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I just got my 2019 macbook pro 16 inch yesterday, upgrading from a 2016 macbook. I am slightly worried at the battery life thus far. This morning for example, I have been browsing the web to check email and read websites- nothing too intensive and no streaming video or anything even approaching that. However, the battery has dropped over 20% in an hour from doing this, with the fans on pretty loud at times. I also had other apps open in the background, including Xcode, but with nothing actively running- xcode was simply open on a project but nothing was built etc.

I have the i9 version, so I expected that the processor will run a bit hotter than my previous laptop. But the battery life seems abnormally bad... Can anyone advise me if this is normal/any quick fixes for it?

This is the output from Activity Monitor: enter image description here

iCloud is uploading some files right now, but the process 'bird' in particular is taking up a lot of CPU all the time.

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    New machine, the OS is probably doing a lot of setup tasks, iCloud sync, Spotlight initialisation etc. Check Activity Monitor & see what's using the most CPU.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Apr 17, 2020 at 9:13
  • @Tetsujin it was set-up yesterday, so I assumed that all the initialisation would be coplete by now. In Activity Monitor there is however a lot of random things- like over a hundred random names of things I've never heard of before. And the apps I am using aren't ranked very high in the list.. Would you recommend force quitting these?
    – tam63
    Commented Apr 17, 2020 at 9:22
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    I'd recommend adding a picture to your question, rather than running wild force-quitting processes you don't know that purpose of.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Apr 17, 2020 at 9:26
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    Yup, that's mainly iCloud & Spotlight getting themselves set up. Give it a couple of days & check again.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Apr 17, 2020 at 11:27
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    To add to @Tetsujin's point, iCloud and Spotlight usually only run during certain times of inactivity on the laptop to avoid impacting you. It's also affected by your wifi speed and bandwidth. It could take several days for all of this syncing to complete.
    – fsb
    Commented Apr 17, 2020 at 12:34

2 Answers 2

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I also have the mbp i9 and sometimes when I move large amounts of files around (500,000+ files) it makes the fans on my macbook pro go into overdrive (sometimes for hours).

I think this might be happening to you because of the mds, mds_stores and mdworker_shared processes I see in your screenshot.

There is no solution really. You have to let this thing run and finish indexing. It might take a while but here are two recommendations:

  1. It's possible to turn off indexing if you need to get something done and indexing is interfering and then let it run at a later time. I'll give the commands to do this below.

  2. I don't know your physical setup but if your mac is indexing and running hot for hours like mine sometimes does, I open up the notebook so that the mac's lcd screen can run a bit cooler and take a break from the heat. Just an opinion that keeping your mac closed while its running super hot for long periods might not be so good for your lcd color uniformity longevity.

Here are the commands to turn indexing on and off. These work for me and I'm running MacOS 11.2.1 Just remember to turn it back on or spotlight wont be able to find new apps and files that you add.

Turn off the indexing:

sudo mdutil -a -i off

Turn the indexing back on:

sudo mdutil -a -i on

Good luck and enjoy your new mbp!! :)

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Unfortunately, the fault t is a bad design concerning the heat dissipation of the laptop. Especially if you use the display with an external monitor it gets very noisy and hot. Maybe they can solve it with a software update by reducing the voltage of the cpu and gpu. Please report this problem to Apple. If you look on google there is really a lot of people complaining about it. (Tip: you should charge your laptop on the right side).

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