Battery life cut in half after Mojave—anyone else?

[badlydrawnboy]

I upgraded to Mojave a couple days ago. My battery life dropped by 50%. I was getting about 7-8 hours before. This morning, I started using my computer (with brightness at about 25%, just email, Slack, Chrome) about two hours ago and I'm already down to 57%.

I had a 2016 before and the battery life was terrible. When I first got the 2018, one of the biggest differences was a significantly improved battery life, so it's disappointing to see that benefit disappear.

Is anyone else seeing this? Anything I can do about it?

 

[more fps]

Which year is your MacBook Pro?

 

[badlydrawnboy]

2018. Will update the original post.

I had a 2016 before and the battery life was terrible. When I first got the 2018, one of the biggest differences was a significantly improved battery life, so it's disappointing to see that benefit disappear.

 

[jerryk]

I upgraded to Mojave a couple days ago. My battery life dropped by 50%. I was getting about 7-8 hours before. This morning, I started using my computer (with brightness at about 25%, just email, Slack, Chrome) about two hours ago and I'm already down to 57%.

I had a 2016 before and the battery life was terrible. When I first got the 2018, one of the biggest differences was a significantly improved battery life, so it's disappointing to see that benefit disappear.

Is anyone else seeing this? Anything I can do about it?

Assuming you have the new version of Chrome, (rounded tabs, etc) it was updated this week also. Chrome may be the issues.

Can you try Safari for a bit and see if the low battery life persists?

 

[badlydrawnboy]

Assuming you have the new version of Chrome, (rounded tabs, etc) it was updated this week also. Chrome may be the issues.

Can you try Safari for a bit and see if the low battery life persists?

I definitely noticed the change after upgrading to Mojave and before I got the Chrome update. But I'll try using Safari for a day and see what happens.

 

[Miltz]

go back to high sierra until 14.1 or 14.2.

 

[Painter2002]

I'm on a 2017 MBP, and battery usage seems to be about the same after upgrading to Mojave, I get about 8 hours on one charge (medium usage on battery). I actually have less battery drain when the computer is sleeping than I did on High Sierra.

I'd try Safari, and/or do a full fresh reinstall of Mojave to see if the issue persists.

 

[Bending Pixels]

nope

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I'm on a 2017 MBP, and battery usage seems to be about the same after upgrading to Mojave, I get about 8 hours on one charge (medium usage on battery). I actually have less battery drain when the computer is sleeping than I did on High Sierra.

I'd try Safari, and/or do a full fresh reinstall of Mojave to see if the issue persists.

I called Apple and they suggested a re-install from the Recovery Partition. I'm in the process of doing that now.
[doublepost=1538160540][/doublepost]I don't think it has anything to do with Chrome. I charged to full again, then only had Safari open. I had it open for about 30 min and it said 4 hours remaining. I was consistently getting 8+ hours before.

 

[Ma2k5]

It's a shame Chrome can hog a lot of battery on macOS (it seems in your case that isn't the case, but rather other people's responses), on my XPS 9360 I easily get 8+ hours using chrome + other apps continuously.

 

[0009827]

Mojave battery life is defo worse. Even when machine is supposedly sleeping.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I reinstalled Mojave from the recovery partition. I'm down to 86% after about an hour with very light use, which translates into a little over 7 hours. That's not as good as I was getting before, but it's better than before the reinstall. I wonder what's going on.

Maybe I should just go back to High Sierra. How would I do that?

 

[Painter2002]

I reinstalled Mojave from the recovery partition. I'm down to 86% after about an hour with very light use, which translates into a little over 7 hours. That's not as good as I was getting before, but it's better than before the reinstall. I wonder what's going on.

Maybe I should just go back to High Sierra. How would I do that?

Keep in mind, if you just installed Mojave or really any newer MacOS, you need to give it a day or so to finish processing everything in the background. Spotlight takes a bit to index everything, and if you have a lot of photos that will eat up a lot of juice while it indexes and files all your photos.

I'd give it a 2-3 days without shutting the computer off, and if you still have the issue then I'd try going back to High Sierra. The first day I installed Mojave it did suck battery pretty good until I plugged it in and let it sleep overnight.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

Keep in mind, if you just installed Mojave or really any newer MacOS, you need to give it a day or so to finish processing everything in the background. Spotlight takes a bit to index everything, and if you have a lot of photos that will eat up a lot of juice while it indexes and files all your photos.

I'd give it a 2-3 days without shutting the computer off, and if you still have the issue then I'd try going back to High Sierra. The first day I installed Mojave it did suck battery pretty good until I plugged it in and let it sleep overnight.

I installed Mojave on Monday so I don't think it's indexing or processing anything at this point. Reinstalling Mojave seemed to help, but not sure. My battery dropped 2% in the last ~3 min.

 

[Howard2k]

Significant loss of battery while sleeping on my 2015. Incredible, it’s worse than High Sierra.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I'm looking at the battery monitor and Chrome definitely has a big energy impact, even with just normal web browsing and only three tabs open. That's nothing new, but I wonder if the recent Chrome update is contributing in addition to Mojave. Right now Chrome energy impact is between 60-120 and the only thing that is happening is me writing this post. That said, average impact over 12 hours is 12.96.

 

[iMacDragon]

I called Apple and they suggested a re-install from the Recovery Partition. I'm in the process of doing that now.
[doublepost=1538160540][/doublepost]I don't think it has anything to do with Chrome. I charged to full again, then only had Safari open. I had it open for about 30 min and it said 4 hours remaining. I was consistently getting 8+ hours before.

Very odd, activity monitor not showing anything using high cpu, or dgpu active for some reason?

I'm regularly using mine for ~6 hours a day for this sort of light and still have 40-50% battery left.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

Very odd, activity monitor not showing anything using high cpu, or dgpu active for some reason?

I'm regularly using mine for ~6 hours a day for this sort of light and still have 40-50% battery left.

So frustrating, because that's the kind of battery life I was getting in the past.

There's nothing egregious in the CPU tab. In the Energy tab, Chrome is definitely the highest user of energy, but I'm not sure whether that is simply because I use it more than any other app or because it's causing a problem. Also, my use of Chrome is no different than it was before when I was getting much better battery life.

Wondering if I should try a completely clean install next, e.g. erasing the hard drive and installing Mojave from scratch? This isn't that big of a deal for me since I store all of my data in the cloud. Just takes a bit of time to install all of my apps.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

Okay, I think reinstalling from the partition did solve the problem. The reason it may not have seemed to at first is it was probably re-indexing and stuff. But after charging the computer overnight, this morning I've been using for 3:33 and I'm at 67%. That would suggest ~10 hours of battery life, which is where I was before Mojave, or maybe even a bit better. Hooray!

 

[coolX]

It's a shame Chrome can hog a lot of battery on macOS (it seems in your case that isn't the case, but rather other people's responses), on my XPS 9360 I easily get 8+ hours using chrome + other apps continuously.

why can't google make chrome perform as well as other browsers like Brave? makes me doubt their engineering talent nowadays.

 

[csurfr]

I'm looking at the battery monitor and Chrome definitely has a big energy impact, even with just normal web browsing and only three tabs open. That's nothing new, but I wonder if the recent Chrome update is contributing in addition to Mojave. Right now Chrome energy impact is between 60-120 and the only thing that is happening is me writing this post. That said, average impact over 12 hours is 12.96.

Not sure if you're aware of this or not, but by default Chrome likes to use the dGPU (and Safari doesn't), which will certainly affect your battery life. If you goto settings, scroll down and click advanced, and then scroll until you see the setting in the pic I uploaded you can turn it off. I had to reboot the machine for some reason to get it to turn off the dGPU, but you may not have to.

 

[rmiller065]

My 2015 MacBook Pro will get down to 50% just while sleeping for 12hrs
prior to Mojave i'd maybe lose 10%-20% during the same time

 

[Howard2k]

My 2015 MacBook Pro will get down to 50% just while sleeping for 12hrs
prior to Mojave i'd maybe lose 10%-20% during the same time

I did a clean install on my 2015 and I lose around 10% while sleeping for six hours. Pretty atrocious.

 

[dh953]

Anyone know if this has been improved with the 10.14.1 update?

 

[vishhvak]

Okay, I think reinstalling from the partition did solve the problem. The reason it may not have seemed to at first is it was probably re-indexing and stuff. But after charging the computer overnight, this morning I've been using for 3:33 and I'm at 67%. That would suggest ~10 hours of battery life, which is where I was before Mojave, or maybe even a bit better. Hooray!

By reinstalling, do you mean - clean install or a dirty install over your existing one?