Battery Draining Fast since Tahoe upgrade

I've been able to sort out what was causing it for me on my 14in MacBook Pro with M4 MAX 64gb . I had tried booting in safe mode, disabling all safari extensions, and reinstalling Tahoe. None of those resolved my issue.

It turns out two electron based apps were to blame, specifically Slack and VSCode for me. I used to have these apps open and running in the background all the time but after hard quitting those apps, my battery performance returned to normal (basically a full day or two, on a full charge).

I found this via a reddit thread. Folks are saying it has something to do with how those apps render shadows and how that affects the window server process.

That should be expected while spotlight is indexing files in the background and optimizing object detection on your photo library after an update. Give it 3-4 days and leave the Mac plugged in when near a power source. Large Photo libraries may take a day or two longer.

About Apple software updates - Apple Support

It really should not take long to index files with the speed of the M4 as long as the computer is not shut off to prevent it from indexing.

erikbock wrote:

I have a 14" M4 Pro MBP and ever since I upgraded to Tahoe the battery is draining incredibly fast. Has anyone else had this and if so have you been able to mitigate it?

hmmm....

on the M-series A SafeBoot Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support will sort many anomalies

then Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.

The rule of thumb—if you are near the mains leave it plugged in, if you need the portability then run on the battery only—this is how you help optimize your battery charging and extend the working life of your battery by reducing the cycle count.

Have you let it finish indexing the files after the update?

As you can see in the post from ginomatico here:

I left it plugged in overnight; some people said there might be things happening in the background, so I figured I’d just let it sort itself out.

Not sure if that did the trick, but the battery’s been working fine since :)

Is it true that your Mac is not near power for 2 days at a time? The Mac is not an iPhone and should be plugged into power when it is available. You would be needlessly increasing your charge cycles that will have a significant effect on its Battery Health.

in addition to what Mac Jim ID points out, there are things that a newly-installed MacOS wants to do, that can only take place when there is power, and your Mac is awake but not too busy. These include re-building the spotlight index of every word in every document for fast searching, identifying objects and faces in your photos, and computing what files should be included in your backups.

I tested this theory and I was watching movies, for 30 mins it took a 7% battery.

After I closed slack, chrome, and VS code. for 1 hr it only took 6% battery.

That computer is a battery-CAPABLE device. It is not optimized as a battery-operated device. (It is NOT an iPhone.)

Your computer performs best when connected to AC power, such as the power adapter. It can use the full output of the Power Adapter AND when doing especially challenging work could also freely "borrow" power from the battery. In some cases, even with the power adapter connected, the charged state may decline during very stressful work.

When used only on battery, your computer has no extra cushion of power, and may perform more slowly. However, for ordinary non-stressful tasks this may not be objectionable (possibly not even noticeable.)

In general, you should ALWAYS connect a power source when it is possible to do so, and only run on batteries (which could be somewhat slower) when no power sources are at hand. Modern Macs maintain optimum battery charge levels under program control, and will NEVER over-charge. Activate Battery Health Management and do not spend another moment of your time thinking about charging.

When you set it down in one place or for the night, plug it in. Then you won't CARE whether it would drain the battery when nominally asleep.

It was the same for me! the battery was draining just like you mentioned. But after a few days, it started working as it did before the update.

I left it plugged in overnight; some people said there might be things happening in the background, so I figured I’d just let it sort itself out.

Not sure if that did the trick, but the battery’s been working fine since :)

Update: After a few days the battery is working as before. It's all good.

"I have a 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M4 Pro chip, 24GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. Ever since I updated to macOS Tahoe, the battery has been draining incredibly fast.

And you know what? I've been leaving it constantly on, just putting it to sleep by closing the lid. The whole story about Spotlight indexing is nonsense. It's not indexing anything. The OS version is just raw and unpolished.

My MacBook only has 54 charge cycles, and it's already reporting 99% battery health after just one month of use. For comparison, my 2020 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro went down to 87% after five years of use. What are you even talking about? This is ridiculous.

I bought an external hard drive just to offload my terabyte of data and go back to the previous OS. This whole situation is absurd, and Apple support is no help at all. Today, I started working at 10:45 AM, and by 2:50 PM, the battery was already down to 17 percent. I was watching the percentage drop right before my eyes."

[Edited by Moderator]