M3 MacBook Air 15" power consumption in sleep higher than when awake

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risa2000 Author

Level 1

0 points

M3 MacBook Air 15" power consumption in sleep higher than when awake

I have my MB Air powered in the dock on a metered power plug. I have noticed than when I put the computer to sleep manually, it eventually wakes up, then starts waking more ofter, for longer periods, and eventually starts to churn almost twice as much of power as when I am working on it.

The annotated graphs is below. The first phase - work - includes some power intensive tasks, where the power throttling from 35W to 25W is visible (as MB Air does not have a fan), but otherwise it stays just around 8.3W.

Then I put it to sleep manually (Apple->Sleep). It goes to almost 0W with regular wake ups on 15 min period.

After several such wake ups, it starts running something for one hour, sleeps for 2x15 minutes, runs for one hour, etc. When it runs, it consumes more than 7.3W (there are spikes, which are normally not seen in "work" workflow).

After several such cycles, it decides to power up even more, consuming >14.3W and again runs one hour blocks, separated only by one or two 15 min periods of sleep.

When I saw this I logged in, recorded CPU time for most consuming processes, put it into sleep manually again and let it be for another 24 hours. When it got to 14W power burner mode again, I logged in again, and this time disabled "wake for network access" just to see if this would have any impact on the behavior. It did not. Took another snapshot of CPU times and compared to previous ones, taken 24 hours earlier.

The most consuming processes during this 24 hour sleep interval were:

mediaanalysisd using 10h 15min

mds_stores using 8h 20min

mediaanalysisd-access using 3h

kernel_task using 22 min

RustDesk using 10 min

and everything else typically less

I do not think this is a correct behavior for Sleep. I would expect the 15 min period wake ups (for updates) and that is all. Instead it looks like it burns more power in sleep than I use when actually using the computer, and I even have no idea for what. It may as well be mining crypto, running SETI, whatever.

Is there a way to have the computer actually sleeping in sleep?

MacBook Air 15″

Posted on Apr 24, 2025 10:28 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 24, 2025 10:42 AM in response to risa2000

try uninstalling disabling your https://rustdesk.com/

Uninstall all third party apps that are Cleaners/Optimizers/VPN/Anti-Virus

all known to cause issues on the macOS

unplug all non-essential peripherals when testing

To trouble shoot further you can:

—A SafeBoot Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support will sort many anomalies

Does a quick disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, third party system modifications and system accelerations are disabled temporarily.

Login and test. Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.

This test will tell you if third party interference; most extensions etc are not loaded in safe boot mode.

—Test issue in another user (or guest user) account Change Users & Groups settings on Mac - Apple Support

This will tell you if it a universal issue or isolated to your user/admin account.

***wireless keyboard with rechargeable batteries— connect the charging cable, this will make the wired keyboard successful Safe Boot your Mac.

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Answer 2

den.thed

Level 10

91,006 points

Apr 26, 2025 6:06 PM in response to risa2000

1) Open your Activity Monitor and add the Preventing Sleep column.

Then scroll down the list to see which process or processes are preventing sleep.

2) What utility are you using to record the power consumption..?

There is a good possibility that utility is causing part or some of your problems.

3) What other third-party App's are installed on the MacBook Air..?

EtreCheckPro is an excellent tool for finding and sorting out problems.

Download and run the free version of EtreCheckPro, from > https://etrecheck.com/en/index.html

Then post back with your Report, as per > How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

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Answer 3

den.thed

Level 10

91,006 points

Apr 27, 2025 12:24 PM in response to risa2000

risa2000 wrote:

The Mac itself is connected to the TB dock, and everything else is connected to the dock. So technically the recorded power consumption measures also the TB dock consumption. The other USB peripherals are connected through USB hub in a monitor, so I assume this one is powered from the monitor.

Sounds like the power consumption is coming from something connected to the dock or to the displays hub and has nothing to do with the Mac.

What you need to do is disconnect one peripheral device from dock and/or the display hub at a time, until you find the intermittent power hunger culprit.

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Answer 4

markwmsn

Level 6

16,715 points

Apr 26, 2025 2:36 PM in response to risa2000

Those two background tasks you mention (mediaanalysisd and mds_stores) try to stay out of your way when you are using the computer and work when the computer is otherwise idle. Sounds like they may be working as designed, though this is an extreme case.

Usually people complain when background tasks are competing with them when they are trying to get work done.

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Answer 5

risa2000 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 27, 2025 2:04 PM in response to den.thed

Actually, when I measured the power profiles posted above, the Mac was connected to TB dock, but there were only two displays connected, both switched to a different input (my Window machine), and an ethernet cable. The USB hub (in one of the displays) with all peripherals was disconnected, as I had it connected to my Windows desktop machine. When I needed to run something on my Mac, I either connected through RustDesk, or, recently, reconnected my USB hub with devices to the TB dock.

So what is logged on power graph is basically just the Mac and the dock. The only other thing I could disconnect is the dock itself.

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Answer 6

risa2000 Author

Level 1

0 points

May 1, 2025 7:00 AM in response to den.thed

I disconnected the TB dock (on midnight Mo/Tue, see the attached graph). The system went to sleep for 3 hours, then started to run on full power again. The drop in power consumption (~5 W) corresponds to the disconnected TB dock. Now the system is completely disconnected from any peripheral (wi-fi is disabled) so it cannot communicate with the "mothership" anymore, yet it runs on full power consuming +10 W almost nonstop.

This seems like a bug either in the processes which run (mediaanalysisd, etc.) or in the power management.

1) No background tasks should run in "sleep" (though I guess this is just my wrong interpretation of sleep on Mac)

2) If any background tasks is not able to finish in a reasonable time (minutes) it is wrong. This has been running for weeks.

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Answer 7

risa2000 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 24, 2025 11:10 AM in response to leroydouglas

Is there a way (by turning some system wide logging) to figure out, why the system wakes up and runs for those 1 hour blocks? And why it eventually feels the need to burn twice the power as usual?

The point you suggest may be a universal boilerplate to start with when you have no clue. But I have already some clues. For example RustDesk (runs as an app, I have not installed the service) consumed less CPU than kernel_task and I would assume that it was because I logged in via RustDesk when taking snapshots and observing the system. Otherwise it will be insignificant.

The obvious suspects are the processes which recorded the most of the CPU time. And the question could be, why they typically run, and why they need so much run in sleep?

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Answer 8

risa2000 Author

Level 1

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Apr 26, 2025 1:36 PM in response to leroydouglas

I stopped RustDesk, put it into sleep manually and let it sit. The following pic shows the sleep power consumption since then.

Thursday evening is just the end of the work. Then it managed to "sleep" for about 3 hours (12 ticks) and then again it started working, eventually could not keep up with the work, so after about 16 hours, started burning twice the energy (possibly hitting the power envelope for the "sleep").

I see two problems here:

1) MacBook is set to not wake up for network updates, yet it still wakes up every 15 minutes. Why does it wake up then?

2) The aforementioned processes (mediaanalysisd, etc.) do not run when I am using the computer, so they seem to be just some background tasks, why do they run in sleep mode?

I have been using Windows and Linux most of my life, never have seen either running arbitrary background tasks in sleep.

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Answer 9

risa2000 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 26, 2025 5:20 PM in response to markwmsn

I can imagine having some background task running when the computer is *idle*. This is at least how it works on Windows. Even there though the background tasks have some well defined *task* to do, e.g. disk defragmentation, virus checking, checking for updates etc. and they start, end, and only run so often.

This is however not the case here. The computer in sleep consumes twice as much power than when I am using it. I do not think it would be acceptable even in idle mode, nothing to say about sleep. I mean in the "other" OSes.

I guess sleep in macOS means something different from what I am used to. Is there a way to put macOS into a mode, which corresponds to my understanding of sleep?

Or prevent the aforementioned processes from running and/or preventing the sleep?

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Answer 10

risa2000 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 27, 2025 8:30 AM in response to den.thed

ad 1) When I log in (or better say, unlock the screen, because I am already logged in), all the three processes mentioned above stop running, I can only see in the history of the CPU activity that the CPU was loaded just prior my login.

At that moment, the only processes listed as "prevent sleep" are WindowsServer and powerd. Which seems to be fine, as I just authenticated.

ad 2) This is a metered power plug, so it is completely independent of the OS, or the hardware. It just measures and records how much power the Mac uses. The Mac itself is connected to the TB dock, and everything else is connected to the dock. So technically the recorded power consumption measures also the TB dock consumption. The other USB peripherals are connected through USB hub in a monitor, so I assume this one is powered from the monitor.

ad 3)

etrecheckpro free report

I also run EtreCheck Tools->Analytics, which shows sleep, time, idle time and CPU load over past few days, which seems to correspond to the profile I recorded with the plug. The absolute values however do not make much sense to me. EtreCheck claims that the absolute peak value of CPU usage e.g. during the 24th was 4.67%, and the peak value of the "work usage" 1.4%.

(Note, the power plug graph starts from the 24th, because on the 23rd the Mac was sleeping on batter).

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