What causes battery drain on MacBook Pro in sleep mode?

Hello Community


I have my MacBook Pro 13" M2 since 2022 and I changed the battery 5 months after getting it for a keyboard issue.

Now its health is at 94% for a cycle count of 211.


I don't know what that really means. But since I got it I never really had an issue with the battery since it gave really tremendous experience!!


But it's been a week since I've seen a drop in its performance. The most one is while I'm not using it, it's losing battery in sleep mode. Since I've got it I never had the habit of turning it off.


So I thought of an app running on background but I can't seem to see where I could find that in system settings.


If you have any more ideas or help that would be very helpful

Thanks a lot !


Chris


[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Battery issues

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 15.5

Posted on Jul 15, 2025 05:29 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 21, 2025 06:57 PM

Wow, your laptop is waking up a lot there many times within minutes of going back to sleep. I've never quite seen a system waking that soon. It is like death by a thousand cuts.


However, the biggest drops in battery charge level seem to occur after an extended wake period with these entries:

2025-07-21 11:57:15 +0200 Wake           Wake from Deep Idle [CDNVA] : due to smc.70070000 lid SMC.OutboxNotEmpty/HID Activity Using BATT (Charge:37%)           
2025-07-21 12:02:12 +0200 Assertions     PID 159(runningboardd) Summary PreventUserIdleSystemSleep  00:03:49  id:0x0x1000085a0 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2025-07-21 12:03:59 +0200 Assertions     PID 159(runningboardd) Released PreventUserIdleSystemSleep  00:05:36  id:0x0x1000085a0 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2025-07-21 12:17:12 +0200 Assertions     PID 159(runningboardd) Summary PreventUserIdleSystemSleep  00:12:39  id:0x0x1000086d4 [System: PrevIdle PrevDisp DeclUser kDisp]          
2025-07-21 12:32:12 +0200 Assertions     PID 159(runningboardd) Summary PreventUserIdleSystemSleep  00:27:39  id:0x0x1000086d4 [System: PrevIdle PrevDisp kDisp]          
2025-07-21 12:39:06 +0200 Assertions     PID 159(runningboardd) Released PreventUserIdleSystemSleep  00:34:34  id:0x0x1000086d4 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser IntPrevDisp kDisp]          
2025-07-21 12:39:18 +0200 Sleep          Entering Sleep state due to 'Clamshell Sleep':TCPKeepAlive=active Using Batt (Charge:26%) 962 secs


Notice the 11% drop there.


I'm not certain, but I think the laptop is waking up due to the lid angle sensor (see the first line I quoted where it references "lid") and it may be kept awake by the Display (kDisp).


Personally I would test with a clean install of macOS to confirm the same behavior. Erase the disk followed by reinstalling macOS, but do not install any third party apps and do not restore from a backup.


Even better would be perform a DFU Firmware Restore which resets the security enclave chip, system firmware, and internal SSD & pushes a clean copy of macOS onto the internal SSD.


You can try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected. The only useful diagnostic is one which produces an error code. I'm not sure if the diagnostics would detect a bad Lid Angle Sensor.


You can try testing the Lid Angle Sensor by opening & closing the display clamshell. When the lid is just about closed, do you see the display go dark? And when you lift the lid beyond a quarter inch do you see the display light up again? Even if the Lid Angle Sensor is operating correctly for this test, it is possible the sensor is bad and intermittently thinks the Display clamshell has been lifted. Once macOS thinks the display has been opened, then your timers for putting the display to sleep will depend upon those settings before it may go back to sleep.


To get any further information & insights would require looking at the main system logs to see what else (if anything) the system may be doing during those time periods (requires using the command line to gather up the system logs), but that is a nightmare and is not for the faint of heart (or anyone who wishes to remain sane). You can easily have hundreds if not thousands of entries per second.....yes per second. Most of those entries will be meaningless and will be scary sounding....the ones which show the most promise will be censored for privacy/security reasons. I can provide the Terminal command to gather those logs, but I don't know how to filter them since the built-in filters require a deeper understanding of macOS & the programming interfaces/terminology which is very hard to find online...much less understand.


Maybe other contributors can provide a bit more information about the events causing the laptop to wake up. I tried a quick search for some of the terms, but unfortunately there is no quickly found information that I could find which would help understand them.


Assuming the test of a clean install (or better yet the clean install from a DFU Firmware Restore) has the same issue (remember, do not restore from a backup & do not install any third party apps while you test the system), then you have a hardware issue of some sort (most likely a Lid Angle Sensor if those log entries are any indication).


If there are no issues with a clean install, then it means you have some sort of configuration issue or an issue with some third party installed software. In that case you can post an EtreCheck report here and/or just keep the power adapter connected to laptop.

37 replies

Jul 16, 2025 10:26 AM in response to Chris_0607

"On the cloud" is great for sharing photos, but is not a viable backup solution for everything you have. The stuff is not under your control, and is subject to sloppy handling, arbitrary changes in policy, theft, accidental deletion, data loss [are they making frequent backups using best practices?], and discontinuation or throttling of the service. It can easily take three days to restore it at ordinary Internet speeds.


If you do not have a recent local, disk-based backup, your computer is like a ticking Time bomb. You are only one disk failure, one mainboard failure, one crazy software, or one "oops" away from losing EVERYTHING! Drives do not last forever. It is not a question of IF it will fail, only WHEN it will fail. In addition, you never know when crazy software or Pilot Error throws away far more than you intended.


If you are using another direct-to-disk backup method that you prefer, and you currently have a recent disk-based backup, that is great. If not, you should consider using Built-in Time Machine. Take steps to acquire an external drive as soon as possible. If you buy one, a drive 2 to 3 times or larger than your boot drive is preferable for long term trouble-free operation. Do not pay extra for a drive that is fast.  (You can get by for a while with a "found" smaller drive if necessary, but it will eventually become annoying).


Attach your external drive and use

Settings > General > Time machine ...


... to turn on Time Machine and specify what drive to store your Backups on.  It may ask to initialize the new drive, and that is as expected. APFS format is default format if running MacOS 11 Big Sur or later.


Time machine works quietly and automatically in the background, without interrupting your regular work, and only saves the incremental changes (after the first full backup). Time machine backs up your machine — including every connected drive that is in a Mac compatible format. it can not back up Windows format drives.


Time Machine's "claim to fame" is that it is the backup that gets done. It does not ruin performance of the rest of the computer while doing its backup operations. You do not have to set aside a "Special Time" when you only do backups. When you need it, your Time machine Backup is much more likely to be there.


How to use Time Machine to Backup or Restore your Mac:

Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support


Jul 17, 2025 11:03 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thank you Grant for your answer


But I’m quite surprised of your answer because this machine has been reliable for many time, and the dusky issue is really concerning not in the way you think maybe, because each time it’s calculating it differently, I have supposedly now 50GB of free space even though I didn’t do anything


what do you think about that

but we haven’t solved yet the issue I’ve come to you for my battery issue


Thank you John for your response

But it’s kind of concerning because I don’t have any usb device connected to my Mac

Jul 18, 2025 07:46 AM in response to Chris_0607

<< drain while using in class (so on battery) ? >>


Running more than ONE app at a time in class will cause this. You must close all but ONE app to use this computer in an appropriately-responsive way.


Since the real RAM memory is so small, more than one App at a time forces the drive to run all the time, because the additional RAM required is being simulated on the drive. And because the drive is nearly full, writing takes a long time and everything slows. It also may hang from time to time waiting for the writes to complete, but this could be on a scale of milliseconds, so may not be noticeable.


Normally, if you had enough RAM and enough free space on the drive, the drive could stay unpowered most of the time. And battery would last far longer.

Jul 22, 2025 11:12 AM in response to Chris_0607

The disk space issue is serious enough to greatly reduce your drive's performance. An M1/2 Mac should post Write and Read speeds in the range of 2700-3200MB/sec. Yours:


Performance:

    System Load: 119.12 (1 min ago) 44.15 (5 min ago) 19.52 (15 min ago)

    Nominal I/O usage: 42.92 MB/s

    File system: 8.65 seconds

    Write speed: 1013 MB/s ⚠️

    Read speed: 1256 MB/s ⚠️

Jul 22, 2025 01:53 PM in response to John Galt

But since my Mac is out of warranty, I didn't wanted to go to a Genius Bar because I was afraid they would make me pay since I don't think they could see anything on the spot in a 15minutes appointment.


But I don't experience a battery drain only while sleeping but also while using as mentioned, I have a 94% health pourcentage and 215ish cycles so pretty correct...


But Thank you a lot to everyone for your replies !!

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What causes battery drain on MacBook Pro in sleep mode?

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