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How Do I Improve My 2016 MacBook Pro Battery Life?

am only getting 6 hours at max with very undemanding usage.
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Alan Ingram Phillips

Comments: 11 Responses to “How Do I Improve My 2016 MacBook Pro Battery Life?”

    7 years ago

    There is no magic to it. You need to think about what you do and what could be using battery power. You say "undemanding usage" -- but you may still be doing something that uses a lot of power without recognizing it.
    Do you browse the web a lot? Lots of pages with video, animation, ads, moving things -- that uses a lot of power. Even some simple scripts on websites could be draining the battery as they look up information on a constant basis.
    There are a ton of other factors -- you really need to think about what you are using and experiment. Don't make assumptions about what is undemanding and what is not. For instance, playing fullscreen video can use very little power due to optimized chips for video compression. But viewing a "static" webpage can use a lot of battery for video and animation that you may not even notice.

    Alan
    7 years ago

    Thank Gary ... but whatever I do the maximum I can get is 6 hours not the advertised 10.

    7 years ago

    Alan -- so, what ARE you doing on your Mac? Hard to help without knowing some details. What apps are running? What are they doing? Any peripherals?

    Alan Phillips
    7 years ago

    Most of my time I am on the Internet via Safari, just reading web pages (no downloading). I read The Guardian newspaper each day online and subscribe to New Scientist magazine online. I do not shop online. I use gMail every day but just with my family. I am retired so no job-related use. I never transfer files. I occasionally use Photos. I sometimes, but rarely, look at Google Maps. I have a late 2016 13 inch MacBook Pro with an i7 processor and 16GB.I sometimes look at a bit of On Demand TV.

    Alan Phillips
    7 years ago

    No peripherals

    7 years ago

    Alan: A few things. First, I looked at The Guardian's webpage and it is pretty intense. Looking at their homepage and much is going on on that page. I would expect it to use more battery power than the average page.
    Second, how are you measuring your battery? For instance, are you looking at 100% battery and it says you have 6 hours remaining, and therefore assuming you have 6 hours? Or are you actually using the battery from 100% to 0% and timing it in at 6 hours?
    The reason I ask is that up until yesterday's 10.12.2 update, there was a bug that made the battery time indicator's number a poor estimate. It could say you had 6 hours left, but in reality you may have had much more. In 10.12.2 they actually removed it and will probably bring it back at some point once they figure it out.
    Also, the 10.12.2 update may have improve energy use in various ways, so I would keep that in mind.

    Alan
    7 years ago

    I am now on 10.12.2 and on full charge it says I have 6 hours of battery life on full charge. It now says I have 3.1 hours left at 70% charge on the Activity Monitor.

    7 years ago

    So you can see where the problem may not be that you have < 10 hours of battery. It is just that the "hours left" may be wrong. If 30% of your charge lasted almost 3 hours, then 100% should last close to 10 hours.

    Alan
    7 years ago

    Could you advise of a good test of battery life I could do NOT involving buying films?

    7 years ago

    Alan: Not sure what the point would be. Why test doing something you don't do? If it gets 10 hours playing video and 8 hours doing online shopping, are you going to skip online shopping to watch movies instead?
    Why not just use your Mac as you want to use your Mac and not change your behavior to maximize battery life?

    Alan
    7 years ago

    Because at 6 hours max the battery life is too low and I am irritated at having to recharge all the time in the middle of the day. It was advertised as 10 hours.

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