FWIW Dropbox was not showing up as a battery hog on my machine at the time, but it was still the culprit. I had a call with Apple Support and it was one of the first questions they asked.

This was around a year ago, so much could have changed since then. Hope it is just Firefox...it certainly sounds like it.

 

[acidfast7_redux]

I might have to rip off the band-aid and do the same. I was trying to minimize the disruption of moving to a new machine. It's bad enough adjusting to all the horrible changes Apple made to Mail in Big Sur. It's pushing me to Spark I think (unless there are other recommendations from all of you.)

I've actually found it a nice transition to Safari (except Google Meet running like poop).

I am struggling with the keyboard. My old machine was Japanese and my iMac has a Swedish keyboard and I have a UK keyboard at work.

I was running them all on Swedish but the keyboard layout on the M1MBP has the keys in different physical positions than on the Japanese keyboard.

I but the bullet and put them all on UK English now.

It's taken several hundred hours to fully remap my brain.

 

[haralds]

I banished DropBox a while back for its resource hogging - battery, memory, and money. I do everything via iCloud now. I once in a while put stuff in DropBox "free level" for sharing.
I mainly use Safari - fast, safe, efficient. I use Firefox and Chrome only when needed. Less safe and efficient.
I have a large number of app always loaded and can go all day with 30% left going to bed.

 

[dmccloud]

I'm running M1-ready builds of both Firefox and Chrome on my Pro, had the system running on battery from around 10am until 12am and battery only dropped down to 46%. The only extensions I run in Firefox are LastPass and AdBlock Plus, neither of which seem to have a dramatic effect on battery life. Screen brightness is at 50%, and the only devices connected to my unit were my AirPods and the Magic Mouse 2. I can easily run this machine all day and not worry about battery. In fact, I only charge the battery if it drops below 50% because of the incredible battery life.

 

[petestein1]

I'm running M1-ready builds of both Firefox and Chrome on my Pro

Where did you get the “M1 ready build“ of firefox? And have they said anything about when it will be generally available? I have heard December 15 several times but don’t know where that data comes from.