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Battery Cycle Going Up... I haven't unplugged it yet...

randomgeeza

randomgeeza

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 12, 2014
657
555
United Kingdom
Since I took receipt of the MBP 2021, three weeks ago. I have opted to use plugged power, and have turned on Battery Optimisation. I have seen the battery percentage drop to 80% and then charge back up, once. I also checked battery cycle when the MBP was out of the box. It was at 1.

Checking today it has somehow managed to cycle 4 more times, how and why is a mystery. It is on plugged power.

Is anyone able to offer any insight on this?

By my math and by the precedent set. By the end of year (2022) the battery will have cycled circa 65 times without actually being unplugged.
 
Last edited:
randomgeeza said:
Since I took receipt of the MBP 2021, three weeks ago. I have opted to use plugged power, and have turned on Battery Optimisation. I have seen the battery percentage drop to 80% and then charge back up, once. I also checked battery cycle when the MBP was out of the box. It was at 1.

Checking today it has somehow managed to cycle 4 more times, how and why is a mystery. It is on plugged power.

Is anyone able to offer any insight on this?

By my math and by the precedent set. By the end of year the battery will have cycled circa 65 times without actually being unplugged.
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I don't have much insight as I have not heard anything directly from Apple about this "feature".

I do find it strange to say the least. My curiosity is definitely sparked. It seems as though Apple may be doing this to preserve batteries from swelling.

I recently had a 2015 15" and it was plugged in 98% of the time and only when it dropped to 70% or lower and charged, that it would count that as a "battery cycle".

My current M1 Air is the same as my 2015.

Your MBP M1 is quite odd.
 
Talking with Apple about it now... They said it was expected behaviour and could be calibrating based upon my behaviour. They mentioned to get into the habit of regularly unplugging it and allowing a partial discharge, and recharge.

I'm going to keep an eye on it for now... But welcome further opinions and observations.
 
When plugged in all the time, your battery isn't staying at 100% (or 80%). It will discharge slightly and then charge back up to 100% (or 80%). Over 3 weeks this has apparently equated to 4 charge cycles. Keeping it plugged in all the time isn't ideal. Your battery will still age and lose capacity even if you don't use it. Batteries like to be discharged/charged on a regular basis.
 
Yeah, I suspect it has been doing something in the background. It would be better if the battery meter and percentile showed this and was more informative.
 
As you've said, you have battery optimization turned on. This will dynamically control battery charging, and in my experience will allow the battery to stop charging at levels below 100%. If the computer is unplugged or loses power (even momentarily), the algorithm will bring the battery charge to 100% (since it thinks you might be changing your usage to battery operation). After a few days, it should resume lowering the max charge level.

The other setting under Battery Heath>Manage battery longevity, actually lowers the maximum battery capacity reported by the MacOS, which causes utilities such as iStat Menus to report (prematurely) low battery health percentages. This has resulted in numerous threads complaining about poor battery life. Turning off Manage battery longevity will restore the actual max capacity reported by the OS, after a few days.
 
Agreed, however this is not normal behaviour... Monterey bug perhaps?
 

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It might just be the machines with the T2 chip and later... You have an older MacBook?

1640901539616.png
 
carlob said:
Manage battery longevity? I have no settings under Battery Health


View attachment 1936550
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Same here on my brand new 16' MacBook Pro. No such setting called manage battery longevity. I'm checking threads to find out how to charge correctly. Are there actual steps? The laptop has been plugged in (closed when not using it) on a desk where I use it since I bought it a few weeks ago. Woke it up today and it was showing 78% charge with the orange light showing even though it was plugged in. This is confusing.
 
Must be an Intel vs Apple Silicon thing. I have the 2020 13" MBP i7 (need to use Windows 10 VM for certain work stuff). The battery health support articles on apple.com read a bit different for the Intel and AS notebooks- most notably the absence of the section on controlling the battery health management features in AS article.
 
photoj2754 said:
Same here on my brand new 16' MacBook Pro. No such setting called manage battery longevity. I'm checking threads to find out how to charge correctly. Are there actual steps? The laptop has been plugged in (closed when not using it) on a desk where I use it since I bought it a few weeks ago. Woke it up today and it was showing 78% charge with the orange light showing even though it was plugged in. This is confusing.
Click to expand...
I believe that is the battery optimisation kicking in. I saw that behaviour too. So when I checked the Battery cycles counter I was expecting at least 2, maybe 3 cycles. So to find 5 was a shock and what prompted my post.

I am going to get into the habit of using on battery at least once a week, this was also suggested and recommended by Apple. It exercises the battery and should keep it healthy. The trick is to not discharge fully, take it to about 60% and then plug it back in.
 
With battery optimization the battery will sometimes stop charging at about 80%. When the OS thinks you might need battery power, it will charge to 100%. Li Ion batteries don't like to be kept at 100% for long periods of time so Mac OS will sometimes go on battery power for a period time and then bring it back to 100% later. So it's sort of a yoyo effect between 80 and 100%. Do that 5 times and Mac OS will consider that 1 charge cycle. This will probably happen more often shortly after getting the MacBook as Mac OS is trying to figure out your schedule to anticipate the charge to 100%.
 
random wrote:
"The trick is to not discharge fully, take it to about 60% and then plug it back in."

I suggest to take it down a little further... to around 45% or so.
 
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