Huge battery drain (and damage?) on my MBP Retina

Paul Kkpf Rmr

Flux drains the battery life of my MBP Retina (OS 10.11.2, Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB) by a LOT, on a full charge my battery lasts for about 20 minutes when Flux is running. Instantly goes back to normal run-time when I turn Flux off. In addition, my battery now wants "maintenance", even when Flux is not running.

What happened here is there a fix?

herf

This is a new one - I think that MBPr might have had two GPUs?

Can you test if running f.lux with "disable until sunrise" on exhibits similar behavior? It should do very little in that case.

Paul Kkpf Rmr

@herf
Correct it does have two GPU's and "automatic graphic switching" is turned on. Is that a problem?

I've "disabled until sunrise", indeed the battery drain has stopped but so has f.lux. What is your advice here to keep it disabled until the next sunrise and then... what?

herf

If you can, follow the instructions here to disable our profile writer (requires some mucking around in Terminal):

https://justgetflux.com/news/2014/10/28/profile.html

My thought is that you may have an app that is using an incredible amount of CPU when we change the profile (this isn't normal but it is possible), so disabling the profile writer may help find the problem.

herf

If that doesn't work, try out http://gfx.io/ and see if using one GPU or the other helps.

Paul Kkpf Rmr

@herf
I did both and so far it works, although I'm not using gfx.io to switch off the GPU'S but rather as a notifier when the battery intense "discreet GPU" turns on (only happened once for like 10 min so far).

Battery does not drain (although still wants "maintenance") even though Flux is running. However, so far I've only been in normal (daylight) mode. Will report back after testing this during evening / bedtime hours when the color temperature actually changes.

Thanks so far

Paul Kkpf Rmr

@herf said:

If you can, follow the instructions here to disable our profile writer (requires some mucking around in Terminal):

https://justgetflux.com/news/2014/10/28/profile.html

My thought is that you may have an app that is using an incredible amount of CPU when we change the profile (this isn't normal but it is possible), so disabling the profile writer may help find the problem.

This seems to have done the trick, battery drain has stopped.