Something (negative) i just discovered today

[losthismarbles]

** Edit: Sorted, see last post **

Namely, that this (M4) Air's battery is ****. That about covers it.

- 100% charged; i unplugged it just to test, had never checked this.
- (not including background processes), only two programs left open: Firefox, on an empty, blank tab, nothing open, no downloading, nothing at all, minimised; and Thunderbird, which only has two email addresses to check up on, which additionally didn't even have a single email to receive through the whole night, also minimised.
- Mail, iCloud sync, etc., none are used; not an "Apple.. ecosystem.. enthusiast" person.
- Nothing hooked to it, nothing to wake it.
- As much as one can have disabled in a stock 26.4 is already disabled; including certain famous resource/battery hogs. So already, well below expected usage demands.
- Closed the lid at about, 11PM? Slightly later? Woke up very early in the morning (dog) and it was dead Jim. So long. The battery mind! 🙂

That's it, lol

Now, i use it in lieu of a desktop, it never leaves the desk let alone the house, so as mentioned, had never checked to see how much it can last. Aaand, now i know.

****.

Doesn't really matter for me, but.. Praised it for its price-to-performance, praised it for its thermals, praised for it lacking a fan (which matters, albeit to few), praised it for its trackpad.
But goddamn, its battery's useless, lol. Not even five hours? Without use?
Were i to expect actually using it outside the house, i'd be rather pissed off 🙂

Anyway, just my take. Can't have it all, sure, but, i've had crappy Intel uber heater potatos that lasted as long or longer, despite their consuming about 4/5 times what this Air does.. so.. short on excuses.
Just mentioning, had not noticed 'til now. Maybe it helps someone, maybe not. Maybe the M5 is better, no idea.

 

[Starfia]

Sorry to hear about the bad experience.

(No details on what model of MacBook Air this is, or how old the device is?)

 

[losthismarbles]

Sorry to hear about the bad experience.

(No details on what model of MacBook Air this is, or how old the device is?)

Much appreciated, but nothing to be sorry about! 🙂
For what i was after, it's been a-we-so-me! Not changing it ^^

It's an M4, got it early August i think? Brand new straight from the regional.. qualified.. local partner down here. Edit: BTO too, so literally made for me, i'd assume about zero battery shelf time?

 

[Starfia]

It's an M4, got it early August i think? Brand new straight from the regional.. qualified.. local partner down here. Edit: BTO too, so literally made for me, i'd assume about zero battery shelf time?

Hmm; you'd think so. That sounds severe enough that an attempt at service under warranty – presumably in effect if you bought it in August from a legitimate seller – would be worth pursuing after making a few reasonable attempts to rule out other factors (high battery draw shortly after a system update, processes that are invisibly using resources in a way that isn't apparent, et cetera).

 

[losthismarbles]

Hmm; you'd think so. That sounds severe enough that an attempt at service under warranty – presumably in effect if you bought it in August from a legitimate seller – would be worth pursuing after making a few reasonable attempts to rule out other factors (high battery draw shortly after a system update, processes that are invisibly using resources in a way that isn't apparent, et cetera).

At my age, schedule is.. relevant!
Next time i tuck in relatively early, i'll check it again, may well have been a one-off.

Beyond that, yeah; i have an extended to 4yrs warranty, so worst comes to worst, just a matter of timing it right (would first have to check how long this usually takes; as in down here, through said partner specifically).

But again, not a complaint as it's a non-issue for me. More like you know, an observation.
(with my thanks once again)

 

[jeffpeng]

Yeah isn't right. In standby that machine should last *days*. Almost definitely something broken or massively misconfirgured.

 

[Howard2k]

Something sounds wrong there. I can literally use my M4 Air for hours and hours at a stretch on battery. I just never really even need to think about charging the thing. Even if I'm doing some light local LLM type stuff, which can hammer the processors quite hard.

Use Activity Monitor and check the power usage of your processes and see which ones are hogging it. You can also see if an app is Preventing Sleep.

I suspect a one off but I'd check Activity Monitor if the issue persists.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

Namely, that this (M4) Air's battery is ****. That about covers it.

- 100% charged; i unplugged it just to test, had never checked this.
- (not including background processes), only two programs left open: Firefox, on an empty, blank tab, nothing open, no downloading, nothing at all, minimised; and Thunderbird, which only has two email addresses to check up on, which additionally didn't even have a single email to receive through the whole night, also minimised.
- Mail, iCloud sync, etc., none are used; not an "Apple.. ecosystem.. enthusiast" person.
- Nothing hooked to it, nothing to wake it.
- As much as one can have disabled in a stock 26.4 is already disabled; including certain famous resource/battery hogs. So already, well below expected usage demands.
- Closed the lid at about, 11PM? Slightly later? Woke up very early in the morning (dog) and it was dead Jim. So long. The battery mind! 🙂

That's it, lol

Now, i use it in lieu of a desktop, it never leaves the desk let alone the house, so as mentioned, had never checked to see how much it can last. Aaand, now i know.

****.

Doesn't really matter for me, but.. Praised it for its price-to-performance, praised it for its thermals, praised for it lacking a fan (which matters, albeit to few), praised it for its trackpad.
But goddamn, its battery's useless, lol. Not even five hours? Without use?
Were i to expect actually using it outside the house, i'd be rather pissed off 🙂

Anyway, just my take. Can't have it all, sure, but, i've had crappy Intel uber heater potatos that lasted as long or longer, despite their consuming about 4/5 times what this Air does.. so.. short on excuses.
Just mentioning, had not noticed 'til now. Maybe it helps someone, maybe not. Maybe the M5 is better, no idea.

Try turning the WiFi off, and then close the lid and go to bed.

I would also turn the following off: Automatic Software Updates and "things" that work during the night or incognito, including Apple Intelligence. I have no idea what "Intelligence" is doing in the dark or background. Maybe Apple AI does its best work in the dark? 😅

 

[BotchQue]

...Use Activity Monitor and check the power usage of your processes and see which ones are hogging it. You can also see if an app is Preventing Sleep.

I suspect a one off but I'd check Activity Monitor if the issue persists.

This. My brand-new M1 MBP didn't last a day on battery; once I looked at the Activity Monitor I figured out I hadn't properly removed an unwanted malware guard, and a part of it was continuously chugging in the background. After calling the vendor and repeating, "No I don't want to renew it just tell me how to get rid of this thing!" for twenty minutes, they finally sent me a small file that fixed everything up.

 

[Joplin]

Chiming in here as I've been monitoring my M4 Air (15") battery a bit lately. I have had it running for a year using batt (open source app that limits charging to a limit you set) with a charge limit of 80%.

It's a little disappointing to see that battery health is now reporting at 95% after 58 cycles. I even ran it to 0% and up to 100% a few times to recalibrate. But oh well, maybe the next year will see less degradation.

But more on topic: I also notice pretty severe battery drain when I leave the MacBook in sleep overnight. Few days ago it went from 100% to 80% during a single night. However I have the machine configured with LuLu (open source alternative to Little Snitch) and I block a bunch of Apple services with it. Maybe some instances keep trying to connect in the background? I can't really see anything weird in the activity monitor (past 12h energy use). I am running Sequoia.

HOWEVER when I disable wifi and bluetooth my battery stays at 100% overnight. So there's something to try...

 

[losthismarbles]

O.K. i know what's the issue.. Apple 🙂

It's the "peopled" process*, apparently running amok for many others as well after 26.4
72% CPU as i type this.

Googled it up after i noticed it on the activity monitor, plenty of threads about it.
Many thanks to everyone taking the time to post, sincerely 🙂

* some say it's facial recognition (meaning i could kill it forever if so), others that it's used in conjuction with icloud sync daemons (ergo i cannot kill it forever). If anyone knows exactly what it's responsible for, pointers would be appreciated.

 

[ignatius345]

You’ve got a rogue process somewhere.

I’ve got something on my M4 Air that slowly drains the battery when asleep, but it’s more on the order of 10% overnight, something like that. I don’t love it, but it’s a small enough inconvenience that I haven’t bothered to track it down yet.

If you really want to confirm it’s a software and non-system thing, create a new vanilla user account, restart and log onto into that new account only. Note the charge level and set the machine to sleep as normal. Check in the morning and you’ll probably find it’s around the same charge as the night before. If it’s NOT, then you know you’ve got something else going on at the system level.

 

[ignatius345]

some say it's facial recognition (meaning i could kill it forever if so), others that it's used in conjuction with icloud sync daemons (ergo i cannot kill it forever). If anyone knows exactly what it's responsible for, pointers would be appreciated.

Odd there’s so little info about this process online, but the “facial recognition” theory is a non-starter IMO since no Mac has hardware for that. I just checked mine and it’s barely active. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[losthismarbles]

“facial recognition” theory is a non-starter

..

It scans your photo folder, matches faces to names.

 

[hobowankenobi]

Check this thread for in-depth info and possible solutions. Daemons can be a booger to diagnose. Also...be aware, trashing them won't kill them. Some can run in the trash, even after a reboot.

As for the facial recognition thing, yes, it is reported, but for Photos app, not for access or security. I see this:

High CPU usage by the peopled process on macOS is often linked to the Photos app conducting background facial recognition, scanning, or syncing, especially after importing new media. To resolve this, keep the Mac plugged in and open Photos to allow the processing to finish, or restart the machine to clear temporary processes. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Immediate Actions for peopled High CPU:

• Let It Finish: Leave the Photos app open and the Mac awake/plugged into power for several hours to complete indexing.
• Check Activity Monitor: Use Activity Monitor (Command+Space) to confirm peopled or photoanalysisd is the culprit.
• Restart the Mac: Sometimes this temporary thread state can be cleared with a simple reboot.
• Investigate Photos: On Reddit, a user suggested that checking cmd+i (Get Info) on the process in Activity Monitor might reveal specific file paths causing the issue. [1, 2, 3, 4]

If peopled remains high after extensive, uninterrupted time, it may indicate a corrupt library that needs addressing.

 

[ignatius345]

..

It scans your photo folder, matches faces to names.

Ohhhh, I get it. Sorry, made the assumption this was FaceID related. Yeah, this does make sense as a possible culprit.

 

[splitpea]

I have an Intel MBA that does something like that. If you sleep it while on power and then unplug it, it doesn’t sleep as deeply, and the battery quickly runs down. Whereas if you unplug it and then sleep it, it’ll last for days. Something’s off with the power management, and after trying a half dozen things I just gave up and resolved to make sure to unplug and then sleep in that order if I need the battery to last.

 

[theorist9]

Other ways to check if it's the battery or something else:

1) Boot into Safe Mode, close the lid, and see what happens.

2) After confirming you have a good backup, create a second partition (i.e., an entirely different container), install the OS on that, boot into that partition, close the lid, and see what happens. If you don't get battery drain, install your apps in groups into the new partition, and check the battery drain after adding each group.

 

[losthismarbles]

@hobowankenobi seen it, yeah.. i'm about to do that now, it's still going crazy in usage (peopled + callhistorydb)

And my apologies for the belated reply, but wanted to see it if it persists/can be helped before deleting databases.
Answer being no 🙂

This apparently only happens to "some" users after 26.4, so no help pinning it down either.
And my thanks to everyone replying, really ^^

Edit: I started the brute's way (because why not), went and chowned/deleted the whole callhistorydb folder, no logging out, don't see why he suggests that tbh. Folder had 4 items inside it, 3 + 1 plist. Was instantly recreated, albeit with 6 items inside it this time; so we know it can write inside it now, we know stuff was missing.. somehow.
This is what it looks like now. Perhaps someone could compare with theirs?

Will report back to mention whether this actually amounted to anything or not.

Edit 2: Same old.. zero improvement. Killed peopled, will let it start again on its own (which it will), see what happens. Have also had Photos open the entire time as per suggestion above, though to me this is clearly unrelated. Kill peopled, callhistoryd or whatever (the second, equally troublesome culprit) also calms down. Photos on the other hand have had zero effect on anything.

Edit 3: (12ish hours later) Success! Fingers crossed it stays that way, lol, but for now it looks sorted. Peopled did reinitiate and is back to its usual 0,1-0,2% CPU usage.
So it seems that for anyone who's had this, all they need do is delete the CallHistoryDB folder entirely, wait for it to be recreated, then manually kill peopled; and they're sorted.

Will ammend post if it reverts back to its problematic state.

 

[jerryjohnson]

Lol, I feel this 😅
Thought the M4 Air would last longer too. Great price and thermals, but battery… yikes.

 

[losthismarbles]

@jerryjohnson even if you leave everything stock, as it comes out the box, Sequoia vs Tahoe is a big difference.

If there's nothing bloat/features-wise you really need from Tahoe, you could always downgrade.
(am personally planning to, bit of experimenting left as am new to macs, testing some things before i wipe it)

 

[losthismarbles]

Edit 4: Zero success..

After the daily reboot, peopled and callhistorydb are back at it..
CPU clog, plus the heat derived thereof.

Am out of things to try.

Also, am missing my stable, UNLOCKED, Linux machine.
More. And more. And more. But that's me 🙂

Anyway, to get back to topic, not sure how the Air's battery would have behaved without all this.

 

[1BadManVan]

Sorry you're having such issues with this rogue process, definitely did not have such issues with either my m2 air or my m5.

Got it off the charger at 6:30pm, just light usage and streaming YouTube, but it's currently 10:30 and I'm at 95%. That's the type of battery you SHOULD be seeing when it's running properly. I can go days without a charge

 

[Howard2k]

Edit 4: Zero success..

After the daily reboot, peopled and callhistorydb are back at it..
CPU clog, plus the heat derived thereof.

Am out of things to try.

Also, am missing my stable, UNLOCKED, Linux machine.
More. And more. And more. But that's me 🙂

Anyway, to get back to topic, not sure how the Air's battery would have behaved without all this.

Sounds like it would have been fine without all of this.

If you've exhausted all troubleshooting options, take the nuclear option. Do a wipe and erase and verify that the vanilla plain machine without all your apps installed works well on battery.

 

[FrozenDarkness]

i'm curious so tagging what you find in the "energy tab" for activity monitor.

one thing i found out was steam game that was minimized was keeping my laptop awake. i thought it would still go into sleep mode. so something might be keeping your computer awake.