James Hochadel

Who is Draining my MacBook Battery?

My M1 MacBook Air is an amazing computer. Its battery lasts 20 hours while browsing the web with Safari and programming with Sublime Text, or about 30 days asleep with the lid closed. Except today, it died after less than a day of sleep.

A rogue, poorly coded app with bad power management must have caused this. Which wayward app developer is to blame?

Answer: Apple.

Activity Monitor showing Apple Messages’ 12-hour power impact of 135. The most power-hungry app, Minecraft, has an impact of 291. Mail, an app comparable to Messages, has an impact of 4.

To be clear, Minecraft was closed while the machine was sleeping. Why is Messages using as much battery while my laptop is asleep as Minecraft did while it was awake?