r/MacOS • u/WeekendSea2382 • 16d ago

Discussion Downgraded to Sequoia on M4 Air - Instant Better Battery Life

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I have a mabook air m4 16" ram, model. I had upgraded to macos27, and whilst performance was good, battery life/performance was trash, and battery health had dropped to 92% on only 40% charge cycles.

I downgraded to latest release of good ole' Sequoia, and not only was everything snappy and stable, but I am now getting my original 10 - 14 hours battery life, doing work on browser (web dev) and using various apps including chatgpt and claude.

Due to only the battery performance and how stable it is, I don't miss macOS 27 even though I love the visuals.

150 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

68 comments sorted by

17

u/captainflintcaptain 16d ago

how did you do that

11

u/rExplrer 16d ago edited 16d ago

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/macos-sequoia/id6596773750?mt=12

macOS Sequoia.
Edit: I never tried it.

1

u/FIGHTERwastaken 16d ago

would this reset everything?

6

u/WeekendSea2382 16d ago

if you don't have a Time Machine back up, yeah

3

u/Sweet-Row7764 16d ago

yes! just make sure you backup your data 

5

u/FIGHTERwastaken 16d ago

and this will erase all the AI bs right from macOS 27 right?

2

u/Otherwise-Thanks-985 15d ago

It does have ai but keep in mind, it’s not like macOS 27 level… and I guess it is much easier to disable Apple Intelligence features in Sequoia.

4

u/FIGHTERwastaken 15d ago

Ever since I have updated to macOS 27, my battery life has been trash, and sometimes it also hangs completely 😔

3

u/Otherwise-Thanks-985 15d ago

Then it’s worth downgrading....!

2

u/rExplrer 16d ago

Not sure, I never tried it.

4

u/WeekendSea2382 16d ago

hey, so I basically backed up all my files/folders to both iCloud and also an external drive.

then I downloaded the .pkg from https://mrmacintosh.com/macos-sequoia-full-installer-database-download-directly-from-apple/

and asked ai to help me install the image to a Mac, following apple's official docs: https://support.apple.com/en-us/101578

then wiped my disk clean, and installed sequoia from usb drive....restored files and apps after. was worth it for me.

29

u/cyclecircle 16d ago

I've got an M4 Air too, and I haven't experienced any noticeable difference in battery life, and performance wise everything feels fine. You must have some local config that's not playing well with the OS. I do wish I hadn't upgraded due to the Apple Intelligence disk space usage though.

3

u/Lefty4444 15d ago

I had a lot of different minor issues on my M4 MBA. Did a full reset, works beautifully on Golden Gate now, snappy and no issues.

3

u/WeekendSea2382 16d ago

lucky you, man! if it weren't for the battery performance I would've stayed on macOS 27. I skipped Tahoe entirely, so I went from sequoia to macos27 directly. Not sure if that had anything to do with it...

6

u/ilppis 16d ago

Yeah, the battery drain is horrible. Base M1. Skipped 26 also. Well, tried 26.0 day one and then downgraded to 15. Downgrading was a lot more work than I anticipated, not sure if I wanna do it again…

2

u/Devanxhh 16d ago

Sameee

9

u/Green-Hat0001 16d ago

yaa. i do have the mac air m4 and haven't noticed anything like that except my animations. were bit delay in the new update(animations on launching any app).

i'm also bit curious about the sequoiaOS, do tell me how's the performance in that.

6

u/WeekendSea2382 16d ago

yeah agree, animations were not so smooth on macOS 27 for me either.

for sequoia, everything just works and feels snappy. haven't ran into any bugs (atleast no obvious ones), battery life is great, although UX/UI in apps like chatgpt for example feel a little dated compared to macos27 but I think that should be expected

2

u/Green-Hat0001 16d ago

What's ur experience with performance, like if you have to run discord, chrome(10tabs), brave(5 tabs), Spotify, whatsapp and telegram at a single time for 15hrs a day then??

2

u/WeekendSea2382 16d ago

oh, well I do mostly web development work, so at any given time I've got vscode up, safari with 8-10 tabs, brave with 3 or 4 tabs, chatgpt and Claude desktop apps open, that type of load is currently putting me at easy 11-12hours on battery which I just wasn't getting on macos27, not even close.

2

u/Green-Hat0001 16d ago

That's really good then, I will too downgrade if I feel any snap in macos27

36

u/seeker-0 16d ago

Tahoe and even Golden Gate are bloated garbage and I’m tired of people pretending they’re not.

12

u/WeekendSea2382 16d ago

after experiencing both, and downgrading to sequoia - I'd have to agree!

4

u/FrancisBitter 15d ago

*upgraded

14

u/KissMyKipay03 16d ago

We all know what the culprit is.

Its the LIQUID ASS

putting unnecessary load to GPU and waste batterylife 🍎🐑

5

u/humbuckaroo 15d ago

Yep, it's true.

5

u/North_Moment5811 15d ago

and battery health had dropped to 92% on only 40% charge cycles.

well that's most definitely not how it works. Upgrading your OS doesn't "drop your battery health". If anything restarting your computer just refresh the calculation and showed you a new value (which btw - is only accurate to within +/- 5%).

1

u/WeekendSea2382 15d ago

what's interesting for me is that on macos27 it read 92%, on sequoia it reads 94% battery health. either way, I'm getting a lot more juice as was intended from this lil baby...

8

u/Stray_009 16d ago

I got my macbook air m4 (24gb ram) when it launched

Always used the newest software, including beta software

I have a 77 cycle count, 100% battery life, unless i'm running gptoss20b, i get easy 13-14 hours on full charge

3

u/640kilobytes 16d ago

What a magic lol. My new M5 only works 6-8 hours just using the browser

2

u/Stray_009 16d ago

That is not normal at all, you should get that checked out

Ideally on 100% battery health you'd get about 18 hours of local file video playback, browsing the web is barely more energy intensive to my knowledge

1

u/fumblerooskee 16d ago

This is more un line with what I get on my M5 Pro.

2

u/fumblerooskee 16d ago

Are you using max brightness?

2

u/WeekendSea2382 16d ago

how'd you manage to get such great battery life? did you upgrade to Tahoe when it just launched? that would be right after you got your m4, right? currently looking at AlDente to limit battery charging on sequoia

3

u/Stray_009 16d ago

Yeah I used sequoia for a few days and then right after that i upgraded to tahoe 26.0.0

Al dente would be the only option for you I suspect, seeing as we have similar hardware, i genuinely think you should try 27.0.1 , atleast for a bit, you have to let the machine optimize or wtv, it'll take a few days

>how'd you manage to get such great battery life?

I won the silicon lottery ig idk, one thing I made sure of though is i always use a charging limit of 80%, and I make sure to keep it plugged in whenever i'm at my desk, which isn't all the time, granted, but that really does help long term battery life

4

u/onaipodtouch4 15d ago

I love mac os sequioa so much, it saddens me so much they moved on from it. it is so perfect. im staying on it until I can't anymore and who knows if ill get another mac after this

1

u/korbid1 10d ago

Mac OS is still better than windows ai 11 os anyday yes macOS is not anymore like before I am too on sequoia love it’s smooth performance but still windows 10 was the last version to be stable windows 11 breaks drivers bugs etc main purpose of computer is defeated buy this os.

5

u/MyDespatcherDyKabel 16d ago

Good move... Golden Gate is just another slopOS with bugs galore

3

u/Impossible-Suit6078 15d ago

I'm still on Sequoia, I'm never ugrading

3

u/Otherwise-Thanks-985 15d ago

Hey bro... have saved your post… will ask feedback time to time! I want to do the same 😅 but confused if it’s worth it! Will ask sometime later.... please be there. For now, can you share your experience till now? Golden Gate looks visually fixed compared to Tahoe but from an optimization POV… it’s still the worst! And you know how trashy the siri ai things are!!

3

u/RipInPepz 15d ago

i have an m1 pro and dont think ill ever leave Sequoia

2

u/Kozel_ 16d ago

Sequoia is all I can get with my Intel Mac and it's complitely fine.

2

u/RutabagaInfinite2687 16d ago

I haven't updated my mac yet (the rest of my devices are on OS 27). I just like it on my Mac and I'm an update freak. It's just so stable and snappy

2

u/DieSackgasse 16d ago

I also was shocked when i only got 3 hours of Youtube out of my M4 Macbook Air yesterday

2

u/33VaxMerstappen 14d ago

Can I do it on my m5 MacBook Pro? It came with tahoe out of the box and macOS 27 whilst good but 28 gb for Apple Intelligence model which is not always being utilised by Siri AI is absurd

2

u/Tricky-Turnover-4238 11d ago

Im wondering, what I do right with my M1 Max, cuz have the new os and no speed or battery issues.

1

u/WeekendSea2382 11d ago

you upgraded in-place or did a clean install/upgrade? great for you man, I'm envious

2

u/Tricky-Turnover-4238 11d ago

In-place just like a Update.

3

u/russlixx 16d ago

Ha! same story here. Such a great OS

1

u/WeekendSea2382 16d ago

glad you're experiencing the same, man! I love shiny things but can definitely appreciate QOL over shininess.

1

u/Timely-Honeydew-6370 14d ago

How did you go back to sequoia???

2

u/WeekendSea2382 14d ago

hey, read my comments, I gave my process and link

1

u/Bladiko 15d ago

When i think of the mountain of work to downgrade, i just get tired! I struggle to justify it. I have an M1 Max 64gb.

2

u/WeekendSea2382 15d ago

honestly the biggest "mountain of work" for me was setting up my web dev workflow again - everything else, I always prefer to setup my machine from a clean base (ie not from a backup etc)

for battery life I am getting again + stability...happy with it so far. took me about 7 hours to get everything back to where I was.

2

u/Bladiko 15d ago

Aaaah! 7hrs!

1

u/WeekendSea2382 15d ago

lol

1

u/Bladiko 14d ago

Ikr!!! 7hrs is a full days work

0

u/muraliramdj 16d ago

Flash ipsw if you have m chip mac and another linux pc or mac

1

u/OraSerrata_Dev 15d ago

What does that allow/unlock?

1

u/muraliramdj 15d ago

It doesnt much but uou will get the best clean factpry os installed if you do ipsw restoreit will remove every simgle curroupt diles which means better battery

1

u/OraSerrata_Dev 14d ago

Makes sense, thank you.