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Stage Manager: high standby battery usage

spiderman0616

spiderman0616

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Original poster
Aug 1, 2010
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Anyone notice the battery drains faster in standby when you have several groups of apps open in Stage Manager? I use my 2021 14" MBP off the charger a lot, and I've now had it drain dead twice in that scenario. I have never had this issue before, even when leaving the same amount of apps open in Spaces.

The way I understand it is that Stage Manager is keeping all those apps loaded up in RAM and running, where as traditional multitasking, Spaces, etc. don't quite behave that way. That could be completely incorrect--just something I read. It's also quite possible that I'm just not noticing how low my battery is before sleep. I can be a little absent minded about that sometimes, but again, I've never had that issue before.

Any of you noticed the same? I don't see any processes using weird amounts of cycles or anything like that. Stage Manager is the only new thing I've introduced into my workflow. The only other culprit it could possibly be is my new Mastodon client, Hyperspace Desktop, but that software isn't using any unusual power either.
 
I did some testing yesterday/last night with my Mac, and I'm pretty convinced that leaving Stage Manager open with all the apps I use regularly is not a good idea off charger. I charged my MacBook back up to 100% from dead, unplugged it, closed down 4 or 5 apps, and turned off Stage Manager. When I opened it this morning, I was still in the 90s. That's back to normal standby drain from my experience with Apple Silicon.

I would surmise that closing apps was not even necessary. I've kept 3 or 4 desktops worth of apps open in Spaces and put my Mac to sleep for days and been able to use it again just fine with fairly minimal battery drain. The culprit has to be Stage Manager. I'll continue to use it on both my Macs because I actually really like it, but I don't think I'll be leaving it on when I'm not plugged in anymore, or at least until I hear this is more reliable.
 
i will try this tonight as well. Close SM and unplug the macbook.
I will leave all my apps open like i did before ventura.
 
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Not really fair results. I unplugged my MacBook and quit SM.

But I streamed some Plex while in bed to my iPad. My MacBook is my Plex server, so it powered the attached ext hdd for 2 hours.

Nevertheless the drain was significantly less with SM closed.
I didn’t close any open apps and windows.

I will test it later this week again, also when at work I will keep SM open tomorrow and close it on Friday.
Thursday is my day at college, so that day is not representative because I use the MacBook for 10 hours straight.
 
I actually had a setback in testing yesterday. I believe the apps I had open in standby were Messages, Mail, Safari, Reeder, News, Home, and Calendar. I put the computer to sleep with about 60% and woke it up a few hours later to see it was already down to 51%. This was with Stage Manager NOT turned on, just regular sleep.

This has only been an issue since 13.1 and my new theory is that Home is doing it. I'm going to try messing with that a little bit and see what happens.
 
spiderman0616 said:
I actually had a setback in testing yesterday. I believe the apps I had open in standby were Messages, Mail, Safari, Reeder, News, Home, and Calendar. I put the computer to sleep with about 60% and woke it up a few hours later to see it was already down to 51%. This was with Stage Manager NOT turned on, just regular sleep.

This has only been an issue since 13.1 and my new theory is that Home is doing it. I'm going to try messing with that a little bit and see what happens.
Click to expand...
I don't know about standby since that is harder to have vision into but when my M2 MacBook Air is just sitting at idle, the power usage is the same with or without Stage Manager. About 2.5 W at idle. Just under 1/2 brightness. MacOS 13.1.
 
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jdb8167 said:
I don't know about standby since that is harder to have vision into but when my M2 MacBook Air is just sitting at idle, the power usage is the same with or without Stage Manager. About 2.5 W at idle. Just under 1/2 brightness. MacOS 13.1.
Click to expand...
Yeah--it wasn't Stage Manager at all. I was able to test a little more after the holiday--today with roughly the same handful of apps open and Stage Manager on, it lost 2% in sleep. The only difference this time was that I didn't have my Home app or my Mastodon desktop client open. I seriously doubt it's the Mastodon app doing this.

If I sound extremely ready to blame the Home app, it's because I am. It eats up a lot of cycles and is causing me a few headaches at the moment as well due to the HomeKit transition. But at the same time, I'm glad I seem to have pinpointed it to something.
 
Yep--Home app was the culprit. I only lost another 2% overnight with Stage Manager and Power Nap turned on overnight with all my stuff open BUT Home. I'm ready to declare case closed on this thread, but if any of you have suggestions on what else can cause this, I'm all ears. Good old Activity Monitor usually has all the clues though I guess.
 
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