Apple Explains Why You Might See 'Not Charging' When a Mac is Plugged In

[aevan]

Problem solved:

GitHub - AppHouseKitchen/AlDente-Charge-Limiter: Menubar Tool to set Charge Limits and Prolong Battery Lifespan

Menubar Tool to set Charge Limits and Prolong Battery Lifespan - AppHouseKitchen/AlDente-Charge-Limiter

github.com

Thanks! Have you tried it? Does it work?

 

[PBG4 Dude]

Thanks! Have you tried it? Does it work?

I haven’t tried it yet, just have seen it mentioned here in multiple battery threads.

 

[FrakeTrain]

Here is what I posted (in blue) last month on another thread and still NOTHING has changed. Nothing has "calibrated" in two months of this feature doing the below described for two months solid. My MBP has been plugged-in 99% of the time. By now my charge should be stopping at around 80%. Please provide as much Apple phone feedback and Feedback Assistant tickets as possible. Yea, sucks taking the time, bit this feature definitely is not performing as intended or as science dictates.

After observing the BHM feature on my 99% plugged into AC 15" 2017 MBP for a month, this is what I can report:
Approximately every three days the built in charge controller stops energy going to the battery. The finder battery menu shows one thing down to about 95% charge, then another as is shown by my attached screenshots. It gets down to about 90% then starts charging right back to 100%. That's it.

Here it is at 95%:

At 94%:

At 90%:

And the Activity Monitor showing the BHM induced cycle:

As you can see, the Battery icon is showing fully charged and plugged in even when it is below 100% and even when it says "Battery is Not Charging".

Now whatever confidence you may have in Apple engineers to prolong the life of your battery, this behavior will not accomplish what the science shows. Here is an excerpt from just one knowledgeable source, Battery University (there are many others):

"A laptop battery could be prolonged by lowering the charge voltage when connected to the AC grid. To make this feature user-friendly, a device should feature a “Long Life” mode that keeps the battery at 4.05V/cell and offers a SoC of about 80 percent. One hour before traveling, the user requests the “Full Capacity” mode to bring the charge to 4.20V/cell."

Almost all batteries, including Lithium Ion and Lithium Polymer have a voltage associated with States of Charge (SoC). That is how the built in charge controllers know when to taper off the energy (saturation charge) going to the battery and then provide a topping off charge once and a while to keep it at 100% SoC (that is why you will see it go down to 98% while plugged-in every once and a while). According to all the science I have seen, keeping these batteries at 100% SoC all the time is not helping the longevity. But allowing the charge controller to keep the SoC at around 80% is good battery juju. And yes, you will only get 80% of your battery capacity, therefore toggle the feature off if needed to get back to fully charged.

I have spoken with three "senior" Apple CS techs now and not one of them has a clue how the BHM feature was programmed. It's one thing to dumb down the features to a check box, but entirely different to provide no one with knowledge and have the white paper "About battery health management in Mac notebooks" no where near describe in detail the actual behavior, but does suggest that users like me should see it keeping a lower maximum charge. Doing that for less than one hour every three days is not going to accomplish the task.

The only people that may be confused by this are the people that actually have some technical knowledge and want to know if a new feature that is prolonging the inevitable cost of replacing a $200 glued in battery (that used to take less than one minute to replace) is actually working! With all the well documented glitches in the current macOS, it's quite prudent to allow people to be able to simply verify intended function.

If anyone else has anecdotes of their experience, please provide. I would like to know if there is hope for this feature, or should risk AlDente which does exactly what the science suggests should happen, even though having a third party write keys to the SMC firmware is something I definitely want to avoid.


I was hoping 10.15.6 would provide a glitch fix, but no go. Please send as much feedback to Apple as possible.

 

[Tech198]

Been noticing this more and more the last few weeks on my Late 2019 16 Inch MBP.

I was getting very paranoid about it and was thinking about taking my MacBook in to get it checked. This support document must be because they got tired of people reporting charging "problems" when it is a feature.

This may be true, but the same happens on 10.14 as well, and the only option you see there is "reset SMC" or PRAM.

To me, this battery management in Catalina just "adds" to whats an annoying thing in the first pace. It would help users get more longer battery life, but at an incontinence.

I guess on-the-fly would be better to keep precise management,but what inconvenience does it affect users i wonder?

 

[VictorTango777]

Agree. Maybe it should just say "Charging paused" to distinguish from other states when there is an issue with the battery or charger.

Descriptive explanations are better than 1 or 2 word ambiguous text. Users should be able to discern the meanings of things in the menus without having to read additional reference materials. I remember when the Finder had both an "Arrange by" command and a "Sort by" command because Apple didn't want to be more descriptive.

 

[VictorTango777]

Who would like to see Tesla remove the ability to set charging limit and let the car decide how much to charge the battery?

 

[iShater]

I could swear apple laptops always stopped charging and let the charge drop down to ~95% or so in previous generations. Anybody else recall that?

 

[FrakeTrain]

I could swear apple laptops always stopped charging and let the charge drop down to ~95% or so in previous generations. Anybody else recall that?

Without the BHM feature, you are exactly right. According to the people who design/code charging algorithms for these types of batteries and their charge controllers, when the charger gets to 100% it stops energy, then provides topping charges when it dips below 100%. To what extent it dips below 100% and how frequent, only the coders know that. But for for the last 20 years, I have seen my SoC (State of charge, charge percentage), drift down to 98% and back up while plugged-in (I've never seen it reach 95%). Apple seems to hide this fact, but with programs like coconutBattery, one can see this more readily.

I am trying to get attention to the Apple peeps that this new feature is not performing correctly. Please, has anyone else witnessed what I have described in thread #78 above? In short: every three days, showing "Battery Is Charged" down to 95%, then "Battery Is Not Charging" from 94% to 90%, then shows charging back to 100%. This cycle has repeated every three days almost like clockwork for the past 2 months with my MBP plugged in 99%+ of the time. There has been one other person on these threads that says they saw their charge top out at 80% for a while. Any one else? If yes, please provide screenshots so I can get them to Apple. Thx

 

[Zeus65]

Right click on one of your music files, then use the menu option that allows you to select the default application used to open the file.

Oops just realized I posted this in the wrong thread. But in response thanks, My idea was more if you click play on a bluetooth device its opens up, Spotify, or Apple Music or Tidal/Deezer/Amazon Music etc. Currently if I don't use spotify for a long period the phone defaults to apple music.

 

[knadles]

Day late and $1200 short. I already returned and replaced an MBA (last month) because it was doing this...either not charging or literally losing charge to the low 90s before climbing back up again. I took it to the local Genius Bar and the guy agreed there must be a problem, probably in the logic board. The new one did the exact same thing, which I then assumed must a software issue dragged over from when I ran Migration Assistant. So I backed up all my data, spent hours reinstalling the OS and software from scratch, and the next day...SAME BEHAVIOR. Took me a few hours of digging but I eventually found a thread on an Apple forum discussing this behavior as a known issue that appeared to be related to battery management. I wonder how many laptops have been returned, when all Apple needed to do was be upfront with what the freak was going on.

Pete

 

[knadles]

Without the BHM feature, you are exactly right. According to the people who design/code charging algorithms for these types of batteries and their charge controllers, when the charger gets to 100% it stops energy, then provides topping charges when it dips below 100%. To what extent it dips below 100% and how frequent, only the coders know that. But for for the last 20 years, I have seen my SoC (State of charge, charge percentage), drift down to 98% and back up while plugged-in (I've never seen it reach 95%). Apple seems to hide this fact, but with programs like coconutBattery, one can see this more readily.

My first Apple laptop, one of the old plastic MacBooks from around 2005, would maintain 100% charge when plugged in, but wouldn't charge up to 100% unless the battery level was 95% or lower. Apple was clear (I don't recall in what manner...either in the little booklet that came with or with a software popup) that this was done to preserve battery life.

My next Apple laptop, a 2012 MBA, didn't do it at all. But until this new one, I've never seen one *lose charge* while plugged in. I just hope it doesn't decide to drop to 90% right before I head out to spend a day on battery alone.

Pete

 

[FrakeTrain]

I just hope it doesn't decide to drop to 90% right before I head out to spend a day on battery alone.

Pete, these "calibration" drops to 90% should only be due to the BHM feature being turned on. They should not happen if the feature is turned off. If you know you are going to use your battery soon (and this feature is working properly), just tick off the checkbox hours before. If you see this does not work, please post back here. As a sideline, and noted before, Apple is hiding the fact that sometimes your battery is still getting energy even after it reports 100%. Programs like coconutBattery and iStat Menus show that amount of energy still going into the batteries after Apple reports 100%. These programs will show no energy being received by your battery when your battery is truly at 100%.

I would ask that you submit a Feedback Assistant and phone support report with your anecdote. Once Apple realizes they are spending money on this function not performing correctly, they will rectify... and maybe educate their employees. This last little white paper published by Apple on July 31,2020, still does not explain exactly how the function should actually perform.

 

[FrakeTrain]

Here is something that I found perusing BigSur videos. Apparently, there are two different battery management modes offered in the upcoming macOS. One who's description matches the one in Catalina ("Battery health management") called "Manage battery longevity" under the "Battery Health..." button, and an additional one under the new Battery preferences that replaces Energy preferences called "Optimized battery charging" that mimics iOS and mentions the "80%" maximums. I sure would like to know how these differ from each other to verify intended function. Maybe that would help gain insight into the Catalina function. ANYONE???

Catalina:

BigSur:

BigSur:

 

[Camarillo Brillo]

I'm not counting on Apple ever implementing this correctly.

My iPhone 7 has been set to 'optimize battery charging' since day one, it says right in the settings that this will prevent it from charging past 80%. It has never once stopped charging at 80%.

Watching the effects of the new battery health management feature on my MacBook Pro, I'm convinced Apple will never change it, it is what it is.

 

[FrakeTrain]

I'm not counting on Apple ever implementing this correctly.

My iPhone 7 has been set to 'optimize battery charging' since day one, it says right in the settings that this will prevent it from charging past 80%. It has never once stopped charging at 80%.

Watching the effects of the new battery health management feature on my MacBook Pro, I'm convinced Apple will never change it, it is what it is.

I agree with you to some degree. I still think that if enough people start Apple CS phone tickets and submit Feedback Assistant reports, especially those that have taken a significant amount of Apple resource (money) like "knadles" above, they will respond. I've seen it taken years, but still rectified.

The iPhone is a different beast when it comes to this feature. How many people don't use their phones as a mobile device, aka always having it plugged in? Whereas, a laptop, like mine, is plugged in almost 100% of the time and just moved from room to room or to work. What I'm trying to accomplish is some Apple white paper that actually describes how the feature actually performs. That's the only way anyone can verify actual function. This isn't some apple trade secret. I get that they want to dumb it down to a checkbox, but to not provide detailed white paper, hurts them as much as us. They have created white paper in the past due to my and others persistence.

It looks like I will take the plunge and try "AlDente". I haven't heard anyone say it destroys their SMC firmware and it appears that when you delete the program and do an SMC reset, everything goes back to normal. Anyone have any differing experience?

I know it sucks to do Apple's job and submit feedback, but it's the only way I have found to solve issues. If you have time, please feel free to use anything I have posted and submit feedback.

And yes, it's likely that 10.15.6 is the last iteration of Catalina, but they will still do security updates and they have been known before to embed some software and firmware updates in those security updates.

 

[jent]

I'm not counting on Apple ever implementing this correctly.

My iPhone 7 has been set to 'optimize battery charging' since day one, it says right in the settings that this will prevent it from charging past 80%. It has never once stopped charging at 80%.

Watching the effects of the new battery health management feature on my MacBook Pro, I'm convinced Apple will never change it, it is what it is.

Just to clarify, doesn't the feature on iPhone only kick in when your phone is plugged in for long periods of time when based on your usage patterns (when the OS doesn't expect you to use it)? So if it knows you normally go to bed at midnight and wake up at 8:00 AM, when you plug the phone in at night it would charge up to 80%, hold it there, and then around 7:00 AM start charging to the full 100%. I made up those example times but just want to make sure I understand correctly that it only does this when it expects you won't be unplugging the phone for several more hours.

 

[C DM]

Just to clarify, doesn't the feature on iPhone only kick in when your phone is plugged in for long periods of time when based on your usage patterns the OS doesn't expect you to use it? So if it knows you normally go to bed at midnight and wake up at 8:00 AM, when you plug the phone in at night it would charge up to 80%, hold it there, and then around 7:00 AM start charging to the full 100%. I made up those example times but just want to make sure I understand correctly that it only does this when it expects you won't be unplugging the phone for several more hours.

That's more or less it. However many don't seem to find it really doing that with regular use of that nature and even after some time has passed.

 

[kc9hzn]

I’ve got the same problem with my 2017 15” MBP. It will say ‘plugged in not charging’ and power source as ‘power adaptor’ but the battery will slowly run down until it gets to 0% and shuts down. In the last few % points the laptop runs really slow.

That’s a different issue, if the battery is running down to almost 0%. You probably need a new power supply for your notebook if that’s the case.