It's actually even worse on many Macs: Minecraft uses MORE power when it's idle in the background.
When I'm playing minecraft, my laptop (MacBook Pro 16 inch 2019, macOS 12.6.1) becomes moderately warm, not uncomfortably so. When I pause the game and go to a different app, the laptop becomes much hotter and the fan starts to blow loudly. I suspect this may be because the laptop perhaps switches to integrated graphics which normally uses less power but actually uses more when there's a high graphics load. Not sure if this is correct, but whatever the reason, it is definitely a very noticeable effect. And entirely avoidable if they would just pause the rendering engine when the game is paused or the window is invisible.
michelcolman
It's actually even worse on many Macs: Minecraft uses MORE power when it's idle in the background.
When I'm playing minecraft, my laptop (MacBook Pro 16 inch 2019, macOS 12.6.1) becomes moderately warm, not uncomfortably so. When I pause the game and go to a different app, the laptop becomes much hotter and the fan starts to blow loudly. I suspect this may be because the laptop perhaps switches to integrated graphics which normally uses less power but actually uses more when there's a high graphics load. Not sure if this is correct, but whatever the reason, it is definitely a very noticeable effect. And entirely avoidable if they would just pause the rendering engine when the game is paused or the window is invisible.