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How to Best Maintain MacBook Battery Health?

Since getting my M5 MBP seven months ago, it's been plugged in 99% of the time, and has only 11 charge cycles.

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The recommended approach is to leave it plugged in and charge it to around 85% only. Remove it from the charger when you need to do that and then reconnect it when back. This reduces the number of charge cycles which is a measure of how much use the battery has had. If you are going away from the charger for a longer period, then you can make sure you charge it to 100%. This approach is better than running it down each day and then recharging at night. I think people have talked about Coconut Battery which is the standard for monitoring your battery and replace the Apple battery icon in your menu bar. You need to keep cycles down and health up which is obvious and this approach will help with that. I have several laptops and my 5 year old 16" M1 Max has 147 cycles and a battery health of 93% (ie it holds 93% of its original capacity) at this point which is considered good, using this method.
 
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whitby said:
The recommended approach is to leave it plugged in and charge it to around 85% only. Remove it from the charger when you need to do that and then reconnect it when back. This reduces the number of charge cycles which is a measure of how much use the battery has had. If you are going away from the charger for a longer period, then you can make sure you charge it to 100%. This approach is better than running it down each day and then recharging at night. I think people have talked about Coconut Battery which is the standard for monitoring your battery and replace the Apple battery icon in your menu bar. You need to keep cycles down and health up which is obvious and this approach will help with that. I have several laptops and my 5 year old 16" M1 Max has 147 cycles and a battery health of 93% (ie it holds 93% of its original capacity) at this point which is considered good, using this method.
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A 5-year old mac with 93% original battery capacity? This is amazing.
My 1.5 y.o. is already at 96%, so your way definitely has proven itself.
Thank you!
 
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I hardly ever check my battery health until I see threads like these. Surprised to see that my nearly 3-year-old M3 MBP only has 40 charge cycles and 100% battery health. I've never used AlDente. The only thing I do is turn on the optimized charging that's built into the OS. My Mac is plugged in and powered on nearly 24/7. I will turn it off maybe a couple of weekends per month when I travel and occasionally use it on battery power during those times.

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I would not overthink this too much. Using AlDente (I have the Pro version because I like the sailing mode) provides you with the settings to keep the maximum charge at any percentage you want. macOS also has this but it is more limited.

Due to the AlDente settings, I plug in my MacBook Air whenever possible so that I can use it with full speed and screen brightness.

Please let me know if you any specific questions. Always happy to help.
 
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