Hello old friend

It has been a while since I wrote to my blog. What happened? Life.

But why am I back here? The macOS Catalina 10.15.xx.

I'm still working as a consultant testing software my colleagues have written. Recently, I got a new laptop for work and it came with the Catalina OS.

Over the last year I have noticed that Apple Macintosh has become the new Microsoft Windows. Whenever I get an update or install something new and things behave badly (Wifi won't connect) I have learned to reboot my computer. Even though the update or installation didn't say it needed to reboot my computer, I'm finding rebooting my computer actually fixes things from time to time.

Until recently. Normally, to save time, I never shutdown or log out of my laptop unless I feel I REALLY need to. So at the end of the day, I close my laptop and it goes to sleep. I have it plugged in all day. So when I close it, it is at 100% battery power. The next morning, I open my laptop and it is often at 100% power. Sometimes it drops to 99% power.

Since I upgraded to Catalina this is no longer true. I closed my laptop and didn't use it over the weekend. Monday morning I open my laptop and it is at 7% battery remaining. What the heck!?!!

So after a little digging I find that the default settings for a lot of things leave background processes running, even when it should be in sleep mode. Here is what I did to stop my laptop from dying when the lid is closed:

1. Go to System Preferences -> Energy Saver
2. Go to the Battery settings and uncheck Enable Power Nap while on battery power
3. Go to Bluetooth, click the Advanced... button
4. Uncheck Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer
5. If you are using an external mouse and keyboard this could screw them up but I don't use bluetooth devices
6. Go to Notifications, select Do Not Disturb
7. Check on When display is sleeping and When the screen is locked

With these changes, you should find your laptop is not draining power when the lid is close and on battery. If you are still seeing the battery drain, you might have to reset the System Management Control (SMC). To do this:

1. Shut down your laptop
2. Once shutdown, press Shift-Control-Option on the left side of the keyboard
3. While still holding down the 3 keys, press the power button and hold it for around 5 seconds
1. The Apple logo will appear then disappear while you do this
2. If the Apple logo appears a second time, you held the keys for too long
3. Go back to step 1 and try again
4. Release all the keys before the logo appears the second time
5. Wait a second then press the power button to turn on the computer
6. The SMC should now be reset