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Macbook suddenly started lasting half the time

N

nalbagli

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 11, 2014
310
35
My Macbook battery has been amazing on the notebook, with my usual use and the screen brightness set to 50%, normally I would get around 9 hours consistently, also once I charged it to 100% the time estimate with only Safari open would show me around 10 hours. But since my las two charges battery under the same usage conditions have lasted like 5 hours, and on a 100% the time estimate on OS X shows me around 5;30 hours which makes no sense at all because I have made no changes or downloaded anything new.

Any ideas?
 
I can really make no sense at all on why this may be happening, battery was great until yesterday now it's draining really really fast with same type of usage, could letting it discharge to 0% help?
 
nalbagli said:
I can really make no sense at all on why this may be happening, battery was great until yesterday now it's draining really really fast with same type of usage, could letting it discharge to 0% help?
Click to expand...
In the activity monitor, the is a display for application energy use. Perhaps you can check if something is suddenly using a lot of energy.
 
No, you shouldn't need to do a deep discharge on a Lithium Ion battery. In fact, they generally don't like that sort of thing:

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_increase_the_runtime_of_your_wireless_device

Check the Energy column in Activity Monitor. Also do a full shutdown to power-off state and then turn it back on.

You may also want to try resetting the SMC (System Management Controller). Instructions are linked below, under the heading "On Macbook notebooks with non-removable batteries".

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

Finally, before anyone else suggests it: don't try to repair permissions. It's generally voodoo and won't help with your power problems.
 
mkelly said:
No, you shouldn't need to do a deep discharge on a Lithium Ion battery. In fact, they generally don't like that sort of thing:

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_increase_the_runtime_of_your_wireless_device

Check the Energy column in Activity Monitor. Also do a full shutdown to power-off state and then turn it back on.

You may also want to try resetting the SMC (System Management Controller). Instructions are linked below, under the heading "On Macbook notebooks with non-removable batteries".

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

Finally, before anyone else suggests it: don't try to repair permissions. It's generally voodoo and won't help with your power problems.
Click to expand...


Thanks I'll try resetting the SMC!!
 
nalbagli said:
My Macbook battery has been amazing on the notebook, with my usual use and the screen brightness set to 50%, normally I would get around 9 hours consistently, also once I charged it to 100% the time estimate with only Safari open would show me around 10 hours. But since my las two charges battery under the same usage conditions have lasted like 5 hours, and on a 100% the time estimate on OS X shows me around 5;30 hours which makes no sense at all because I have made no changes or downloaded anything new.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Have checked to see what % of battery life is left? You can use apps like Battery Health or CoconutBattery to check. Your problem happened to me and my battery life % dropped from 98% to 79% in a matter of a few days. Apple is replacing my rMB.
 
cmjars said:
Have checked to see what % of battery life is left? You can use apps like Battery Health or CoconutBattery to check. Your problem happened to me and my battery life % dropped from 98% to 79% in a matter of a few days. Apple is replacing my rMB.
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my battery is at 96%, I check it with Coconut Battery but it hasn't been very reliable, a few weeks ago it showed me 93%
 

Thanks for the input, truth is I can make no sense of my battery lasting so little, I have been using it on 50% Brightness, with only safari and messages open, and after 3 hours of use my battery is 44%. The only app consuming energy is safari but a few days ago my computer lasted 9-10 hours with this type of use
 

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I hear ya. Ive only ever gotten 5 hours max with similar use and screen turned down. I am waiting for the macbook to be more readily available before i take it in and ask for a replacement.
 
The only times I have found my MB battery badly impacted is when there is a buggy runaway process sucking up CPU. Examples of this are coreduetd and securityd.

Take a look in activity monitor at the CPU tab. Is the IDLE at the bottom of the window constantly at a very low value? Sort the %CPU column in descending order and see what the top processes are.
 

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nalbagli said:
Thanks for the input, truth is I can make no sense of my battery lasting so little, I have been using it on 50% Brightness, with only safari and messages open, and after 3 hours of use my battery is 44%. The only app consuming energy is safari but a few days ago my computer lasted 9-10 hours with this type of use
Click to expand...

You've made no changes to settings. No updates of software. You're not on the beta. Just a sudden drop?

Rarely do these issues come from out of the blue.
 
ZipZap said:
You've made no changes to settings. No updates of software. You're not on the beta. Just a sudden drop?

Rarely do these issues come from out of the blue.
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That's what's strange, I've changed no settings or anything in my Macbook.
 
Are you running you Chrome? That's been known to be a resource hog, that could also impact battery life.
 
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