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MacBook Pro Battery Drain

Avatar Rick Churchill
The battery on my MacBook Pro runs down much more quickly than it did. I would say 4 hours continual usage to drop from full to 10%. Even overnight in sleep it will reduce from 100% to 87%.

Unfortunately I upgraded the computer from High Sierra to Mojave at the same time as replacing it's internal storage from 256 Gbyte to 1Tbyte so I do not know for certain which is to blame (or neither and I have now only become aware of a gradual deterioration).

I suspect the SSD card. I could swap the card back as an experiment but as there is no way I am going to stay with the 256GBytes card my only reason would be to advise others of a consequence of upgrading using the OWC (Other World Computing) card.

Any ideas?

Re: MacBook Pro Battery Drain

Avatar Mick Burrell
I wouldn't expect either upgrade to cause the battery issue. Perhaps Mojave will be harder to run on an older machine - at least, harder than the OS it came with, but you don't give us data defining "much more quickly". You don't tell us the age of the laptop but batteries don't last forever and as you mention four hours continuous use, I'm guessing it would come into the "well used" category. If the machine is over three years old and has been well used (is it your only machine or do you have a desk machine you use more?) I'd consider replacing the battery or like most people accept you can't be far away from a charging point for too long.

I'm not certain but I'm fairly sure Apple provide us with vital security updates without telling us and I think they can download while a machine is asleep. If that's correct, that would explain the drop overnight.

Re: MacBook Pro Battery Drain

Avatar Rick Churchill
Thanks Mick. The Macbook Pro was bought in September 2015 which makes it just 3 years old and It is my only machine. Over last night it dropped to 89% . A new battery may revive it however I have a suspicion that this battery drain was not present before the upgrades.

Using the menu: Apple>About This Mac>System Report>Power - the battery shows it has done only 485 cycles and its condition is stated as Normal.
I don't know what constitutes a cycle i.e. how far the battery has to be discharged before being connected to the charger to register. The System Report also shows that the battery is charging to the maximum capacity but I am not sure how this can be measured accurately.

I closed all Application Software and the discharge is shown at 160mA which sounds reasonable. I'll leave it overnight with everything closed down to see what discharge there is. Anyone else with a MacBook Pro early 2015 edition who could advise on their discharge rate and deterioration overnight?

(Addendum: I've just done some more experimentation with monitoring the discharge and it is very inconsistent and doesn't look a if it is an accurate measuring tool)

Re: MacBook Pro Battery Drain

Avatar Mick Burrell
I have a MacBook Pro from years earlier than yours which I only use to run Snow Leopard. It has a removable battery which is knackered! It shows 237 cycles 😉

I wouldn't rely on the system figures too much. A battery replacement won't be wonderfully cheap but a lot cheaper than a new machine so it depends on how much you need to use it longer than the battery can last on a charge.

Re: MacBook Pro Battery Drain

Avatar Tony Still
A couple of things you could try:
Shut the machine down overnight and restart in the morning. If there's a drop in the battery level then that points to a hardware issue (which could be your battery misbehaving).
In Activity Monitor, go to the Energy pane, ensure that the 'Preventing Sleep' column is enabled (if not: View>Columns and tick it) and check for any app that's not allowing the machine to sleep. While you're there, have a look at the 'Energy Impact' to see if anything is using more power than expected. You can also look under CPU for any runaway background process that's using lots of %CPU - anything over 10 or 15% whilst supposedly idling is suspicious (though you'd probably hear the fans in this case).

Have you installed any new software recently (apart from Mojave)? I had a program a while ago with a faulty plug-in: macOS kept trying to use it, having a process crash due to the fault, restarting its process and trying to use it again... repeat until battery flat!

Re: MacBook Pro Battery Drain

Avatar Rick Churchill
Interesting. Activity Monitor shows no apps preventing sleep. It shows that Creative Cloud is the highest user and inside that something called Adobe CEF Helper at 1.2 which is strange as no Adobe Apps are running. In fact there are 3 Adobe CEF helpers.

I have 3 Adobe products Photoshop Elements, Premiere Elements and Lightroom. In addition there is Acrobat reader, Creative Cloud and Bridge. (Where the last 2 are I am not quite sure)

In the last week PSE 11 has been crashing (quitting when certain operations are carried out). I uninstalled it and re-installed it from disc but then it quit for any operation! As I could not find any similar situations reported on the internet and as PSE 11 is quite old I have bought Affinity Photo as I need an image manipulation app. in the next month and reckoned that it would take time to learn a new one.

Opening either PSE, PE or LR does not increase the activity of Adobe CEF Helper but in their own right after stabilising have levels of 18!, 3 and 3. I'll now uninstall PSE and see if there is any difference in battery drain.

Interesting. There are 2 copies of Uninstall PSE in the Applications folder so perhaps I either had 2 copies before or my uninstall process did not complete properly. Now I have none after uninstalling twice but still 3 Adobe CEF Helper processes running.

With no PSE installed I have left the computer for an hour and it's still 100% charged. Could be solved. thanks.

Re: MacBook Pro Battery Drain

Avatar Trevor Hewson
If you're feeling brave, you could quit CEF Helper, Acrobat Reader and Creative Cloud in Activity Monitor. I'd guess that if any of the remaining Adobe apps need them, they will re-launch them - but I don't know for sure!

P.S. I have PSE 6 and PSE 12 both running ok under Sierra (we kept PSE 6 because we find it easier to use than PSE 12!). I've checked Activity monitor and we don't seem to have Creative Cloud or CEF Helper.

Re: MacBook Pro Battery Drain

Avatar Tony Still
I have three Adobe processes running, being the only 32-bit processes on my machine. These are:
AdobeDesktopService, AdobeUpdateDaemon and AdobeIPCBroker

The only Adobe product I have is Lightroom; with LR not running they are using 0.0/0.1% CPU. That doesn't change when I open LR. I don't think they're your problem.

I think it's worth trying shutting-down the machine overnight (or longer) and checking whether you lose charge. I'm leaning towards it being a battery hardware issue.

You could try reseting the SMC: this is often just voodoo but the SMC does have a role in battery management and you have been messing with the hardware so it might do some good. Apple's advice is here.

Re: MacBook Pro Battery Drain

Avatar Rick Churchill
I tested the overnight energy loss several nights ago. With the Mac shut down there was no loss in battery, it remained at 100%. I have reset the SMC and after I charge the battery to 100% I'll monitor the drain and edit this reply later today.

Unfortunately with little usage an hour over lunch and then left in sleep for the afternoon the battery is down to 52%.

Re: MacBook Pro Battery Drain

Avatar Trevor Hewson
Just a thought - Could Spotlight still be indexing the contents of your new SSD?

Re: MacBook Pro Battery Drain

Avatar Tony Still
You did suggest swapping back to your old SSD. This might just eliminate a faulty SSD putting a drain on the battery but I don't see it as very likely. You could just remove and reseat the new SSD, looking out for poor connections and shorts but this is a long shot.

Personally, I think I'd go for a new battery at this point.

Re: MacBook Pro Battery Drain

Avatar Rick Churchill
It has been several days now so I don't think it can be Spotlight.

After 2 hours my battery is down to 38% so I may have to fork out some more cash. First I'll have to pluck up courage to do an SSD swap again when I have sorted out a few other things.

At present I'm trying to publish a booklet and iTunes Producer says I don't have valid iTunes Store credit card! Why do I need one if I'm publishing a free booklet and anyway I have an App store card, are they different! (Sorry mixing threads here it was just an aside)

Re: MacBook Pro Battery Drain

Avatar Tony Still
Just one more thought: Is the machine running hot when it's not doing very much (or do you hear the fans running a lot)? That would point to something amiss elsewhere in the hardware and would explain why the battery is being depleted. The obvious suspect at that point would be the new SSD.

If it is running hot, is it practical to run with the case open? That would let you check the temperature of the SSD. Be careful what you touch but touching the tops of the SSD devices won't do any harm. There are no dangerous voltages inside the machine (no mains, no CRT). I take no responsibility for burned fingers...
 
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