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Poor Battery Life on new air?

throAU said:
Try 1blocker + safari for your web browsing. Basically the only time I use something else is Brave (use Brave browser instead of Chrome too - its basically Chrome but blocks most garbage running in the background spying on you) for some sites that don't quite work with Windows authentication on our corporate network.

I'm usually between 50-60% screen brightness to get the sort of performance I am getting above.
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I am using Safari, but I don't think adding an extension is going to help with battery life is it? Sounds counterproductive. I wonder if the processor difference plays a significant role - it would be useful when comparing to state which of the 3 variants we own, as I notice yours is i7 and mine is the increasingly power-hungry-it-seems i5.

Edit - and my screen brightness is lower than yours.

Edit 2 - going to give 1blocker a go - thank you.
 

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throAU said:
You'd be surprised at how much junk is running in a modern web page...
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Are you using the free version? Which of the blocking features did you enable in the app? Just the top one? £38 sounds a bit steep for the paid version.
 
geesus said:
Are you using the free version? Which of the blocking features did you enable in the app? Just the top one? £38 sounds a bit steep for the paid version.
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I think I'm running the paid version. I started using it several years ago (originally on iOS) and forget what I paid for it.

I'm blocking almost everything except comments and porn.
 
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throAU said:
I think I'm running the paid version. I started using it several years ago (originally on iOS) and forget what I paid for it.

I'm blocking almost everything except comments and porn.
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Do you shutdown between uses or are you just sleeping i.e. putting the lid down? I might give the free trial a go for the full version as it will be worth it if it improves the battery life further. Seems better so far even just disabling the ads alone.
 
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geesus said:
Do you shutdown between uses or are you just sleeping i.e. putting the lid down? I might give the free trial a go for the full version as it will be worth it if it improves the battery life further. Seems better so far even just disabling the ads alone.
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I never shut down my Macs. Always lid close.
 
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Bump for this as I noticed something else that might be impacting on battery life - It seems that maps was pinging my location literally every 30 seconds or so, despite it not even being open. This has to have some impact on battery, no matter how negligible, so I've turned off access in location services for now. Seems like an old bug that Apple hasn't ironed out yet.
 
geesus said:
Bump for this as I noticed something else that might be impacting on battery life - It seems that maps was pinging my location literally every 30 seconds or so, despite it not even being open. This has to have some impact on battery, no matter how negligible, so I've turned off access in location services for now. Seems like an old bug that Apple hasn't ironed out yet.
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Having location turned on really affects battery life in my experience. Glad your battery life seems better now, do give an update if it has improved.
 
RegularGuy09 said:
Having location turned on really affects battery life in my experience. Glad your battery life seems better now, do give an update if it has improved.
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I feel like I am getting an extra hour out of mine on average, under the same usage patterns as before, since blocking ads/trackers/annoyances and turning off location services for maps. A decent improvement and I think I will be buying the pro version of 1blocker when the trial runs out. Seems to run a bit cooler too but that is anecdotal. It is worth mentioning that mine is *only* used for browsing though really. My old pro is still the workhorse, even if the air probably outperforms it now.
 
I have the base model and at least with my light usage pattern the battery seems good so far (have only had it for 3 days).

On my first charge I got around 48h on battery with 2-3h of screen time and auto bright setting (installed some apps, configured Slack, MS Teams and few other tools, few YouTube clips, browsing etc.). This is my 2:nd charge and so far I have used it for like 1.5h with approx 20 min MS Teams conference call, chatting on Slack, running VS Code for remote development and few other things and remaining time says like 9h.

I have location turned on by the way.

UPDATE: Have used mine now almost 8h in total screen time for remote work, and still 11% left.
 
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Anyone used Unicorn Blocker? I've heard, it does good job and on top of that is very lightweight and low power demanding.
 
pnd4pnd said:
I've found closing as many tabs as you can, only leaving the apps open that you are using, and cutting brightness significantly helps with battery life. Recently I installed turbo boost switcher (https://www.rugarciap.com/turbo-boost-switcher-for-os-x/ ) and this has had a dramatically positive effect on battery life. It tells you the cpu temp and fan speed which is really helpful.
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Any performance degradation with Turbo Boost?
 
geesus said:
I thought that had been discontinued as it wasn't compatible with Catalina Safari?
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yep

and uBlock has nothing to do with uBlock origin devs and advised against.

The GitHub post says that AdGuard is their recommended alternative for Catalina/ Safari 13.
 
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