Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Yosemite battery life
- Thread starter aoaaron
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Totally fine. I might even get a bit better after the maintenance tasks are done and you given the computer restart. I wouldn't think about it, that sounds just fine.
Sounds quite normal. There are many factors that impact your battery life. See the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the following link for details, including tips on how to maximize your battery life.
The link below should answer most, if not all, of your battery/charging questions. If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend you take the time to read it. Yosemite has killed the battery life on my Late '13 15".
The time remaining gives what looks like a healthy figure, but the percentage drops a hell of a lot quicker.
The time remaining gives what looks like a healthy figure, but the percentage drops a hell of a lot quicker.
How long have you been running Yosemite? It's normal for battery life to be degraded when transitioning to a new OS version. Indexing drives and other maintenance tasks, along with apps that may need to be upgraded to be fully compatible may contribute to higher than normal power demands. I'd give it some time before making the assumption that the OS version has an ongoing negative effect on battery life.
I'm on 87% and its predicting around 4 hours 30 minutes of battery life right.
I have Spotify (playing music, iTunes, Safari with 5 tabs, ical and evernote open.
I'm sure on Mavericks I had about 45 mins to an hour more.
Shall I do a clean install or am i being OCD?
I have Spotify (playing music, iTunes, Safari with 5 tabs, ical and evernote open.
I'm sure on Mavericks I had about 45 mins to an hour more.
Shall I do a clean install or am i being OCD?
I'm have an Air 2013 and the only thing I really use is Safari with 5 tabs atm. I have 80% left and the remaining time is only 5h and 10 min, which doesn't seem very good. I would usually have 7-8 hours on Mavericks at this point.
Battery % drops right away from 100%, than if you go back again later you will see the % climb again. Unknown if this is just a % bug, but my battery time is very good as long as I don't read into the first % numbers after battery is at 100%. Takes time to settle down me thinks
I used my Late 2013 15" rMBP continuously yesterday, using iTunes, Safari (with some streaming for an hour or so), some Lightroom, and general Finder activities.
I got 6h:40m from pulling the plug with 100% showing, to it dying completely.
I wish I'd done that on Mavericks to see if I'm just paranoid or not.
I got 6h:40m from pulling the plug with 100% showing, to it dying completely.
I wish I'd done that on Mavericks to see if I'm just paranoid or not.
The built-in batteries in the newer Mac unibody notebooks come pre-calibrated and do not require regular calibration like the removable batteries in older Apple notebooks.
Run on battery whenever you need to and plug it in whenever you can. You can plug or unplug any time you need to, regardless of the charged percentage, and you never need to completely drain your battery.
Yeah I'm aware of that. I was never going to completely drain the battery. But the calculation for the amount of battery remaning and the battery percentage keeps changing. It's not lasting very long, which is strange given that Safari and Chrome are pretty much the only thing running. Only got one tab of Chrome though, so I guess this version is not exactly optimized.
That seems pretty decent actually. I have the 2014 15" rMBP (Iris Pro) and my Yosemite install was really buggy. Was getting 4 and a bit hours out of the battery, and it was noticeably warmer at idle too. I went back to Mavericks, and I easily get 7+ hours based on my usage. I figure I'll do a clean install in a few months when some of the bugs are sorted out.
Draining your battery to 2 or 3% then recharging will have zero effect on your battery readings, as that's not how calibration is done.
It's perfectly normal for your remaining percentage or time to vary constantly, as it's only an estimate, based on the minute-by-minute power demands of your system. See the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the Apple Notebook Battery FAQ (link in post #3 of this thread) for details.
The status in my menu bar is always completely out of date.
I was sitting on 59% for about an hour, then it dropped to 37%. I plugged in the charger, and it's still showing 37% and no indication of it being plugged in. However when I go to the "Energy" panel in Sys Prefs, it clearly says it's plugged in, charging and at 43%.
Does anyone know how to fix this?
I was sitting on 59% for about an hour, then it dropped to 37%. I plugged in the charger, and it's still showing 37% and no indication of it being plugged in. However when I go to the "Energy" panel in Sys Prefs, it clearly says it's plugged in, charging and at 43%.
Does anyone know how to fix this?
Interesting, thanks for tip! That seems to be a very elaborate post, I'll look into it.
I do have a question though. How accurate is the "time on battery" in Activity Monitor? I had about 7 h 20 min before I needed to charge.
Spotlight has an average energy impact of 129 according to Activity Monitor. Is that normal when Safari is only taking up 12?
Not accurate enough to be useful. The time remaining can jump from 7 hours to 1 hour and back to 6 hours within the span of a minute or two, because of minute-to-minute changes in your computer's workload and power demands.
Spotlight may be indexing your drives, or may have done so recently, which would account for higher than normal usage.
I've noticed a hit on battery life as well, although I can't pinpoint the exact cause. I've also noticed a few peculiar things...
When I click on the battery icon to see which apps are using a lot of power, it doesn't seem to make much sense. For example, I can be watching a movie in VLC and it won't be listed as using a lot of power. But if I close the movie and have VLC open in the background, then it says it's using a lot of power... ??
I also have the Battery Health app installed, but the listed amount of power doesn't match what OS X is telling me via the battery icon. And this is after I did a full calibration (i.e., draining the battery to 0%, then charging and leaving it plugged in for a few hours after 100%). OS X will say I have 77% charge, and Battery Health will show something like 73% charge.
I installed Yosemite on Oct. 16, so I would have thought most indexing tasks would be finished by now. The computer has been on most of the time with a few reboots.
What gives?
When I click on the battery icon to see which apps are using a lot of power, it doesn't seem to make much sense. For example, I can be watching a movie in VLC and it won't be listed as using a lot of power. But if I close the movie and have VLC open in the background, then it says it's using a lot of power... ??
I also have the Battery Health app installed, but the listed amount of power doesn't match what OS X is telling me via the battery icon. And this is after I did a full calibration (i.e., draining the battery to 0%, then charging and leaving it plugged in for a few hours after 100%). OS X will say I have 77% charge, and Battery Health will show something like 73% charge.
I installed Yosemite on Oct. 16, so I would have thought most indexing tasks would be finished by now. The computer has been on most of the time with a few reboots.
What gives?
Thanks for this. Have completed it, and will now monitor and advise of the outcome.
I haven't used the Battery Health app, but I do have a workflow on Alfred that does the same thing. From what I can make out, the Battery Health app would take the "Full Charge Capacity" and "Full Charge Remaining" from System Information and formulate a percentage amount.
The battery icon seems to get re-calibrated for a reduction in the health of the battery. So for example, two years into its life cycle, it will still show a 100% charge, even though it's technically not a 100% of it's capacity.
Could be wrong, would be interesting to hear someone else's opinion too.
I am having the same issues having the fan working and my MBP overheating. I followed up recommendation to open Activity Monitor and found out that Mail app was taking about 95% of the CPU time plus Energy. I have configure Exchange, Gmail and iCloud accounts. I decided to close the Mail app and after 1-2 minutes the CPU usage dropped and fan stopped working.
I am wondering if Mail app is creating this issue and most concern if the Exchange issue that happened on previous version of iOS is happening again now on OS X ?
I remove my Exchange account and reload Mail and everything worked well. Convinced that Exchange has something to do here.
Anybody experienced similar situation?
Regards,
I am wondering if Mail app is creating this issue and most concern if the Exchange issue that happened on previous version of iOS is happening again now on OS X ?
I remove my Exchange account and reload Mail and everything worked well. Convinced that Exchange has something to do here.
Anybody experienced similar situation?
Regards,
not a perfect analogy, but it's a bit like MPG meters you have in many cars these days - especially hybrids. if you floor it or go up a hill the MPG goes way down. presumably you're not going to be going up hill your entire trip, or spinning the wheels so aggressively, so that MPG reading is not going to be accurate in any meaningful capacity except "in the moment"
but it's still good to know