macOS Mojave Draining Your Mac Battery Life? Here Is How To Fix

While we’re excited for macOS Mojave, several users are unhappy about Mac battery drain that comes along with this new powerful update. Did  you recently updated to Mojave? Are you having battery drain problems? Are you trying to figure out why your Mac battery is dying so fast? Do not worry, you are not alone.

We are receiving many complaints from a growing number of Mac users (including MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro users) that battery life has been significantly curtailed since installing Mojave. Some thinks that after the update, Mac battery is draining more quickly. This article explains what you can do to fix this problem.

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1. Optimize your Mac’s settings to save power. Here his how:
   1. Energy Saver: On your Mac, open System Preferences and click Energy Saver. Here, select the both options: “Put hard disks to sleep when possible” and “Slightly dim the display while on battery power”.  You may also want to change the “computer sleep” and “display sleep” times to maximize your battery life.
   2. If you are not using Bluetooth, turn it off. To do that, go to System Preferences > then click the Bluetooth icon and then click the  “Turn Bluetooth Off” button.
   3. If you are not using, turn off Wi-Fi (even when you are not connected to a Wi-Fi connection). To do that, simply click the Wi-Fi icon in the Status menu and then click “Turn Wi-Fi Off”.
   4. Optimize your display settings. Go to System Preferences > Display. Select the box for ” Automatically adjust brightness”. You may also want to reduce Brightness.
   5. Go to Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor and then click the Energy tab and look for anything that may be using a lot of energy.
2. Turn off dynamic background. Mojave’s new dynamic desktop feature changes the desktop background picture throughout the day. Turning this off may help you save your battery life. Here is how:
   1. On your Mac, open System Preferences
   2. Click Desktop & Screen Saver
   3. Then select another option beside “Dynamic”. There are two more options: Light and Dark. You can choose one of the both.
3. Is your battery draining significantly in Sleep/Hibernate mode? If this is the case, you may want to change your hibernate settings. There are basically three different sleep/hibernate types:
   1. hibernatemode 0: This is normal sleep. This is the default for Mac desktops.
   2. hibernatemode 3:This is the default for Mac portable computers. This means safe sleep, meaning  your system write out the contents of RAM to disk ensuring fast wake time.
   3. hibernatemode 25: This is the traditional hibernate mode. This option has a slower wake up time but also has the potential to maximize battery runtime. Thus you may want to try this option. If you want to do this, here is how:
      1. Launch the Terminal app and enter the following command (you may need to enter your Admin password) and hit Enter:
      2. sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25 standby 0 autopoweroff 0
4. Reset System Management Controller (SMC). SMC is responsible for battery management and thus resetting may help resolve your issue. This process is slightly different for different Mac models. Here is how
   1. If your battery is removable (mostly older Mac notebooks):
      1. Power off your Mac
      2. You need to remove the battery
      3. Press and hold the power button for five seconds
      4. Put battery back in
      5. Turn on your computer
   2. If your battery is non-removable (mostly later models, 2009 and later)”
      1. Turn off your Mac
      2. After your Mac is completely powered off, press Shift-Control-Option and Power button together at the same time and keep holding them for 10 seconds
      3. After then seconds, release everything
      4. Turn on your Mac
5. Reset NVRAM or PRAM. Resetting this might help you. Note that after resetting this, you may want to optimize your settings (see #1), because this action will reset your display settings etc. Here is how:
   1. Turn off your Mac
   2. Turn on your Mac while pressing these keys: Option, Command, P, and R.
   3. Release the keys after 20 seconds
6. Turn off Automatic Updates. While this feature is very useful, this may also drain batter more quickly. To turn this off, follow these steps:
   1. Open System Preferences
   2. Click “Software Update”
   3. And de-select the box for “Automatically keep my Mac up to date”. You will enter your password and be asked to confirm your selection. Simply click the Turn Off Automatic Updates”

If you are still having issues, you may want to live chat with an Apple specialist or you can make a Genius appointment.

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