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How can I maximize M1 MacBook battery health?

Johnnyangel

Johnnyangel

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 16, 2020
31
48
I have been delighted with the battery life of my M1 MacBook but that makes me all the more concerned about preserving battery health. (I have a 12.9-inch iPad Pro that needs a new battery again only a year and a half after the last one was replaced by Apple.)

some recommend routinely charging the battery only to 80% of maximum. However, Al Dente and other utilities for setting an SMC parameter to accomplish this were written for Intel Macs, and they do not work on the M1 MacBook Pro.

Yes, Apple claims it offers its own battery management, but frankly esp. with my iOS experience I would place greater trust in a third-party tool! I do not want my MacBook Pro’s battery to get baked while the laptop is plugged in, whether it is being used or not.
 
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I’ve done that of course. But I don’t want to just take Apple’s secret algorithms on faith — I want to see an indicated 80 percent charge, not a 100 percent indication that may or may not be meaningful.
 
chabig said:
I think that's a fool's folly. Just use the machine normally.
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Not a fools folly. Batteries don’t like being charged to 100% and discharge to under 20%.
On the intel Mbp I just returned I was using aldente to charge to 72% and after 2 weeks my max capacity was staying over 100%.

I’ll just manually disconnect before 100% on the m1 when it arrives.

I didn’t have the most recent screenshots. Returned already.
 

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I don't see why it is foolish to want to manage my battery's health the way I want to. My experience with my iOS device and my older MacBook has shown that Apple really doesn't prioritize battery health -- whatever they might say/ It's really annoying to have to unplug the battery when the device has reached 80 percent charge (I'm not going to know when that is anyway if it's sitting closed), plus if I'm using it plugged in all day I should be able to limit the charge in that case too ...

Various PC manufacturers (Lenovo, Huawei, eetc.) let you do this automatically. It's annoying that Apple doesn't.

Maybe an updated version of Al Dente is in the works?
 
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Not foolish at all! I’m just saying I think the battery optimization is about as much as we get at this point. My 2013 air was usually kept on a charger and only had 15 or so cycles by the time I sold it years later. The battery held pretty much completely solid and didn’t lose any run time. Can’t imagine newer machines would be any different
 
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My experience with a 12" MacBook has been pretty different. I'm too indolent to fish it out at the moment, but I can promise it has way WAY more cycles than you cite and a lot poorer health. Always updated to the latest OS releases, used on battery very little, and left plugged in almost all the time (which I now bitterly regret).

Until Al Dente or an equivalent comes out for the M1, I think I'll unplug it when I'm not using it.
 
Johnnyangel said:
I don't see why it is foolish to want to manage my battery's health the way I want to.
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I think you’re obsessing over one variable among many. Some people here obsess over temperature. Some obsess over RAM. Some obsess over Wi-Fi or wired network speed. You’ve chosen to obsess over the battery. None of these obsessions are necessary. Do you also obsess over and try to manage your car battery? Your razor? Your electric toothbrush? Your vacuum cleaner? Any other battery powered devices?
 
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None of these devices has cost me more than $100 over a 18-month period for battery replacement the way the iPad Pro has. And the value of my 12” MacBook has been substantially diminished to me or the next owner because of the decline in its battery performance.

None of my other battery powered devices has declined in any meaningful way. Oh, my car’s battery dies if I don’t drive it for a couple of weeks, but it’s 8 years old.

Plus, on plenty of other devices the batteries are easily (I stress the “easily”) user-replaceable.
 
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Johnnyangel said:
I have been delighted with the battery life of my M1 MacBook but that makes me all the more concerned about preserving battery health. (I have a 12.9-inch iPad Pro that needs a new battery again only a year and a half after the last one was replaced by Apple.)

some recommend routinely charging the battery only to 80% of maximum. However, Al Dente and other utilities for setting an SMC parameter to accomplish this were written for Intel Macs, and they do not work on the M1 MacBook Pro.

Yes, Apple claims it offers its own battery management, but frankly esp. with my iOS experience I would place greater trust in a third-party tool! I do not want my MacBook Pro’s battery to get baked while the laptop is plugged in, whether it is being used or not.
Click to expand...

Optimal (and best of both worlds) range to keep it charged is between 25%-85%. We had some apps for Intel MacBook's to actually stop the charging however we don't have any for M1 yet as far as I am aware. So perhaps, you might want to avoid charging out of this range, if possible. Keeping it above 25% is a bit easier to practice but keeping it off after 85% is the difficult part.

gj1ewqr0.jpg
 
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FreeWoRLD83 said:
Optimal (and best of both worlds) range to keep it charged is between 25%-85%. We had some apps for Intel MacBook's to actually stop the charging however we don't have any for M1 yet as far as I am aware. So perhaps, you might want to avoid charging out of this range, if possible. Keeping it above 25% is a bit easier to practice but keeping it off after 85% is the difficult part.

View attachment 1678169
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Yes, what you said!
 
I do, so thanks for asking this question. ^_^

I wonder if there’s some kind of niche controller thing meant for dumber devices that could be used? The fact these charge via USB-C is super handy, you could message the device that way.

If there’s a command line utility you could run to output battery level, could that message an Arduino board to flip a switch?
 
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Sanpete said:
What OS were you running on your iPad Pro during the time you had the new battery?
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Always ran the latest available, so a variety. Regarding the script/smart switch so,unions, they sound great. Unfortunately I’m not a programmer or builder, so I can’t partake. if someone went into the business of producing a turnkey solution, I’d be sold.

i guess a manual approach would be to run down a device to 80 percent, watch it to see how long it takes to charge to 80%, record that interval, then for future chargings set an external countdown timer ... I see these can be had for about $12 each!
 
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Johnnyangel said:
Hard for me to believe so few care about this issue ...
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I'm surprised as well. Most people see a battery as a disposable item that is meant to be used. Any attempt at prolonging the life is seen as way too inconvenient.

Does coconutBattery work? https://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/ --- I've used this to monitor my batteries for years now.

I use AlDente on my 2020 MBP 13' to keep the battery around 85% since I use it as a desktop these days (virus). Every now and then I'll set it to 100% for a day then back to 55-85% (Usually 70%+). Hopefully something like this comes out for the M1 soon!

Batteries are a hobby of mine. I've read Buchmann's book several times and love his website: https://batteryuniversity.com

Battery University clearly states batteries will last longer when used 40-75%. Of course you get less usage out of your battery that you paid for - but it does extend the life significantly. As this post (in this thread) states: #14


This is really the first year I've ever been able to do the 40-75% (or 40-85%) because I'm at home all the time. Otherwise it's just too inconvenient. Most of my Apple devices are used 90-100% and after several years they do pretty well on the capacity vs design capacity scale.

I could talk about Batteries forever. Yes, we're a rare breed I guess.
 
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It is my opinion that as long as you're not regularly draining under 40%, running high battery temps for long periods of time - your batteries should last 3 years without a problem. Doing the 40-75% thing really pays off if you keep your devices 3+ years.

Within a 2 year timeframe (for iOS/iPad devices) I've seen little to no benefit to 40-75 (<200 cycles). My guess this benefit really shines at 3+ years and 300+ cycles. For MacBooks - probably even earlier due to the heat for the Intel versions?
 
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Thanks for the good comments! I've been accused of obsessing over battery life, but I don't think that's quite fair (look at electric car owners if you want battery life obsession). Honeslly I'd have more of a "use it up and throw it away" mentality if I didn't have so many devices and didn't like to keep them for a long time. And if battery replacement could still be done by the user.

The last time my iPad Pro went to Apple for a battery replacement was only a year and a half ago. Apart from the inconvenience of being without it, Apple claimed the iPad was bent (it wasn't and isn't) and wanted $599 to fix that in addition to the battery replacement. I had to escalate that to a senior level in order to get it back without the extra $600 charge. (When I send it in again, I'm going to take multiple photos with a ruler resting on it first!)

The iPad Pro now has a battery life of about four hours. And I don't even know how long my 12" MacBook would last on batteries compared to when it was new because I've unplugged it so seldom.

I can't understand how the poster who said his MacBook has only about 15 cycles on the battery after years of usage. I'm attaching Coconut Battery readouts for my iPad Pro and MacBook to see what are more realistic results -- or am I just jinxed?

Coconut Battery does work on the M1 MaxBook Pro in its latest update, BTW ....

B6DC887B-C082-40DF-9929-438EBC81CA4C.jpeg
1BFE9186-601B-4B7E-8F47-CA5DA1483FCC.jpeg
 
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BigMcGuire said:
I'm surprised as well. Most people see a battery as a disposable item that is meant to be used. Any attempt at prolonging the life is seen as way too inconvenient.

Does coconutBattery work? https://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/ --- I've used this to monitor my batteries for years now.

I use AlDente on my 2020 MBP 13' to keep the battery around 85% since I use it as a desktop these days (virus). Every now and then I'll set it to 100% for a day then back to 55-85% (Usually 70%+). Hopefully something like this comes out for the M1 soon!

Batteries are a hobby of mine. I've read Buchmann's book several times and love his website: https://batteryuniversity.com

Battery University clearly states batteries will last longer when used 40-75%. Of course you get less usage out of your battery that you paid for - but it does extend the life significantly. As this post (in this thread) states: #14


This is really the first year I've ever been able to do the 40-75% (or 40-85%) because I'm at home all the time. Otherwise it's just too inconvenient. Most of my Apple devices are used 90-100% and after several years they do pretty well on the capacity vs design capacity scale.

I could talk about Batteries forever. Yes, we're a rare breed I guess.
Click to expand...
I have found my MacBook Air M1 battery is not performing as well as everyone else's is. I am roughly getting around 6-8 hours top while others are easily getting around 12 hours or more. It's been a week and my machine stopped doing all of the indexing. I am not using Chrome and run just a few native apps.

Any advice for what I can do to improve my situation?

Thanks!
 
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inc0gnito said:
I have found my MacBook Air M1 battery is not performing as well as everyone else's is. I am roughly getting around 6-8 hours top while others are easily getting around 12 hours or more. It's been a week and my machine stopped doing all of the indexing. I am not using Chrome and run just a few native apps.

Any advice for what I can do to improve my situation?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Everyone uses their computer differently. For example: User A will game heavily on their phone at 100% brightness while streaming music or YouTube saying they only get 6 hours of screen on time. User B pops out iBooks and reads on a black background with brightness at 20% with an occasional Youtube video with headphones saying they get 12+ hours of battery life.

If you're using just native apps and only getting 6 hours - I'd start looking at activity monitor and figuring out what's using the CPU. That M1 should be sipping battery with native apps with almost no usage. Who knows, it could be a defective unit as well - especially if it's hot and high CPU usage.

I usually ignore the "I get X hours" screen on time. A lot of these are heavily biased and due to people liking their device. Real world usage is almost always less. I have to gauge my own "x hours" against my own usage otherwise it isn't comparing like usage.

What can you do if you're just using native apps? It takes a few days for my 100+ GB photos library to sync. When I get a new device, I end up using it 3-4 hours more a day than usual - this sometime distorts my "battery life" expectations.

Make sure coconutBattery is reporting good capacity on your battery.

Bout all I can think of. Hope you get it resolved.
 
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