My wife’s MacBook Pro runs down its battery in less than 2 hours.
I’ve thought about changing the battery, but it occurred to me, she could have a virus or somesuch.
I’ve been a TidBITS reader since the late 80s, but I never followed viruses, our company tries to practise safe computing. Without my doing a deep dive into the archives, can someone easily tell me how to check?
Thank you, Rick
There are two things to check:
What is the current battery health?
You didn’t say which macOS you’re running. In macOS 13 Ventura, you can go to System Settings > Battery. What does it say for Battery Health? If you click on the (i) icon, what does it say for Maximum Capacity?
If there was a virus causing reduced runtime, it would be because the program is running at a high CPU rate. But that could also be some other software, that isn’t a malware or a virus. In fact, I’ve seen where occaisionally my anti-virus utility goes haywire and runs at 100% CPU, forever.
Open Utilities > Activity Monitor and select the CPU tab. What is the System and User load percent at the bottom of the window? If it is really high, sort the window by % CPU, descending. What’s at the top of the list?
And one last question: How old is the MacBook Pro?
If its an old Macbook and is otherwise running well I would investigate replacing the battery.
I did this with my 2015 Retina Macbook a few years ago. My partner’s Retina Macbook now has less than 80% battery capacity but a replacement battery is no longer available from Apple.
So… don’t wait too long!.
What is the current battery health?
You didn’t say which macOS you’re running. In macOS 13 Ventura, you can go to System Settings > Battery. What does it say for Battery Health? If you click on the (i) icon, what does it say for Maximum Capacity?
She’s running Catalina 10.15.7. Battery health shows as normal, from the battery menu icon. I’m having no luck at finding the % of the battery left or a Battery area in System Preferences.
The computer is a MacBook Pro 2019. And one we don’t want to replace yet.
I know it’s an extremely old OS we’re running. But it works, all apps work, and my wife hates change, so I update her rarely.
If there was a virus causing reduced runtime, it would be because the program is running at a high CPU rate. But that could also be some other software, that isn’t a malware or a virus. In fact, I’ve seen where occaisionally my anti-virus utility goes haywire and runs at 100% CPU, forever.
Open Utilities > Activity Monitor and select the CPU tab. What is the System and User load percent at the bottom of the window? If it is really high, sort the window by % CPU, descending. What’s at the top of the list
SystemUIServer is 0% CPU and CPU time is 51.51
UserEventAgent is .1% and 51.97 CPU time
I’m not seeing a Process Name called simply System or User. Highest % CPU is Activity Monitor, ranging fro 23-51%
Thank you for taking the time for such a detailed explanation. I suspect it’s just an old battery but would hate to spend the $$$ and have it still running slow.
Funny/sad story. We’ll go immediately as soon as we can decide.
For Catalina, try clicking the battery icon in the menu bar while pressing the Option key to get more information. There’s also free utilities that can analyze the battery date, such as coconutBattery.
For Activity Monitor, the CPU time doesn’t tell us much – that’s just the total time the process was on the CPU since the process started. I’m interested in the total CPU %. It Ventura it is in a section at the very bottom of the window. I don’t remember if it is different in Catalina.
For example, right now my iMac is about 90% idle.
Other signs that something’s running the CPU hard would be a hot computer, with the fans running.
Funny thing: I said above that sometimes my anti-virus goes haywire? That just happened! The Sophos updater got stuck in a CPU loop and I had to quit it.
How many cycles has the battery done?
(Apple Menu/About this Mac/System Report/Power)
North of ~500 cycles you might see the behaviour you described.
Agreed. Well worth downloading.
Thank you everyone! Rick