Description of the issue:
Starting about 10 days ago, if Brave is running, the battery in my my 2020 M1 MacBook Air drains almost twice as fast.
I’m not using Brave any differently than before (no new extensions, etc.) and it doesn’t seem to matter how many profiles, windows, or tabs are open. I often have 2-3 profiles open, with anywhere from 10 to 40 tabs open. But even if I take it down to one window with only 10-12 tabs, the battery drain remains significantly higher than it would have been 2 weeks ago under the same circumstances.
If I quit Brave, battery drain returns to normal. If I open Chrome instead, and run the same kind of scenario (multiple profiles + many tabs), I don’t have the same problem.
I know this because I use Brave and Chrome for different thing, but use them similarly throughout the day. Brave shows up under “apps using significant energy” pretty much whenever it’s running at all. Chrome, with just as many windows and tabs, does not.
Anybody else having this issue since Brave v1.47.171 ?
I’m finding the issue is intermittent. Right now, I’m looking at 11 hours of battery remaining at 87%, while typing this in a Brave, with three windows open containing 60+ tabs. I’m starting to look into background processes. It may not be Brave after all — although the correlation has been extraordinary.
Keep me in the loop. Note that each tab is its own process, so having 60+ tabs is 60+ process, and that’s not including any built-in extensions that also require processing power (such as Shields, Rewards, etc) and any 3rd party extensions you may have installed.
I typically have my M1 plugged in while working so its hard to tell what the battery life is on my end. I’m going to unplug it now and test to see if it seems like it drains irregularly quickly. May also be worth disabling Hardware Acceleration in your browser as I have seen users report that this has an effect on battery life as well.
@Mattches thanks for chiming in. Really appreciate the presence of top team members in these forums.
I may have been barking up the wrong tree. I’m no noob and usually pretty good at tracking down whatever may be taxing my system, but pretty much as soon as I posted this, the problem stopped happening (naturally). I do try to keep my browser sessions to a minimum. I have separate user profiles for various jobs/projects/activities, and I try to not have more than 2 profiles open at once for very long.
40 tabs is certainly a quite a few. Would step back to one browser screen, with a few tabs then monitor usage via ≡ → More Tools → Task Manager to see where CPU/GPU/RAM goes. If its a specific site or extension or combination of both. Then watch as you open new webpages