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OneDrive killing battery life on 2018 MBP 15"

jafico1

jafico1

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 7, 2018
95
30
Maine
As the title says, my 2018 MacBook Pro 15" seems to have a bit of a problem with OneDrive syncing, with it being a massive battery hog. It doesn't seem to be slowing down the Mac at all. Initially, I thought it was just due to the fact it was syncing the files from the OneDrive server, but I've left it for two weeks and it still seems to be destroying the battery life. Here is a screenshot:
upload_2018-8-31_11-44-36.png


Does anyone know how I may mitigate this issue? I do know that OneDrive was a massive battery/CPU hog on my previous XPS 15, but it's even more painful on this machine as without OneDrive, the battery life is amazing (with typical college work I get around 9 hours).
 
Search the internet for "Onedrive battery drain" and you'll get lots of results both on Mac and Windows. Apparently it's a very inefficient app. In that case, your only options are to live with it, don't use it, or use it sporadically.
 
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jafico1 said:
It's such a shame as OneDrive is by far the best value online storage solution out there (with Office 365 included), as I share it with other family members. Does anyone have any recommendations for any OneDrive alternatives?
Click to expand...


Well, I'm sure you know all the options.

Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, iCloud Drive, Creative Cloud. - I personally use iCloud Drive mostly, and Google Drive a little.

A separate option would be setting up your own service on a home server.
 
Is there a way to start and stop OneDrive manually on a Mac?

Under windows I do not have Onedrive start automatically as part of the boot. Instead I start it when I need to sync and then terminate it when the syncing is done.
 
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jerryk said:
Is there a way to start and stop OneDrive manually on a Mac?

Under windows I do not have Onedrive start automatically as part of the boot. Instead I start it when I need to sync and then terminate it when the syncing is done.
Click to expand...
Just clic the OneDrive icon, clic on "More", clic on "Preferences", then uncheck "Open at login".. From there if you want to manually start it, just clic the icon. I use it all the time and I have not problems whatsoever.
 
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Cusa said:
Just clic the OneDrive icon, clic on "More", clic on "Preferences", then uncheck "Open at login".. From there if you want to manually start it, just clic the icon. I use it all the time and I have not problems whatsoever.
Click to expand...

Great. That is exactly how it is in Windows.
 
Hah funny, my 2017 MBP 13' ---- I just moved to Dropbox because of this very issue. It caught me unaware one time when I needed my battery BAD and didn't have access to a plug... Wondering why CoconutBattery was telling me I had 2 hours left... OneDrive was using 100% CPU. You're right, doesn't slow down the MBP at all, had I not looked at the CoconutBattery timer, I'd have never known.

What's weird is I only catch this happening on battery ... never plugged in. Annoying. Well, last time it's done it for me cuz I've moved to Dropbox.

Edit: Killing OneDrive and restarting it fixes the 100% cpu issue temporarily. But it comes back randomly and it's hard to catch cuz the system doesn't slow down.
 
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BigMcGuire said:
Hah funny, my 2017 MBP 13' ---- I just moved to Dropbox because of this very issue. It caught me unaware one time when I needed my battery BAD and didn't have access to a plug... Wondering why CoconutBattery was telling me I had 2 hours left... OneDrive was using 100% CPU. You're right, doesn't slow down the MBP at all, had I not looked at the CoconutBattery timer, I'd have never known.

What's weird is I only catch this happening on battery ... never plugged in. Annoying. Well, last time it's done it for me cuz I've moved to Dropbox.

Edit: Killing OneDrive and restarting it fixes the 100% cpu issue temporarily. But it comes back randomly and it's hard to catch cuz the system doesn't slow down.
Click to expand...

You can run Activity Monitor as an icon showing CPU usage. It’ll minimize to your dock and it’ll be crystal clear when something is hammering your CPU.
 
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Howard2k said:
You can run Activity Monitor as an icon showing CPU usage. It’ll minimize to your dock and it’ll be crystal clear when something is hammering your CPU.
Click to expand...

Thank you. I did not know this. Right clicking the icon on the bar at the bottom and choosing: Dock Icon - CPU Usage. Very cool!
 
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BigMcGuire said:
Hah funny, my 2017 MBP 13' ---- I just moved to Dropbox because of this very issue. It caught me unaware one time when I needed my battery BAD and didn't have access to a plug... Wondering why CoconutBattery was telling me I had 2 hours left... OneDrive was using 100% CPU. You're right, doesn't slow down the MBP at all, had I not looked at the CoconutBattery timer, I'd have never known.

What's weird is I only catch this happening on battery ... never plugged in. Annoying. Well, last time it's done it for me cuz I've moved to Dropbox.

Edit: Killing OneDrive and restarting it fixes the 100% cpu issue temporarily. But it comes back randomly and it's hard to catch cuz the system doesn't slow down.
Click to expand...
hmm Interesting.. I will check OneDrive while running on battery. I rarely have my MBP unplugged while working.
 
Windows software works best with Windows of course and Apple software of course you guessed it.
 
cbautis2 said:
Windows software works best with Windows of course and Apple software of course you guessed it.
Click to expand...
That would be the case normally, except Microsoft decided to ruin the OneDrive client in Windows 10 after the excellent 8.1 version - nowadays the situation on Windows is no better
 
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jafico1 said:
after the excellent 8.1 version
Click to expand...
I had so much trouble with the 8.1 version. I do miss the ability to keep a file reference local but the actual files on the sever, yet in on windows 8.1, it was a nightmare. I've given up in both windows and macOS having a OneDrive client running. Since the offie apps are able to retrieve my files on OneDrive without the client I go that route.
 
Could be constant syncing? I’ve never used Onedrive but when I had the Dropbox app installed it would constantly be syncing files and drain the battery on my MBP. I eventually set auto sync off and it was better after that.
 
smbu2000 said:
Could be constant syncing? I’ve never used Onedrive but when I had the Dropbox app installed it would constantly be syncing files and drain the battery on my MBP. I eventually set auto sync off and it was better after that.
Click to expand...

It wasn't syncing for me when it was using all that CPU. Maybe indexing? Dunno. It's a bug in the last version or two cuz this didn't happen before - I've been using this for awhile too. :/ Oh well, Microsoft gets my $ anyway cuz of Office 365. They'll probably make more $ with me not using OneDrive storage. :p
 
no issue here, everything went normal on this mbp mid 2018
 

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I tested One Drive and Dropbox as I use both. If you have large amount of data (my dropbox has 90GB, but one drive has only <10GB), the first sync will take a long time and it will push the machine very hot.

The strange side is, the CPU usage is <15% for most of the time, but clock seems running at 4.0+GHz most of the time and package temperature most likely will be hitting 100C.

This is even worse if you use bootcamp and run windows.
 
I have had this issue with OneDrive on both my 2018 MBP and 2015 iMac through several versions of OneDrive. I am currently on 18.192.0920.0013 (Fast Insiders). It has occurred while running macOS 10.14 and 10.14.1.

The first time I noticed it was after I discovered my MBP had died after being fully charged. I thought perhaps something was wrong with the hardware or it wasn't staying asleep, but then later that day I heard the MBP fans on full blast. OneDrive was pegging the CPU. I then also noticed the same problem on iMac. It has happened several times on both machines, usually after wake from sleep. While I can usually hear the MBP fans, on my iMac they are not as loud, so I only discover the issue if I check Activity Monitor.

I had Files-On-Demand enabled, so I'm going to disable that and see if that resolves it. The release notes for the OneDrive version I'm running indicates “Fixed an issue that caused high CPU usage on Mac,” but the CPU issue just happened to me this morning with this version.
 
casperes1996 said:
Well, I'm sure you know all the options.

Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, iCloud Drive, Creative Cloud. - I personally use iCloud Drive mostly, and Google Drive a little.

A separate option would be setting up your own service on a home server.
Click to expand...
I know that this is a late bump but how do you save documents on to iCloud Drive? For example saving a world document on my Mac computer to iCloud Drive?
 
vine-boating said:
I know that this is a late bump but how do you save documents on to iCloud Drive? For example saving a world document on my Mac computer to iCloud Drive?
Click to expand...

Well, if the location of the file is inside iCloud Drive, it gets saved to iCloud Drive. Whether you move it there or choose it as the initial save destination is irrelevant. You can set it up such that your Desktop and Documents folders are stored in iCloud too, such that anything in either of those two locations is synced to iCloud Drive. Each app will have a folder in iCloud Drive for easier sandboxing, but manual storage structures are of course supported.
 
casperes1996 said:
Well, if the location of the file is inside iCloud Drive, it gets saved to iCloud Drive. Whether you move it there or choose it as the initial save destination is irrelevant. You can set it up such that your Desktop and Documents folders are stored in iCloud too, such that anything in either of those two locations is synced to iCloud Drive. Each app will have a folder in iCloud Drive for easier sandboxing, but manual storage structures are of course supported.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply
If I am like at a university windows computer how would I access these files?
 
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