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HiVolt

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Sep 29, 2008
1,764
6,238
Toronto, Canada
I was given given a 2015 13" MBP from a family friend whose husband passed away. I wiped it clean with Internet Recovery and installed a clean macOS Monterey.

Seems like a nicely spec'd unit, a Core i7 with 16GB RAM & 512GB SSD. Seems to work quite nicely despite the aged processor and looks in good shape without any delamination of the coating on the screen.

However I've noticed an interesting "problem". It drains battery quick when the lid is closed, what I assume should be sleep mode. If left fully charged in the evening, it will discharge almost completely by next evening. The battery has 93% capacity and 470-ish something cycles.

The problem is, I don't even know if it's entering sleep mode, since Apple felt necessary to remove the convenient LED that would pulse when a laptop went to sleep or not. The battery preference pane shows a steady decline like if it was being left idle with the screen off. I tried resetting the SMC, it didn't seem to affect it. Power Nap is and was disabled by default. There are no other relevant options I can see. I'm not even logged into iCloud or App store, so its not doing anything in the background, install is clean with only FireFox installed for a browser (sorry I cannot use Safari because of no uBlock Origin support).

I haven't had an Apple laptop since I stopped using my first gen Intel Macbook around 2010, so I don't really know the behaviour of the newer ones. Is this normal, what it's doing? My 2016 Lenovo laptop with similar spec will last well over a week in sleep mode.
 

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Ray2

macrumors 65816
Jul 8, 2014
1,172
493
You can check the sleep state its using and adjust accordingly. Either a utility or, maybe, pmset -g cap still works. No idea with Monterey.

On any laptop, I use a default schedule to shut down soon after my usual bed time and wake shortly before my usual wake time. Saves me having to think and simple to override when desired.
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
29,263
13,362
If nothing else works with Monterey...

... have you considered wiping it and re-installing an older version of the OS?
(since you're "starting fresh" anyway)

I'm thinking that 10.14 "Mojave" might do the trick for you.
 

HiVolt

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Sep 29, 2008
1,764
6,238
Toronto, Canada
It's not a machine I will be using every day, so I'll just shut it down. But I am just curious why this is happening...

My question is, for anyone with any Macbook, does the battery drain register like that on the graph, even if it drains less? I wish it had an indicator that it was in sleep mode like it has for charging.
 

jimmysofat6864

macrumors member
Nov 7, 2018
88
19
If nothing else works with Monterey...

... have you considered wiping it and re-installing an older version of the OS?
(since you're "starting fresh" anyway)

I'm thinking that 10.14 "Mojave" might do the trick for you.
I had the same issue as him and going down to Big Sur didn't help.
 

jimmysofat6864

macrumors member
Nov 7, 2018
88
19
I forgot to get back to this thread... I ended up resetting the SMC & PRAM, and it has been fine. I tested it for a week with sleep, and it only drained like 10%.
Unfortunately that was the first thing I tried and it didn’t work sadly.
 

06tb06

Cancelled
Sep 12, 2017
183
138
The first thing that came to mind.... indexing everything because you did a fresh install. I know this occurs on iPhones regardless of device when upgrading to a newer OS, the phone wants to re-index.
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
29,263
13,362
Again I'll suggest:
If you're not going to be using this for days -- perhaps even a couple of weeks -- at a time, why not just shut it all the way down?

But... it might be a good idea to put it on charge at least once every 7-15 days, boot it up just to check on things, etc.
 
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jimmysofat6864

macrumors member
Nov 7, 2018
88
19
Again I'll suggest:
If you're not going to be using this for days -- perhaps even a couple of weeks -- at a time, why not just shut it all the way down?

But... it might be a good idea to put it on charge at least once every 7-15 days, boot it up just to check on things, etc.
I mean they did advertise a 30 day standby time on sleep so I would at least hope to get at least somewhere within that ballpark.
 
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