Battery usage worse in Mavericks

[lwilliams]

I find that battery usage is much worse in Mavericks than in ML. I am an IT manager, but almost totally in the Microsoft fields... Is there anything in the Mac to check that compares to the Windows Task Manager.....? Or where should I look?

And the only app running is Safari.....no video or anything like that.

 

[gorskiegangsta]

"Activity Monitor" is OS X equivalent of Windows Task Manager.

Btw, if it's a new machine, or a fresh install/update of OS X, the Finder (Windows Explorer equivalent) and Spotlight index will use considerable portion of CPU, temporarily, in order to index the drive. Once the index/caching is complete, CPU usage should die down and battery life should normalize.

Hope that helps.

 

[lwilliams]

Not new, rMBP 13. 11 months old. Installed GM Tuesday. Will look for Activity Monitor.

Where is it located?

 

[gorskiegangsta]

Not new, rMBP 13. 11 months old. Installed GM Tuesday. Will look for Activity Monitor.

Where is it located?

In ~Users/Applications/Utilities

Or just use Spotlight search (magnifying glass icon on top right corner of the screen)

 

[lwilliams]

I'll go there now. I left it for a while.....went from 86% to 71% with display dark. With ML, the % would not change in that condition.

 

[lwilliams]

Looks like it is Safari that is the cause. With Safari closed, the battery level has not changed.

The only page open in Safari is MacRumors.com.

In the Activity Monitor it shows Safari with an Average Energy impact of 2.52. Is that normal for Mac?

Firefox running shows .09 for the same thing.

 

[gorskiegangsta]

Looks like it is Safari that is the cause. With Safari closed, the battery level has not changed.

The only page open in Safari is MacRumors.com.

In the Activity Monitor it shows Safari with an Average Energy impact of 2.52. Is that normal for Mac?

Firefox running shows .09 for the same thing.

The energy impact readings are new to OS X, so I am not too familiar with them. However, the fact that Safari is having much higher energy impact than Firefox (which is considered to be more resource heavy) is troubling, and by no means normal. Did you clean install Mvks, or updated over ML?
Maybe try installing adblocker or flash-blocker for Safari (safari menu -> safari extensions). Also, try gfxCardStatus, it'll allow you to monitor which apps force discreet GPU, and to manually switch to integrated GPU, extending your machine's battery life.

 

[lwilliams]

I installed over ML. Just a bit ago I reset SMC. I am join got see what happens before I change anything else.

 

[djtech42]

I've noticed that the battery indicator always shows that Safari is using significant amounts of energy.

 

[bwat47]

On my machine I've found safari uses less power than firefox or chrome (2013 macbook air). I get a good 12 hours of battery life using safari and other apps the entire time.

Sitting here with this macforums page open and 7 other tabs safari is currently using 0.3 energy in my activity monitor.

 

[lwilliams]

I did reset SMC and it seems much better now.

I just have to wonder if things would be any better or different with a clean install.

 

[Benjamin99]

I've noticed that it seems that the battery life has gotten a little worse on my early 2013 13" rMBP since I installed yesterday. Possibly due to indexing and or updates in the background. Guess we will just wait and see.