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?
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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.
Low Power Mode: Never
That’s not recommended.
Battery Service 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"_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
I’ve done a few of these and it’s possible to do it much faster without pulling the board
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHaw6w_Iw70
That said I would not recommend doing this if you’re not really comfortable doing this kind of work. It’s not a terrrrribly difficult repair if you’re good with working on repair unfriendly modern laptops but if you’re not good with that it can be quite challenging. It’s not as hard as it looks though, the main pain in the ass is the goddamn battery adhesive
Keep in mind that a slipped tool can be devastating (torn ribbon cables can be a nightmare and costly scenario, scratches on the logic board even more so), if you’re impatient while prying the battery and haven’t used enough solvent it can actually be quite dangerous, even stupid shit like if you push down too hard on a stubborn screw to gain torque you can break the lcd (which is easily like $300+ and a much more involved repair)
It’s also verrrry difficult for anyone but Apple to source a legit Apple battery (and people will shit on apple for this but literally every company does it; try to buy an oem battery for any laptop or phone. It’s not that Apple is good, it’s that they all deserved to get shit for it). Keep that in mind. A lot of third party shops will use whatever they can find and those batteries from aliexpress/ebay often have significantly inferior management controller boards and spot welds. You’ll never know but they’ll fail faster (and sometimes spectacularly). This is a fucked up situation and I don’t know what to tell you; you can try and find someone selling oem batteries pulled from units broken for other reasons but these generally are $$$ for batteries with questionable life. Plus there are a ton of sellers that are happy to say they are selling oem batteries with counterfeit labeling (and will often have “warranties” that say if you remove their counterfeit labeling to prove it’s fake you can no longer return it)
The big things are to somehow indicate to manufacturers that it’s not absolutely critical that a device has to be the absolute thinnest thing in the world. More importantly by far parts need to be available, especially things that absolutely will wear like batteries. This needs to happen via political pressure and regulation because Apple, hp, acer, dell, etc have shown consistently that they will not do this. They will produce those parts for a limited period of time internally and they will almost never make them available to external suppliers (exceptions of half hearted efforts like apples self service program, which has parts purposely priced just high enough to make it so it’s about the same as just getting the service from them).
This won’t happen. It’s consistently failed. Political machinations in the USA (where many of these companies are based out of) consistently favor corporate interests and lobbying
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.
You can still get the 13" ones with a touch bar
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.
It was useless for those of use who never open our laptop, I liked it the 3 times my laptop was open though.
I really don’t mind it.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
They took the touchbar and put it on the iPhone
