macOS Tahoe 26.1 Improves Battery Life Significantly of MacBook Air & Pro
If you were one of the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro users who found MacOS Tahoe causing excessive battery drain and battery life reductions with MacOS 26.0 and MacOS 26.0.1, then you’ll want to update to macOS Tahoe 26.1 right away, as it will likely resolve the most significant battery life problems.
Multiple user reports online, with yours truly included, have found that battery life of MacBook Air and MacBook Pro has been restored to expected durations with the installation of macOS Tahoe 26.1. On my particular MacBook Air, Tahoe 26.1 means a return to 12 hour battery life, which is a significant improvement from the 2 hour battery life that I routinely experienced with the initial macOS Tahoe 26 release and the 26.0.1 update.
You can observe your own MacBook Pro or MacBook Air battery life and expected time remaining in Activity Monitor by going to the “Energy” tab, and looking at the bottom of that window:
If you’re a Mac laptop user you might also want to show the battery percentage remaining in the menu bar, though that menu bar item in MacOS no longer provides any time estimates, which is why the Energy section of Activity Monitor is recommended first.
Not all MacBook Pro and MacBook Air users encountered battery performance problems and issues with macOS Tahoe 26 or macOS Tahoe 26.0.1, adding to the mystery. While some third party apps and extensions are undoubtedly impacting some macOS Tahoe users battery life, even a fairly straightforward workflow of Safari, Messages, Notes, ChatGPT, Finder, and Mail app would be sufficient to pummel the battery life remaining on my particular MacBook Air.
While macOS Tahoe 26.1 appears to have introduced a visual bug or two, and some problems with virtual machines, the resolution of battery life problems is a welcome change.
If you’ve been experiencing reductions in battery performance and battery life with macOS Tahoe, don’t miss installing the macOS Tahoe 26.1 update, as it should resolve major battery issues for you as well.
What has been your experiences with battery life and battery drain in macOS Tahoe? Did you experience significant battery problems with the initial 26 releases, and did macOS Tahoe 26.1 resolve those problems for you? Share your thoughts, experiences, and more, in the comments below.
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we all fell for Tahoe, the tech “experts” marveled how the improvement was for computer users as everything was great all summer, boy were we had!
when 26.1.? annoys me, I’m back to Monterey for good.
if I will even use my m1s.
im typing this on a MBP2012 Mojave
since that works better!
OSX daily didn’t fall to this hype and just stated the bare facts which is why I only visit this sites and admire them.
Tahoe 26.1 seems to run faster on my MacBook Pro M1. I disabled liquid glass. Looks cool but isn’t for serious working, at least for me. So far no problems at all with 26.1.
My new MacBook Air gets about 2 to 4 hours battery with macOS Tahoe even with 26.1 updated. I mostly use Safari with a lot of tabs, since everything from email to CRM is in the browser.
This is the worst “upgrade” of system software I’ve ever had, performance is terrible, Liquid Glass is bad. I do not recommend this to anyone and wish I had stayed on macOS Sequoia.
I also work mostly in Safari and Chrome, and it’s like both are poorly optimized for Tahoe. Battery life is bad for the same environment that used to be good in Sequoia, and everything is noticeably slower. Also I think Safari has a memory problem because if you leave some tabs open they will grow to eat all available RAM and then the entire Mac gets very slow with virtual memory and caches. MacOS is 35GB in Tahoe and System Data is 100GB, so that’s 1/3 of my available disk space just for the Tahoe OS. Yuck!