High Battery Drain on Mac

[MoustafaElhadary]

First of all, love cursor and what the team has built. I already can not imagine myself going back to just using VS code as is and copy/pasting from and to claude and chatgpt

I have a M3 Max Macbook Pro w/ 64 GB RAM, running Sanoma 14.2 (23C64). Ever since i started using cursor i have noticed my battery is now draining very rapidly (100% to 4%) in 3 hours. this is happening consistently. I only have my personal device to test on but wanted to flag as a potential issue.

Thank you again

[matthewesp]

M1 Max Macbook Pro w/64 GB Ram running Sanoma 14.2.1 (23C71), not running into this issue. I would check your Macbooks Activity Monitor and see which is causing the most drain. May not be cursor related

[ferg-cod3s]

I’m seeing something similar, not quite as drastic, but definitely quite a bit more battery drain than before with cursor on my M2 Air. I also noticed that Cursor shows up under “apps using significant battery” so I’m guessing there’s a setting turned on that is causing the battery drain that others may not have turned on.

[skylineagle]

having the same problem on my m3pro mac, getting the "apps using significant battery" as well, using the 0.40.3 version

[andreehrlich]

I cannot tell from the activity monitor, but coinciding with the installation and use of Cursor, my Mac M2 Pro drains incredibly quickly now in a way I have not seen before. From 100% to 10% in say 6 hours idly, i.e. without active use. Before the laptop would remain at high battery for days.

Very disappointing because the battery issue makes the Cursor AI unusable ...

[poollooo]

Doubling on your issue, I have a 14inch M3 Max Macbook Pro w/ 64 GB RAM and my battery goes from 100% to 5% in about 2h30. From the activity monitor it clearly shows that Curso is the biggest energy impact

[claudioquaglia]

Same here, after a night with Cursor left opened the battery is completely down. Using Version: 0.41.3

[maxiggle]

First of all, love cursor and what the team has built. I already can not imagine myself going back to just using VS code as is and copy/pasting from and to claude and chatgpt

I have a M3 Max Macbook Pro w/ 64 GB RAM, running Sanoma 14.2 (23C64). Ever since i started using cursor i have noticed my battery is now draining very rapidly (100% to 4%) in 3 hours. this is happening consistently. I only have my personal device to test on but wanted to flag as a potential issue.

Thank you again

I am having this same issue

[sarthakydv]

Similar issue

[lukenguyen-me]

Same here, Macbook Pro M1 16 inch, significant battery drain (and the laptop becomes very hot) since I started using Cursor, which did not happen when I used VSCode with Copilot before.

Love Cursor functionality but this is a really serious issue.

[awesom3o]

Less than a week old Macbook Pro M3 14 inch, the drain is extreme, around 10% loss in every 10 to 15 minutes, only happens when cursor is in use.

[lumix17]

Same over here, M2 PRO 16"
Takes me from 80% to 10% within 2,5hrs.
Version: 0.41.3

[mrarcam]

Same issue, makes it hard to use when working remote.

[tothdanieldamit]

Same for M1 Mac.

Cursor is installed via Brew, version 0.41.3. All feature is on (even experimentals) and using it mainly for a mid-sized JS based full stack codebase. The install was fresh, so I do not rely on many extensions/VSCode specific settings (mostly Eslint, Prettier and Ember related ones are used).

I am gonna disable most of the unused features and find out what could be the reason behind the battery drain.

[imanmalekian31]

I have similar issue with Macbook Air M2 15 inch

[l2succes]

Seeing the same thing on a brand new Macbook Pro M3 Max. It's a bit frustrating because I bought this laptop for being able to work all day on battery. Cursor is great but we need to solve this

[hardeepnarang10]

+1

[JayCodist]

Same here. Macbook pro, with M3 pro, and 100% - 0 in 5 hours, on a laptop previously lasting all day on vs-code.

[damnitrahul]

Same issue, constantly seeing "apps using significant battery" while using Cursor. Even if it's in the background and not actively being used.

[swvjeff]

Same issues here. Battery usage is horrendous on macbook pro.

[danperks]

Hi all,

Can you post the language or project types you are all working in?
Wondering if the battery usage is dependant on what language you are working on.
If we can find a pattern, we can dig in further into why this might be happening!

It's quite possible poorly written extensions could cause this, so I'd look into what you have installed in the meantime.

Also, for those who are facing this issue, can you check what the app "type" is in Process Manager?
On M-series Macs, it should say "Apple" if you have the right version installed, otherwise it might say "Intel", which means its not the right version for your devices!

[Cellule]

Working with Typescript primarily here.
For extensions, I highly doubt it's related since I have the exact same extensions as when I was working on VS Code and noticed a drastic drop in battery life since switched over to Cursor

I could often notice huge cpu usage of Cursor process while doing pretty much nothing.

I'll try to check for the app type and extension list when I get back to my computer

[skylineagle]

@curs Same exact here as @Cellule 🙏🏻

[pymike00]

Same here.

Brand new Macbook Pro with M4 Pro.

Had to switch back to VS Code after a long time on Windows; I will investigate if I get similar energy consumption with it too!

EDIT: same happens on Vanilla VS Code Apparently.

Double terminal with vite / django dev servers

EDIT: after disabling the pylance extension, battery draining stopped on both Cursor and vanilla VS Code

[swvjeff]

PHP & JS dev here working mostly with Laravel & VueJS. Battery drain doesn't appear to be an issue when Cursor is minimized. When it's full screen mode it's absolutely the worst.

[jathanism]

Came here to post that I'm also encountering this on a brand new M4 Max MacBook Pro running Sequoia developer beta (15.2 beta 3). It's killing my battery even while the laptop is asleep. Something is amiss! Closing Cursor appears to alleviate this issue. Here's my Activity Monitor after just having closed Cursor. Over 10k in the last 12 hours! Even Chrome, a well known battery hog, doesn't come close to that.

For reference I use Cursor for everything, and am multi-language. Predominantly Go, JavaScript, Python, Terraform, in that order.

[ahmedpyarali2]

Using it primarily for typescript. Extensions that I have installed are ESLint, GitLens, Jest and Prettier - Code formatter

[puppyapple]

Same here.

Brand new Macbook Pro with M4 Pro.

Had to switch back to VS Code after a long time on Windows; I will investigate if I get similar energy consumption with it too!

EDIT: same happens on Vanilla VS Code Apparently.

Double terminal with vite / django dev servers

**EDIT: after disabling the pylance extension, battery draining stopped on both Cursor and vanilla VS Code**

+1. I've done a little test on my M4 Max 128G. With pylance enabled, 10% battery has been consumed in 40min, and without it, the time was 65min.

[zelalemgetahun9374]

The same issue happened to me too around a month and half ago. I was so annoyed that I was planning to stop using cursor. But while trying to find solution I saw that the "extensionHost" was using a lot of resources (memory, etc.) in cursor's process explorer. After that I reviewed my installed extensions one by one and disabled or uninstalled some of them. Then after restarting cursor it got back to its normal state. It has been more than 2 weeks now and it is working fine. This may help some of you.

[am5188]

I am having this same issue

[aymentrosh]

Is there any solution for this? I have the same issue on my Macbook

[JorgeRojas827]

Having the same issue, I was about to subscribe until I found out how much it drains, it's crazy

[torkelrogstad]

I was also experiencing this issue. For me it turned out that the bradlc.vscode-tailwindcss extension was the reason

[johnnyoshika]

I was also experiencing this issue. For me it turned out that the bradlc.vscode-tailwindcss extension was the reason

How did you figure out which extension was causing it?

[arshad-yaseen]

Same issue +1

[eemebarbe]

I've been having similar issues as well, but it's when the Macbook is supposed to be asleep. Ever since I started using Cursor, if I don't explicitly end processes before closing my Macbook, I wake up to a dead battery.

[yikedu7]

same issue on m2 pro
cursor version: 0.47.5

[daniel-blips]

M1 Pro, 32GB running Sequoia 15.2
If I close the lid while cursor is running and go to sleep, by the time I wake up the laptop is fully drained

[am5188]

I tried uninstalling Cursor, upgrading Cursor, and restarting the computer on my MacBook M1, but couldn't resolve Cursor's high power consumption issue. Reinstalling the system finally fixed the problem. It is still unclear what caused the sudden increase in power consumption.

[max-blds]

Cursor killed my macbook pro batter in under an hour today. Brand new macbook pro 14

[pranftw]

Before you guys ship any new features, prioritise this first.. What's with the radio silence on this issue? A lot of us are suffering and you seem to not care to even respond. Absolutely pathetic! Will be switching to Windsurf if this level of negligence continues.

[thatandyrose]

I have loved cursor until recently. They no longer seem to address issues? Going to try co-pilot today.

Main complaints?

1. power consumption
2. constant network/llm timeouts

[johnnyoshika]

Before you guys ship any new features, prioritise this first.. What's with the radio silence on this issue? A lot of us are suffering and you seem to not care to even respond. Absolutely pathetic! Will be switching to Windsurf if this level of negligence continues.

For what it's worth, I switched to Windsurf and I haven't experienced any battery drain issues. Cursor's drain was about 25% / hour for me on my M2 MacBook Pro 16".

[PuFGGs]

Same issue here happening still to this day.

[raadkasem]

Same issue here happening still to this day.

M1 Pro

[leandro-acosta-yendo]

Same here

[dbyter]

I have the same issue, Macbook Air. The lack of response from the Cursor team is quite surprising given the considerable impact this bug has on the ability to use the product.

[ramonjd]

Same issue. I have switched to WindSurf when on the move without a power source. Pretty frustrating for paid users.

Update: excluding files helped me to put the energy and CPU vampires to sleep, at least for now.

I also use VS Code sometimes and never had similar issues with identical repo so 🤷🏻

[eyeswideopen]

same here. m4 mb air

[dagholmen]

Why is this still not resolved

[AlexVialaBellander]

ffs same here

[norgepaul]

Same issue here. The battery drains very fast on my M4 Macbook Pro.

[filipeveronezi]

same issue here

[tb-b]

Confirmed, battery drain still happening on our Macs (M2 Max)

Edit: as @dagholmen said below, most likely connected to older Next.js version, currently testing 15.4-canary.31 and it seems to be running a bit cooler

[dagholmen]

For me it was the Next.js server that was causing the battery drain. Upgrading to 15.4 canary fixed it. M1 Pro runs nice and cool, battery lasts longer.

[Adamkaram]

my 8gig of ram and dual core of my cpu has no chance with cursor battle , it makes my old pc screaming out like there is a helicopter is about to run

[kenechiorjiako]

Same issue here, battery drain is so intense i thought my laptop had an issue. less than two week m3 pro 18gm macbook