> In my case, the “Wake for maintenance” option was disabled, and Sleep Aid helpfully showed in the settings interface that this could lead to frequent wake up events.
Did author mean to write "option was enabled" instead?
I thought so, but I installed Sleep Aid, and when I disable "Wake for Maintenance", Sleep Aid gives me a stern warning:
> Disabling "Wake for Maintenance" can lead to this Mac waking every few seconds. Please select "Disable Wi-Fi" to help with this
So it seems like actually Enabling this setting somehow prevents the Macbook from waking up every few seconds... presumably due to Wi-Fi? Enabling it seems like the recommendation by Sleep Aid anyway
My iPad only lasts a few days even with zero use. I have not been able to figure out what settings to modify so that I can (for example) pick it up a month later and not find the battery dead.
I have the same issue. I've disabled "Find My" feature and uninstalled everything that kept showing up as battery draining apps. My iPad loses about 20-25% of battery every night and there is nothing showing up in battery details anymore.
I'm pretty sure the problem would go away with a factory reset. Just like it with old Windows installations, except you had a better change debugging those...
I have a different problem with my M3 Macbook Pro. If I leave chrome (sometimes other apps too) open with the macbook plugged in and the lid closed the computer will get very warm and stay very warm until I unplug it / close chrome.
Edit: It's also not warm when plugged in and using chrome with the lid open.
Apple's power management isn't as great as everyone claims.
I've an older MacBook Air with a severe battery drain problem.
The battery will last maybe a day or two when SHUT DOWN (not sleep) before being fully drained and refuses to power on.
It's done this since day one.
I tried resetting everything possible which could be reset and nothing helped.
Allegedly the problem is related to a Bluetooth radio which does not shut down properly but as usual Apple is tight-lipped, and the cult members that moderate their community forum try to gaslight you into believing the computers are perfect and you're doing something wrong.
Eventually I just gave up and lugged the power adapter everywhere.
This used to happen to my MacBook Pro, although it was a non Apple Silicon one. The issue was that I had changed the DHCP lease time on my router from the default to a really low value. I believe I had set it to 15 minutes. What I believe was happening was the MBP was waking up to renew its IP address every 15 minutes and by the time it went to sleep again, it was probably waking back up to repeat the process. Changing the value on the router back to its default completely fixed the battery drain issue on my MacBook Pro. I'd never have guessed the cause-effect except I made the change around the same time I purchased that new MacBook Pro and was paying more attention to any issues that might arise.
I've used an Intel MBP for a few years and now an M2 MBP for a few more. I've always had extremely stellar standby battery life. That is, until a few months ago. Now I get home and my backpack is warm from my MBP turning on while sitting in my backpack.
This is the one biggest thing I loved Apple hardware for over Windows laptops.
Activity Monitor has an "Energy" tab that is useful in situations like this. It can tell you when an application is preventing sleep altogether and it can also show power usage of a process over the last 12 hours, so if you investigate this straight after a "night's sleep", you can usually spot culprits pretty quickly.
Another trick is to open Activity Monitor, switch to the Energy tab, and sort by the "Preventing sleep" column. Some apps prevent macOS from sleeping.
In my case, I've discovered that Devonthink (document/notes management app) is responsible. I've been meaning to file a bug report about it.
I'm surprised that Apple's power management doesn't have an alert for this. Surely an app that causes my Mac to become glowing hot while sitting in my backpack, not to mention slowly running out of battery, is a pretty important thing to intercept. Meanwhile, I keep being asked if Chrome should be allowed to find devices on my network, which doesn't seem nearly as important.
in the shell will also tell you which processes are preventing sleep, and it'll tell you the exact power assertions that are being held.
(`pmset` has some other undocumented commands, you can discovery some of these in its source code Apple releases. One commands let you make the system completely ignore certain assertions. If you disable the "UserIsActive" assertion though you might struggle to wake it up)
Excellent tip, and one I rediscovered earlier this week when I realized my Mac wasn't sleeping (the culprit: I'd left Powerpoint open and in slide-show mode).
I used to use DevonThink, but I quit long ago. I'd be interested in hearing how you use it, especially if you're not an academic.
I’ve been facing a similar issue with my MacBook Pro with Apple Silicon.
While sleeping with an SSD connected, it seems to wake up periodically and activate the drive to do something. The result? Both the laptop and the SSD eventually overheat, and the battery quickly drains.
The only way I managed to mitigate this issue is by disconnecting all drives and plugging in the MBP before setting it to sleep. It’s an annoying bug, to say the least. It reeks of insufficient quality control and testing…
I've worked around this problem on each mac laptop I've owned over the years by configuring "hibernate on lid close."
When I open the lid of the mac it takes maybe 20-30 seconds to resume. I consider this a small price to pay in exchange for reliable sleep and less battery drain with the lid closed.
If you want to try this, run in the terminal:
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25
If you don't like it, you can restore defaults with:
I've had to do this to my Windows laptop recently after it started completely draining the battery when going to normal sleep. Wakes up reasonably quickly still, and no power management problems!
I shut mine down every day. It stops battery drain and is a point of friction if I am thinking about "jumping on to work for a sec" at night. If the work is truly not important, I won't want to boot up and get situated.
I have the opposite problem -- i wish i could lock my Macbook but show my screen, with everything running and viewable (e.g., logs, dashboards) (but locked so people cannot do anything). I'm so used to this with xtrlock on Linux.
Funnily I wrote almost the same blog post last week, sadly that solution didn't work for me as there's some other processes that are not power nap that wake up my Macs: https://annoying.technology/posts/3e451c7b/
In case this helps anyone, I found that removing a Yubikey (i.e. with that contact sensor) seemed to reduce the number of times I opened my bag to find a Macbook Pro unexpectedly warm and with a drained battery.
Can confirm that Yubikey-like devices prevent the M1 MBP from fully sleeping, which eventually depletes the battery. My company's (big tech) IT department reached out to Apple's corp support and eventually got confirmation from Apple that they decided to close the issue w/o fix. Something to do with their USB controller's firmware, if memory serves.
Removing Yubikey before (or after) closing the lid completely prevents total battery drain for me.
Apple's definition of "sleep" is unique, to put it mildly. My MBP may be "sleeping" but it will still aggressively connect to any wireless interface. Sometimes when passing by with my Bluetooth headphones, the MBP will often steal my current connection.
When a device goes to sleep, I don't expect it to interact with anything, even if I didn't deliberately turn off all wireless communication.
Apple is the only one doing this. I've had dozens of linux and windows devices by now, and Apple are the only ones to aggressively maintain or connect to wireless while sleeping.
I remember having a recurring issue with my original 1st gen unibody aluminum iMac where I'd close it at the end of a lecture, but it apparently wouldn't go to sleep, so hours later I'd go to fish it out of my backpack and it was dangerously scorching hot to the touch and the battery was all but fully drained. I tried debugging but ultimately resigned to just shutting it down every time, which sucked so much. At least I didn't wake up on fire.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 70.4 ms ] threadDid author mean to write "option was enabled" instead?
> Disabling "Wake for Maintenance" can lead to this Mac waking every few seconds. Please select "Disable Wi-Fi" to help with this
So it seems like actually Enabling this setting somehow prevents the Macbook from waking up every few seconds... presumably due to Wi-Fi? Enabling it seems like the recommendation by Sleep Aid anyway
I'm pretty sure the problem would go away with a factory reset. Just like it with old Windows installations, except you had a better change debugging those...
Edit: It's also not warm when plugged in and using chrome with the lid open.
I've an older MacBook Air with a severe battery drain problem.
The battery will last maybe a day or two when SHUT DOWN (not sleep) before being fully drained and refuses to power on.
It's done this since day one.
I tried resetting everything possible which could be reset and nothing helped.
Allegedly the problem is related to a Bluetooth radio which does not shut down properly but as usual Apple is tight-lipped, and the cult members that moderate their community forum try to gaslight you into believing the computers are perfect and you're doing something wrong.
Eventually I just gave up and lugged the power adapter everywhere.
This seems to be available as a first party config option
This is the one biggest thing I loved Apple hardware for over Windows laptops.
In my case, I've discovered that Devonthink (document/notes management app) is responsible. I've been meaning to file a bug report about it.
I'm surprised that Apple's power management doesn't have an alert for this. Surely an app that causes my Mac to become glowing hot while sitting in my backpack, not to mention slowly running out of battery, is a pretty important thing to intercept. Meanwhile, I keep being asked if Chrome should be allowed to find devices on my network, which doesn't seem nearly as important.
(`pmset` has some other undocumented commands, you can discovery some of these in its source code Apple releases. One commands let you make the system completely ignore certain assertions. If you disable the "UserIsActive" assertion though you might struggle to wake it up)
1. I had no idea you could do this, thanks.
2. Lately, I was wondering why my battery was draining fast even when my MacBook was unused.
3. Turns out, Firefox is preventing sleep. Something about videos auto-playing, apparently. Not great, but it can be fixed.
So many apps have telemetry and data collection and notifications that eat up your battery and bandwidth for business (no good) reasons.
God in heaven, how can I say yes once and for all!?!
Recently switched to macos and ios.
There are so many of these permissions I can't seem to permanently accept!
Is this a feature or a bug?
I want a button that says yes and don't ask me again. Or, no and don't ask me again.
It's like Apple doesn't trust the user.
But that would require the app to at least register somewhere in advance to be able to achieve that, if not a full fledged permission.
I used to use DevonThink, but I quit long ago. I'd be interested in hearing how you use it, especially if you're not an academic.
Running ripgrep on / would use 1 core, with the remaining 11 at 100% from the probe service...
While sleeping with an SSD connected, it seems to wake up periodically and activate the drive to do something. The result? Both the laptop and the SSD eventually overheat, and the battery quickly drains.
The only way I managed to mitigate this issue is by disconnecting all drives and plugging in the MBP before setting it to sleep. It’s an annoying bug, to say the least. It reeks of insufficient quality control and testing…
When I open the lid of the mac it takes maybe 20-30 seconds to resume. I consider this a small price to pay in exchange for reliable sleep and less battery drain with the lid closed.
If you want to try this, run in the terminal:
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25
If you don't like it, you can restore defaults with:
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3
Turn off WiFi when going to sleep, turn it back on on wake.
I don't need my laptop to be doing things when it's in my bag. It's not a phone, unlike what Apple seems to think...
Removing Yubikey before (or after) closing the lid completely prevents total battery drain for me.
When a device goes to sleep, I don't expect it to interact with anything, even if I didn't deliberately turn off all wireless communication.
Apple is the only one doing this. I've had dozens of linux and windows devices by now, and Apple are the only ones to aggressively maintain or connect to wireless while sleeping.
It turned out I was just leaving it too close to the split A/C unit at the airbnb.