Macbook Pro battery draining overnight
I've got a 2.9 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i9 Macbook Pro (yes, the one with the touchbar and the keyboard nobody likes)...
Anyway, it's been working great, aside from this issue which seems to happen on occasion, when I don't keep it plugged in overnight. It will just drain real fast sometimes.
What causes batteries to just drain over the course of an hour or so?
It’s telling you right on screen. Battery service recommended.
Means the battery’s shot. They don’t last forever.
Google how to replace it yourself, see if you’re up for it. If not, find a service to do it. Doesn’t have to be (probably shouldn’t be) the Apple Store. You’re LOONG out of warranty.
Okie dokie.
That’s not recommended.
That’s why. The cells are worn out and they can’t hold a change anymore.
Go here: https://www.ifixit.com/Device/MacBook_Pro_15%22_Touch_Bar_2018
And good luck. It’s one of the hardest Macbooks to fix.
Jesus H Christ on a cracker. I got halfway through this and it starts talking about removing the fucking trackpad and microphone and I’m like, oh, this must be a full breakdown… nope! You have to literally take the whole thing apart to free the battery. Fucking Apple. They make great shit, but they just want you to buy a new one.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Touch+Bar+2018+Battery+Replacement/122269
Thanks so much for the detailed reply. I appreciate your time and effort and expertise and advice.
If your computer is less than five years old, Apple will replace the battery for around $100 at any Apple store.
2024-2018=6 years booo
Might be worth calling to see if they’d still do it. I believe it’s subject to service part availability after the five year mark.
Hope you learned you lesson and will never make this mistake again.
The “service recommended” state of the battery aside, I would start by using the Activity Monitor to see if there’s something using a lot of power: open Finder, click Applications, open the Utilities folder, and open Activity Monitor. Click the Energy tab at the top, then click the “12-Hour Power” heading to sort by that column. That will show you a relative measure of what’s used the most power recently. Is there an entry in the list that is much higher than others?
This
As everyone else says, battery replacement time.
The freemium and excellent little macOS utility Coconut Battery gives details that will confirm why you need a replacement.
Thanks!
I repair macs and just hate the battery job on your model. It would be reasonable to have Apple do it. It’s expensive, but it's a better quality battery than the third party stuff you get by DiY or going to an independent shop.
That said, it may be messy and time consuming, but you can buy the battery off of amazon and use iFixit to guide you, and save $150.
Does iFixit not sell that battery? If they do then I would recommend buying from them even if it is a little more expensive than Amazon so you help support right to repair legislation, not to mention supporting their repair guides, tear downs, etc. that benefit all of us.
Not in Canada last time I checked, but pretty sure they do in the States.
A friend had this and it was because he had his display set to sleep never. So it was essentially on all the time.
Make sure that prevent computer from sleeping when display is off is also disabled.
Except its showing the screen wasn't on during those hours
The second one is the relevant one. You have to allow the computer to sleep when the display is off or it will still stay awake and drawing power when the display is off.
It’s meant for laptops you want to run in a closed position with an external display when plugged in.
Am I the only one who likes the Touch Bar, honestly wish Touch Bar was still available.
I really don’t mind it.
When I upgraded to a newer MacBook, it didn’t offer it and I was sad. I used it all the time. Loved it for volume controls and such.
You can still get the 13" ones with a touch bar
It was useless for those of use who never open our laptop, I liked it the 3 times my laptop was open though.
Something else to look into is that macbooks sometimes just hate having things plugged into USB when they're sleeping. If you're leaving anything plugged into the ports while it's sleeping, try not doing that and see if it helps.
Can confirm - my practically brand new 2024 MacBook Air will happily drain its entire battery within a day or two while in sleep mode if I leave my usb hub plugged in (Anker hub connected to external mouse, keyboard, and HDMI to a second screen)
Agree that you should probably replace the battery when you can, but you said this is only sometimes happening?
You might want to make sure that the laptop isn't waking up due to power nap or that there's not a process keeping it awake if it does.
I don't have a battery-powered mac sitting around right now, but google should probably end up giving you useful directions for both of those.
I didn’t think Power Nap activated unless you were connected to AC power?
I could be entirely thinking of some other Nap or something; I do know that even on battery it's not impossible for a Mac to wake up and get stuck awake because of a misbehaving app, though I'm probably wrong about which specific feature was responsible.
Could be a task is still running in the background that prevents your Macbook from going to sleep. You can find it in the activity monitor and force-close it.
But also, as others have noted already, your battery needs service.
Had similar issue, turned out to be the cable to the charger. Might be worth to check by wiggling the cable and see if it thinks you're unplugging it.
Might be it. But the battery is getting old too.
App and system updates often run overnight, and this can take up a lot of power. Plus, your battery is shot, and it’s time to replace it.
i just went thru a similar thing with the same laptop. wiped it and the problem stayed. my battery didnt say service was needed tho. the lateat update caused to to idle super warm and no processes were taking up a noticeable drain. very frustrating.
i do a lot of freelance work so i finally just bit the bullet and bought a new laptop.
the funny thing is, this laptop is still pretty good for Dev and photo work. anyways good luck, it feels like planned upgrades to me.
Yeah, I love the thing. Replacing the battery is going to be either extremely risky/time consuming to DIY or expensive if I send it somewhere.
I might just scrap it.
They took the touchbar and put it on the iPhone