Battery Life on 15.2?

[MacPoulet]

Has anyone else noticed really bad battery life on their portables with Sequoia 15.2? My M1 Pro 14" went from 100% battery yesterday when I put it to sleep to 60% this morning when I came into the office. Looking at Activity Monitor, I don't see the culprit...

Hmm, looking like it could be Mail.

 

[Cmaier]

haven’t noticed anything, but I don’t use mail.app anymore on Mac.

 

[Citysnaps]

Has anyone else noticed really bad battery life on their portables with Sequoia 15.2? My M1 Pro 14" went from 100% battery yesterday when I put it to sleep to 60% this morning when I came into the office. Looking at Activity Monitor, I don't see the culprit...

Hmm, looking like it could be Mail.

I haven't yet collected any data to support that conclusion. But will say it sure feels like it when using my M2 MBP regularly every day after updating to 15.2.

 

[Citysnaps]

Hmm, looking like it could be Mail.

Interesting.

I just checked how often Mail checks for new email in Mail -> Settings. It was set to 1 minute. I just changed it to 5 minutes, and will see if there's an improvement in battery life.

 

[MacPoulet]

Interesting.

I just checked how often Mail checks for new email in Mail -> Settings. It was set to 1 minute. I just changed it to 5 minutes, and will see if there's an improvement in battery life.

I’ll check mine out tomorrow, thanks for the tip!

 

[Citysnaps]

I’ll check mine out tomorrow, thanks for the tip!

From doing a little poking around... Apparently MacOS, at least in the previous version to Sequoia, had a feature called Power Nap. That would let your battery powered Mac laptop periodically check email when it was sleeping.

I *think* that was enabled by default. But don't know for sure, now not having a Mac with an OS previous to Sequoia.

Here's an excerpt from an Apple document (link below) that shows how to enable/disable it. The problem is, that doesn't seem to be the case with Sequoia. You're supposed to see an Enable Power Nap pop-up when you do the following:

1. On your Mac, choose Apple menu
   
   > System Settings, then click Battery
   
   in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.)
2. Click Options, click the pop-up menu next to Enable Power Nap, then choose an option.

I don't see the above option at all in Sequoia.

Here's a link to the Apple document: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/turn-power-nap-on-or-off-mh40774/mac#:~:text=When your Mac is asleep,Updates other iCloud events

I'm wondering if there's a bug that left Power Nap in the ON state from the pre Sequoia OS.

 

[Altaic]

From doing a little poking around... Apparently MacOS, at least in the previous version to Sequoia, had a feature called Power Nap. That would let your battery powered Mac laptop periodically check email when it was sleeping.

I *think* that was enabled by default. But don't know for sure, now not having a Mac with an OS previous to Sequoia.

Here's an excerpt from an Apple document (link below) that shows how to enable/disable it. The problem is, that doesn't seem to be the case with Sequoia. You're supposed to see an Enable Power Nap pop-up when you do the following:

1. On your Mac, choose Apple menu
   
   > System Settings, then click Battery
   
   in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.)
2. Click Options, click the pop-up menu next to Enable Power Nap, then choose an option.

I don't see the above option at all in Sequoia.

Here's a link to the Apple document: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/turn-power-nap-on-or-off-mh40774/mac#:~:text=When your Mac is asleep,Updates other iCloud events

I'm wondering if there's a bug that left Power Nap in the ON state from the pre Sequoia OS.

I don’t see Power Nap on my ASi Mac running Monterey. That link you posted also says, “Note: This option is only available on Intel-based Mac computers.” Seems like that’s not the culprit.

 

[MacPoulet]

So I got in to work this morning and my battery is at 20% (down from 60% yesterday) and I didn't use it for much as I was on my desktop. I do have "Wake for network access" set to "Only on Power Adapter" so I'm not quite sure what's causing the battery drain. Looking at Activity Monitor, it's just a gradual downward line. Hopefully it'll get fixed in another point update. Under macOS 14, I'd lose maybe 1-2% each night.

 

[MacPoulet]

Today's update: Battery life went from 19% to 11% over 15 hours. Still not as good as macOS 14, but possibly getting better. I'm charging the laptop up and will see what tomorrow brings.

 

[MacPoulet]

Hazah! 100% battery this morning. I think I've narrowed the problem down to either Apple News or Windscribe VPN. In the past, the Notes app has also drained the battery, but this time it's behaving.

 

[MacPoulet]

And last night it went form 83 to 80%. Tonight I will try to isolate the offending app.

 

[MacPoulet]

After two days, I've seen about a 6% drop each night with Apple News open while the computer sleeps. So there seems to be something with it, but it's not the whole story... Will try with my Windscribe VPN app open but not engaged next.

 

[MacPoulet]

Hmm. Notes seems to be acting... odd. Would this be a memory leak?

 

[mr_roboto]

Hmm. Notes seems to be acting... odd. Would this be a memory leak?

Click the "Memory" panel of Activity Monitor and find out.

 

[MacPoulet]

Click the "Memory" panel of Activity Monitor and find out.

Yeah, no problems there. But the energy use on Apple News App Notes app is odd…

Edit: meant to say Notes app.

 

[mr_roboto]

What I meant is that if you suspect a program has a memory leak, you need to look at its stats in the memory pane, particularly whether its memory use keeps going up over time. (That being the defining symptom of a leak.)

I'm honestly most suspicious of Windscribe VPN. A misbehaving VPN might well cause problems that surface in other apps (for example, Notes or News needing to retry network queries a lot because the VPN's dropping packets).

Do you actually need VPN? If you subscribed to a VPN service based on promises of improved privacy and security, you should probably save yourself some money and cancel, because they sold you a placebo.

 

[MacPoulet]

What I meant is that if you suspect a program has a memory leak, you need to look at its stats in the memory pane, particularly whether its memory use keeps going up over time. (That being the defining symptom of a leak.)

I'm honestly most suspicious of Windscribe VPN. A misbehaving VPN might well cause problems that surface in other apps (for example, Notes or News needing to retry network queries a lot because the VPN's dropping packets).

Do you actually need VPN? If you subscribed to a VPN service based on promises of improved privacy and security, you should probably save yourself some money and cancel, because they sold you a placebo.

My work requires a VPN when connecting to networks off campus. They’ve since implemented their own Cisco VPN, but at the time, it wasn’t up.

I also use it to change my location for search results, and being in Canada, some social media services block news, so this is an easy way to get around that.

I stick with Windscribe mostly because of their entertaining emails though. They seem like a nice group and I like to support them.

So a few different reasons. But I rarely have it working on my laptop. I do have it on 24/7 with my old Mac Pro as it does a better job of blocking ads.