MacBook Pro 16in battery draining

[SneakySquid9]

I just got the 16 inch MacBook Pro and so far I have noticed that the battery drains faster than the advertised duration. So far, my 100 watt hour battery lasts 5-6 hours on a full charge but Apple says that it should last up to 11 hours. I know that these advertised numbers vary based on the applications that I'm running but all I've done so far is web surf on safari and watch YouTube videos. Does anyone know if that's normal?

[Commodus]

6 hours ago, SneakySquid9 said:

I just got the 16 inch MacBook Pro and so far I have noticed that the battery drains faster than the advertised duration. So far, my 100 watt hour battery lasts 5-6 hours on a full charge but Apple says that it should last up to 11 hours. I know that these advertised numbers vary based on the applications that I'm running but all I've done so far is web surf on safari and watch YouTube videos. Does anyone know if that's normal?

Which browser are you using?  Chrome is a notorious battery hog.  Throw in YouTube videos and that might not help matters.  Apple tests using Safari, which is considerably leaner (Microsoft's Chromium version of Edge should be better, too).

 

I'm also wondering if you have any background processes, and where your screen brightness is.

[SneakySquid9]

4 hours ago, Commodus said:

Which browser are you using?  Chrome is a notorious battery hog.  Throw in YouTube videos and that might not help matters.  Apple tests using Safari, which is considerably leaner (Microsoft's Chromium version of Edge should be better, too).

 

I'm also wondering if you have any background processes, and where your screen brightness is.

I am currently using Safari. I don't really have much in the background except maybe Spotify and my screen brightness is default so around 50%. Honestly I'd expect double the battery life I currently have but for some reason it's draining pretty quick.

[Commodus]

13 hours ago, SneakySquid9 said:

I am currently using Safari. I don't really have much in the background except maybe Spotify and my screen brightness is default so around 50%. Honestly I'd expect double the battery life I currently have but for some reason it's draining pretty quick.

Hm, that's odd (and sorry, I missed the Safari reference earlier).  Spotify would add a bit to the drain, but not that much.  And while web video is going to eat at battery life... again, it shouldn't do that much.

 

I imagine you've restarted, and that you don't a bunch of background utilities (the sort that might live in the status bar up top).

[SneakySquid9]

2 hours ago, Commodus said:

Hm, that's odd (and sorry, I missed the Safari reference earlier).  Spotify would add a bit to the drain, but not that much.  And while web video is going to eat at battery life... again, it shouldn't do that much.

 

I imagine you've restarted, and that you don't a bunch of background utilities (the sort that might live in the status bar up top).

Yea I've been making sure to fully quit out of apps to test the battery life but still only about 6 hours of usage (only web surf, Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify for now) from a full charge until it completely shuts down. Not sure if there's something wrong with the battery itself or the system itself is consuming too much power. My status bar is completely empty as well so there definitely isn't anything else running.

[Husky]

Apps such as Spotify and other Electron/CEF apps can sometimes activate the dGPU for some reason and cause the battery to drain very fast. Other times these apps are just extremely poorly optimized and simply use quite a bit of processing power.

 

You can make sure that Automatic Graphics Switching is Enabled in System Preferences > Energy Saver. Then go to About This Mac and make sure that the Graphics listed is the Intel Graphics and that the Radeon graphics does NOT show up, if it is in the list then it is active which consumes a lot of power.

 

Lastly, check Activity Monitor and the Energy tab to see what the Energy usage is. It should also say the it is using the Integrated Graphics. You can also open the CPU and GPU monitor windows by pressing Command+3 and Command+4 respectively and checking if the usage is higher than expected.

 

One more thing, I have found that it often takes a few full charge cycles for the battery to "settle in" and perform how it should. When I first got my machine I noticed that my MacBook Pro's battery life increased quite noticeably after about 5 full charge cycles and since then has been good. There is also other stuff running for a short while on a fresh copy of macOS such as Spotlight indexing and miscellaneous other tasks.

[SneakySquid9]

57 minutes ago, Husky said:

Apps such as Spotify and other Electron/CEF apps can sometimes activate the dGPU for some reason and cause the battery to drain very fast. Other times these apps are just extremely poorly optimized and simply use quite a bit of processing power.

 

You can make sure that Automatic Graphics Switching is Enabled in System Preferences > Energy Saver. Then go to About This Mac and make sure that the Graphics listed is the Intel Graphics and that the Radeon graphics does NOT show up, if it is in the list then it is active which consumes a lot of power.

 

Lastly, check Activity Monitor and the Energy tab to see what the Energy usage is. It should also say the it is using the Integrated Graphics. You can also open the CPU and GPU monitor windows by pressing Command+3 and Command+4 respectively and checking if the usage is higher than expected.

 

One more thing, I have found that it often takes a few full charge cycles for the battery to "settle in" and perform how it should. When I first got my machine I noticed that my MacBook Pro's battery life increased quite noticeably after about 5 full charge cycles and since then has been good. There is also other stuff running for a short while on a fresh copy of macOS such as Spotlight indexing and miscellaneous other tasks.

Looks like my graphics card is active! I was so confused why my new MacBook Pro is consuming so much power. Thanks for the informative post I'm pretty new to macOS and I'm planning on using it for college cuz I've heard it's reliable. So far my battery has only gone through about 4 full cycles so I'm hoping to see some better battery performance.

[Husky]

17 minutes ago, SneakySquid9 said:

Looks like my graphics card is active! I was so confused why my new MacBook Pro is consuming so much power. Thanks for the informative post I'm pretty new to macOS and I'm planning on using it for college cuz I've heard it's reliable. So far my battery has only gone through about 4 full cycles so I'm hoping to see some better battery performance.

Glad to see we have found the culprit. You can check which app is requesting the dGPU to be active by checking the Energy tab in Activity Monitor. There is a column for "Requires High Performance GPU" and there will be a Yes on the apps which are requesting it. Then you can identify the apps that are the problem-causers.

[SneakySquid9]

42 minutes ago, Husky said:

Glad to see we have found the culprit. You can check which app is requesting the dGPU to be active by checking the Energy tab in Activity Monitor. There is a column for "Requires High Performance GPU" and there will be a Yes on the apps which are requesting it. Then you can identify the apps that are the problem-causers.

Lol yea your suspicion was right it was Spotify activating it for some reason. Currently it says that Spotify has the biggest energy impact out of all of them which is pretty interesting.