Is the internal battery off when your mac is plugged in?

[212rikanmofo]

I would like to prolong the battery life by mainly using my macbook plugged directly into a power outlet. Would this disable the usage of the internal batteries thus making them last longer in the long run?

 

[Sanpete]

You'd think so, to a point. The current software is designed to protect from continual overcharging, which is apparently a problem when plugged in a lot. Mine isn't operating quite the way I expected in that regard. After a couple weeks of keeping it mostly plugged in, it did run the battery down to 80% while plugged in, but then it's gone back up to 100% a couple times since for no apparent reason. Maybe it will take longer to adjust. I wish you could just choose to cap it at 80% when you wanted to. (There's third-party software from that, though I've heard it may not always work either.)

 

[seble]

You'd think so, to a point. The current software is designed to protect from continual overcharging, which is apparently a problem when plugged in a lot. Mine isn't operating quite the way I expected in that regard. After a couple weeks of keeping it mostly plugged in, it did run the battery down to 80% while plugged in, but then it's gone back up to 100% a couple times since for no apparent reason. Maybe it will take longer to adjust. I wish you could just choose to cap it at 80% when you wanted to. (There's third-party software from that, though I've heard it may not always work either.)

Al dente is what you want if you want to limit the charge of your battery

 

[Sanpete]

Al dente is what you want if you want to limit the charge of your battery

That's one that I've read doesn't always work either. But I haven't tried it myself.

 

[arche3]

Turn on battery management. When on charger it is not using battery. Mac will also see your habits. When it says fully charged sometimes it is actually not dependent on your use patterns.