im using the original power adapter and cable, i just found out that an aftermarket mag safe cable didnt provide full power throughput as advertised. but still with the original cable and power adapter im running into this problem. PA is registered as 87 watts though, the battery drains far less while on power but its still happening way more often than on my 2012 retina macbook pro
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2018 MBP - Battery draining even when plugged in?
- Thread starter thebitguru
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im using the original power adapter and cable, i just found out that an aftermarket mag safe cable didnt provide full power throughput as advertised. but still with the original cable and power adapter im running into this problem. PA is registered as 87 watts though, the battery drains far less while on power but its still happening way more often than on my 2012 retina macbook pro
Interestingly, on my MBP when I transcode video with Handbrake (which uses pretty much all available cores) and I have the Apple 87W PSU connected via an Apple multiport adapter (USB-C power in, HDMI, USB 2.0), the charge is insufficient to charge the battery while transcoding is in progress and in fact depletes the charge! However, if I plug the USB-C directly into a spare port on the MBP it starts charging.
MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 / 16 GB 2400 MHz DDR4 / Radeon Pro 560X 4 GB / Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB
MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 / 16 GB 2400 MHz DDR4 / Radeon Pro 560X 4 GB / Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB
yea if you need full power supply dont use a third party usbc adapter, some claim to have powerdelivery of the full 87 watts, but i doubt the actually deliver
Same problem here.. I own a 2018 (2,9 i9) (32gb) (vega 20 4GB) and specially when gaming running windows on bootcamp economy mode it drains more juice than the original 87w charger can handle. It is just absurd to think on any solution to reduce speed to save energy. I would like to run it full power without having to worry about energy consumption.
Get a gaming laptop. Gaming is the reason the Razor ships with a 230 Watt power supply.
Is your new charger an apple genuine? Or did you get it elsewhere, a charger that is able perhaps to handle more power?
I was discussing the deficiencies of the 2020 MacBook Air in another thread. Some people maintained that the machine is perfect for the casual users, and if you needed something for heavier loads you should get a Pro machine.
Well... Hereby we're discussing quite expensive 15' Pro machines, and they behave just as bad.
I experienced the battery draining issue today for the first time, using a 2018 15' MacBook Pro with the base 2.2GHz processor... I can't imagine a better example for a configuration that screams "I am powerful, but not too much, so my power adapter and cooling solution should both cope pretty well". Unfortunately though, this is another area where Apple failed. The drain happened while the machine was under moderate load, and only a USB hub + smartphone were plugged in (the phone was already charged at 100%, resting, cool to the touch, so not really a factor). The charger is recognized correctly as 86W.
I've recently upgraded to Catalina 10.15.5, which may be related, as I haven't had this issue before.
I've completely lost faith in Apple laptops. There are way too many things that are wrong.
If only there was a power saving mode, I would love it. I don't always need the full power, sometimes I want to watch YouTube in quiet, without the fans trying to kill my family.
Well... Hereby we're discussing quite expensive 15' Pro machines, and they behave just as bad.
I experienced the battery draining issue today for the first time, using a 2018 15' MacBook Pro with the base 2.2GHz processor... I can't imagine a better example for a configuration that screams "I am powerful, but not too much, so my power adapter and cooling solution should both cope pretty well". Unfortunately though, this is another area where Apple failed. The drain happened while the machine was under moderate load, and only a USB hub + smartphone were plugged in (the phone was already charged at 100%, resting, cool to the touch, so not really a factor). The charger is recognized correctly as 86W.
I've recently upgraded to Catalina 10.15.5, which may be related, as I haven't had this issue before.
I've completely lost faith in Apple laptops. There are way too many things that are wrong.
If only there was a power saving mode, I would love it. I don't always need the full power, sometimes I want to watch YouTube in quiet, without the fans trying to kill my family.
Same problem. I noticed my mac (MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018),2,2 GHz Intel Core i7) started showing up lost percentage a couple of day/weeks ago while being on charge and sometimes in sleep mode. Today it went down to 94 percent in the last couple of minutes when I worked with it. It's 1.5years old and 84 cycles run on battery. I blame either that or recent Catalina update 10.15.5.
I think you're right!
It can be turned off from the Energy Saver screen, for the ones wondering. But I'll leave it on to extend lifespan. I use my laptop mostly plugged in, so no need to have the battery at 100% all the time, and reduce its lifespan.
Btw my Sony laptop from 2010 has a similar feature, though simpler - you can choose to limit charging to ~70%.
It's a good thing Apple added the feature, but it's a dumb thing they didn't inform me about it.
I'm now on a MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2019) / 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9 / 16 GB 2400 MHz DDR4 /
Radeon Pro 560X 4 GB & Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB running macOS Catalina 10.15.5 (19F101)
...using the supplied Apple 87W charger, in any of the 4 thunderbolt 3 ports, with a UAD Arrow TB 3 audio interface, Dell U3415W monitor and Apple iPhone charger connected to an iPhone 11.....
....and I find that a combination of Chrome with ~6 tabs, a Zoom meeting in progress and Parallels Desktop 15 running a Win 10 VM in Productivity mode (2 CPU, 4GB RAM) will NAIL the battery, i.e. deplete to 25% over 4-5 hours.
I spoke to Apple support about it - they told me that your 3rd party applications aren't designed as well as Apple applications and *might* cause problems with battery management, along with the power drawn by the audio interface...
Not sure I buy it. Been using MacBooks since 2006 with a myriad of audio interfaces, some bus powered, some powered externally, hard disks, capture interfaces et al....never had this issue until recent MBPs.
Still unlikely to switch to Windows though, I tried that recently with a Dell XPS and it was generally a suboptimal experience trying to get all my audio stuff working as seamlessly as it does on my Mac....
Radeon Pro 560X 4 GB & Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB running macOS Catalina 10.15.5 (19F101)
...using the supplied Apple 87W charger, in any of the 4 thunderbolt 3 ports, with a UAD Arrow TB 3 audio interface, Dell U3415W monitor and Apple iPhone charger connected to an iPhone 11.....
....and I find that a combination of Chrome with ~6 tabs, a Zoom meeting in progress and Parallels Desktop 15 running a Win 10 VM in Productivity mode (2 CPU, 4GB RAM) will NAIL the battery, i.e. deplete to 25% over 4-5 hours.
I spoke to Apple support about it - they told me that your 3rd party applications aren't designed as well as Apple applications and *might* cause problems with battery management, along with the power drawn by the audio interface...
Not sure I buy it. Been using MacBooks since 2006 with a myriad of audio interfaces, some bus powered, some powered externally, hard disks, capture interfaces et al....never had this issue until recent MBPs.
Still unlikely to switch to Windows though, I tried that recently with a Dell XPS and it was generally a suboptimal experience trying to get all my audio stuff working as seamlessly as it does on my Mac....
macOS catalina 10.15.5 has a new battery health management option that used to drain my battery faster and even when charging the laptop. After disabling it everything went back to normal. Might worth a check. Its under energy saver there is a button battery health at the bottom.
I wonder if that Battery Health Management thing was subversively installed to MBPs running Mojave 10.14.6 in the latest Security Update 2020-003, running in the background and not visible in Energy Saver prefs.
I've not updated to Catalina (can't, due to software I run), and yet I see the same slight drain on Sleep, and occasionally throughout the day on my 2019 MBP i7 6-core. This just recently started occurring, and the only change I've made to my system is that Security Update. Don't see the Battery Health Management setting in Mojave Energy Saver, but I have to wonder if it's been added and we just can't see it or control it.
I've not updated to Catalina (can't, due to software I run), and yet I see the same slight drain on Sleep, and occasionally throughout the day on my 2019 MBP i7 6-core. This just recently started occurring, and the only change I've made to my system is that Security Update. Don't see the Battery Health Management setting in Mojave Energy Saver, but I have to wonder if it's been added and we just can't see it or control it.
This!!!! I have spent the last 1.5 days dealing with charging issues - 2018 MBP i9, 32GB RAM, latest version of Mojave. Plugged in with original charger and a brand new Apple charging cable (thought maybe the cable was damaged so bought a new one yesterday) and battery will slowly drain and the only things eating energy are Safari and, occasionally Time Machine. I've reset PRAM and SMC. Left the laptop plugged in overnight and it was at 100% this morning. Still plugged in and battery icon in menu bar shows running on power, battery not charging and slowly dropping (down to 93% at this time - 45 mins after waking up). Yesterday it dropped to 5% even when plugged in and the biggest things consuming power were TM (1+GB backup) and MS Teams. I spent a bit of time with Apple support yesterday and had to drop off for a call so didn't finish the PRAM reset until after.
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I've spent time with Support and they wanted me to send the laptop in for service but I can't be without it for up to 2 weeks. I submitted a bug report (Feedback Assistant) and suggested there may be an issue with the Battery Health and Mojave. One thing I noted; the battery will charge if the laptop is asleep/closed. But once opened, it will continue to drain. Will leave it open and see how far down it goes before it starts charging again.
Let it run connected in power
1:12pm down to 5%
No lower battery warning
Unplugged power cable - got low battery warning
1:14 down to 4%
1:18 down to 3%
1:19 up to 4% but still showing not charging
1:20 back down to 3%
1:26 down to 2%
Restart - no reset NVRAM or SMC
Took long time to boot once Apple logo showed
Still showed as running on charger and not charging battery
Tried resetting NVRAM but wouldn’t boot
Gave low battery indicator twice and didn’t boot again
Reset SMC and got low battery indicator and it finally restarted
Battery started charging again
Up to 20% in about 15 minutes.
I've got a new 16" MBP here and am having some very strange battery behaviour. All the power/energy settings are default with latest version Catalina.
Earlier, I was using a few apps on battery, nothing very intensive. It was at about 75% charge, I had to pop out for a couple of hours, I came back and the laptop was totally dead with 0 charge. So its obviously not gone to sleep but just let itself run out of charge?
Tonight I came in, it was at 100% charge. I've not been doing anything processor-intensive, but over the last hour the battery is back down at 3%. I've plugged it in to the original charger and its sitting at 3% charge, not moving and says the battery is not charging.
Apparently Safari is using Significant Energy with just this single tab open.
Any ideas what could be going on?!
Earlier, I was using a few apps on battery, nothing very intensive. It was at about 75% charge, I had to pop out for a couple of hours, I came back and the laptop was totally dead with 0 charge. So its obviously not gone to sleep but just let itself run out of charge?
Tonight I came in, it was at 100% charge. I've not been doing anything processor-intensive, but over the last hour the battery is back down at 3%. I've plugged it in to the original charger and its sitting at 3% charge, not moving and says the battery is not charging.
Apparently Safari is using Significant Energy with just this single tab open.
Any ideas what could be going on?!
Check Activity Monitor/Energy tab and see what is using your battery. https://support.apple.com/guide/activity-monitor/view-energy-consumption-actmntr43697/mac
So according to Activity Monitor under Energy Impact, there's nothing. I've rebooted and done the usual resets, but I want to do a quick Handbrake encode and the machine is losing charge rapidly despite being plugged-in on the stock charger and cable.
With Handbrake running, Mail and Activity monitor are causing more of an energy impact.
How many times have you reset the SMC? It took 4 times total, first didn't and I did it 3 more times the next day and I've been back to normal since. I have NO idea what was going on - I've left the report open and asked if they can figure out what happened and let me know (not holding my breath). But I'd recommend resetting SMC a few times - checking after each one.