User level: Level 1 (4 points)MacBook Air M4 Battery Drain After Update – Is anyone else experiencing this?
Device: MacBook Air M4
Issue: Severe battery drain following a recent macOS update
Is anyone else noticing their battery dropping significantly faster after updating? My MacBook Air M4 used to last all day, but since updating, the battery life has taken a noticeable hit.
Posted on Sep 18, 2026 1:19 PM
User level: Level 9 (72,871 points)Sep 18, 2026 1:26 PM in response to Asiif
It is possible there are processes running in the background that are using significant resources. Check Activity Monitor, CPU tab (sort by % CPU) and Memory tab (sort by Memory) to see what's running hard.
Activity Monitor User Guide for Mac - Apple Support
I was traveling over the past two days, and I took my personal Mac (16" M4 Pro MBP) running macOS 27 Golden Gate. Each of the two days, after an overnight charge to full and about 10 hours of use (working in Word, PowerPoint, Keynote and Pages, web browsing, and some video playback during a flight, I had about 50% charge remaining. So personally, I am not seeing any negative effect of the upgrade on battery life.
Originally posted at discussions.apple.com/thread/256360026