Recent reports from users show that macOS is facing a big Sur battery drain issue. One user complained, “Spotlight has been using significant energy for over a week or so now, draining my battery and making it super hot. Does anyone know why and/or how to stop it?. The issue makes the fan of the device to move faster in order to secure the device from heating up and causing a potential safety hazard.
One user said, “today I have upgraded to macOS big Sur. however, there is a significant battery drain after this upgrade. The battery drains in 1 hour after this upgrade. how this issue can be solved. my device is a 2018 MacBook Pro.” The issue seems to be faced by users all around the globe, the heating caused by the spotlight makes the fan of the device move faster.
Another user said that they had been experiencing the same issue with their Mac Pro 2020, they said within an hour the battery drops down from 100% to just 20%. The device also tends to heat up, making the fan work faster. Another user replied to this by saying, “I spoke with Apple customer care and they said that it is normal after the upgrade to Big Sur because of Spotlight. the app starts to make new indexing of the system (disk). It could take one or two days. After that, the battery drain should return to normal.”
Here are a few ways to fix the issue: