Tips for MBP 2016 battery life

[JackDaniels3]

I hope this will be useful for someone.

1. Using additional battery status tools drains the battery. Staring at them drains your time and nerves

2. When you charging your battery, don't trust the charging icon or the drop down menu that says "Battery is charged" Trust me - it's not! Open "System information", click on "Power" and check "Power information". You'll see that that the status is still charging even when the battery icon says that is charged.
Wait until it's fully charged.

3. If you're using Spark (email client), turn if off after you finish working. It will still notify you when you've got new mail, but it will not drain your battery. Same goes for other apps that seems to sleeping, but are still active.

4. Do not leave your apps open while you're not using them. This is a very fast computer and you can start whatever you need very fast. Don't expect 10 hours of battery life if you leave open heavy software!

5. Turn off notifications while the computer sleeps, also the power nap. "FindMyMac" will work anyway, so no worries there. I've done that and my sleep drain is less than 1% overnight. Put to sleep at 100%, wake up on 100% battery. Also check for notifications that you don't need anyway when working during the day. I've turned off a lot of crap.

6. One tick keyboard brightness is enough, just try it. The screen is bright enough to light the keyboard.

7. Turn off the typing suggestions on the touch bar. Unless of course you're using them, but I doubt that.


Please keep in mind that this is just my opinion and my experience with my Mac (MacBook Pro 13tb 2016, 2.9, 8GB RAM, 512SSD) for the past two weeks. Depending on my workflow, I've got between 6 hours (heavy software, plugged external drive, etc.) and 8-9-10 hours (movies, music, browsing, emails).

I'm not saying that you've should change the way you've using your computer, but a little optimizations here and there will not harm your workflow.

I'll update this topic as soon as I have something new to add. Please add your advices as well. Maybe this will help the people with crappy battery life.

 

[macintoshmac]

What is your normal brightness level generally? I can be around 50% according to ambiance in a windowed room with no artificial lighting. In the dark, I can have around 30%.

 

[JackDaniels3]

What is your normal brightness level generally? I can be around 50% according to ambiance in a windowed room with no artificial lighting. In the dark, I can have around 30%.

3 ticks below the max. Even with such brightness I still have normal battery life.

 

[macintoshmac]

3 ticks below the max. Even with such brightness I still have normal battery life.

My Environment: Ambient temps around 25-30 C, battery between 27-35 C

My Use: Safari with about 12 tabs, OneNote, Outlook every hour or so (can't keep it running since then CPU goes beyond 100 percent if left on for long). Safari has Adblock Ultimate running.

My Computer Stats: brightness about 10-11 clicks, macOS Sierra 10.12.2 release version.

So, browsing the web and typing into that OneNote.

My Battery Life: At the end of 6 hours, with the laptop being shut down for about an hour in that duration, so in 5 hours, my battery life remaining is between 40 and 50 percent, with even 60 on 1 day, if I remember right.

Is this a good battery life for this usage? People here sometimes report very good mileage, and I think I might be able to do something to tweak mine?

 

[Brookzy]

Great tips.

I would add to double check that your keyboard backlighting is behaving correctly. By default the backlight should turn off after 5 seconds of no keyboard or mouse input but there seems to be a common bug where the backlight stays on constantly. In keyboard preferences, switch it to 30 seconds and then back to 5 seconds and it should work correctly.

It is possible to get good battery life on these machines. On my 13" TB 3.3 i7/16/512 I average 9 hours with plenty of background apps - Mail, iMessage, Twitter, many Safari tabs, all Office apps, iTunes playing Bluetooth audio all day, and Power Nap on! Screen brightness at about 50%. The only default setting I've turned off is typing suggestions.

 

[meteoreos]

Refrain from using flash player as it'll drain battery in a ...flash.

Some streaming services, for some reason unknown to me, still require it.

 

[Brookzy]

Refrain from using flash player as it'll drain battery in a ...flash.

Some streaming services, for some reason unknown to me, still require it.

God do people still use Flash!

---

Another good tip for the list: many sites that 'force' you to use flash have mobile versions of their sites that deliver the same content via HTML 5. A good example of this is the BBC website, especially for live sports like the snooker that's on now!

But you can load the mobile/tablet version's Flash-free stream:

• In Safari preferences, check "Show Develop menu in menu bar"
• Then, when visiting a site that requires Flash, click Develop > User Agent > Safari - iOS 10 - iPad.

This works for me so often that I no longer have Flash on any of my machines.

 

[macintoshmac]

Great tips.

I would add to double check that your keyboard backlighting is behaving correctly. By default the backlight should turn off after 5 seconds of no keyboard or mouse input but there seems to be a common bug where the backlight stays on constantly. In keyboard preferences, switch it to 30 seconds and then back to 5 seconds and it should work correctly.

Didn't know about the software bug regarding the keyboard backlight, thanks! Had it at default 5 secs and only realised that hey, i never found my lights going off that soon.. maybe even never! So did that 30 and back and sure enough, lights go out. Thanks for that mention!

My machine is the base 13 with touch bar (i5 2.9/8/256). Stock middle finger, as I like to fondly refer it to.

 

[meteoreos]

God do people still use Flash!

---

Another good tip for the list: many sites that 'force' you to use flash have mobile versions of their sites that deliver the same content via HTML 5. A good example of this is the BBC website, especially for live sports like the snooker that's on now!

But you can load the mobile/tablet version's Flash-free stream:

• In Safari preferences, check "Show Develop menu in menu bar"
• Then, when visiting a site that requires Flash, click Develop > User Agent > Safari - iOS 10 - iPad.

This works for me so often that I no longer have Flash on any of my machines.

Yeah, here in the UK BT Sport requires flash player. I still do not understand why.

 

[JackDaniels3]

Is this a good battery life for this usage? People here sometimes report very good mileage, and I think I might be able to do something to tweak mine?

I think its okay.

Great tips.
I would add to double check that your keyboard backlighting is behaving correctly. By default the backlight should turn off after 5 seconds of no keyboard or mouse input but there seems to be a common bug where the backlight stays on constantly. In keyboard preferences, switch it to 30 seconds and then back to 5 seconds and it should work correctly.

I didn't even realize that my keyboard backlight is always on. Thanks!

 

[Mefisto]

Interesting tip about the battery charge level in the first post. Any ideas as to why it says the battery is full in one place and then something else in System Information?

 

[kokhoong0624]

Interesting tip about the battery charge level in the first post. Any ideas as to why it says the battery is full in one place and then something else in System Information?

I think the battery indicator in the menu bar is based on design capacity and the one in system information is based on true capacity. Basically means like if Apple designed the battery to be 4000, but your battery have a true capacity of 4200, when you charge above 4000 but below 4200, your system information will show that it's still charging but the menu bar will show that it is fully charged because it passed its design capacity. That's also why 100% takes longer to drain to 99 compared to 99 to 98 in some devices.