M1 MBA battery not charging

[trailmonkey]

Is anyone else experiencing this?

I noticed on Friday that Condition was stating Service Battery but it was unplugged and I thought it'll sort itself out. But now I'm plugged in after a reboot and it's not looking good. It might be holding a charge at 82%, not sure yet.

Am going to call Apple in a mo.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Run the Apple Diagnostics test

Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac - Apple Support

Apple Diagnostics, formerly known as Apple Hardware Test, can check your Mac for hardware issues.

support.apple.com

If you have optimized battery turned on, (which is the default) your battery isn't going to charge all the time, even though it is plugged in.

 

[theSeb]

It does not matter if he has optimised charging on, it should not be saying ‘service battery’. Something is broken and looks like it will need to be replaced.

Edit: please read below. Looks like iStat is indeed broken and not the hardware.

 

[Apple_Robert]

It does not matter if he has optimised charging on, it should not be saying ‘service battery’. Something is broken and looks like it will to be replaced.

It could be a software glitch. That is why I suggested running the test. If the test states there is a problem, then Apple will rightfully service .

There have been other forum posts with a few M1 owners who got that message and the test said everything was fine.

 

[theSeb]

It could be a software glitch. That is why I suggested running the test. If the test states there is a problem, then Apple will rightfully service .

There have been other forum posts with a few M1 owners who got that message and the test said everything was fine.

Software does not really work like that. If anything, it's indicative of bad/falling hardware. Possible a sensor, or the actual battery itself. Unless the OP has a pre-release quantum computing based Macbook, of course.

Software cannot one day decide that a battery is at 2% health and the next it's at > 80%. Well it can, if the function is just returning random numbers from 0 to 100, but clearly that is not what is happening. It gets that value from some sensor, which isn't responding properly, if there are users who have seen 2% and no charging and then 90% and charging the next day. Also, there is probably some logic during the "initiate charging negotiation" that checks (if batteryHealth < some_number) then return false. Hence no charging.

When the temperature sensor on the SSD in my Mac Pro started failing it would exhibit similar, yet seemingly randoml, behaviour that you mention related to other users' reports. Sometimes my Mac Pro would boot up and sometimes it would not. Sometimes the AHT would complain about the temperature sensor and sometimes it would not. Sometimes I could work for quite a while and then I would get a kernel panic. Sometimes I would get a kernel panic after every 10 minutes. Eventually I could not boot up at all from the internal drive, but I could still access the drive perfectly fine using target disk mode.

TLDR: A battery should not be at 2% after 32 cycles and how long the OP has had the Mac for. It needs to be returned to Apple for them to fix it whether that involves replacing the battery, the sensors or the entire logic board, or all of the above.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Software does not really work like that. If anything, it's indicative of bad/falling hardware. Possible a sensor, or the actual battery itself. Unless the OP has a pre-release quantum computing based Macbook, of course.

Software cannot one day decide that a battery is at 2% health and the next it's at > 80%. Well it can, if the function is just returning random numbers from 0 to 100, but clearly that is not what is happening. It gets that value from some sensor, which isn't responding properly, if there are users who have seen 2% and no charging and then 90% and charging the next day. Also, there is probably some logic during the "initiate charging negotiation" that checks (if batteryHealth < some_number) then return false. Hence no charging.

When the temperature sensor on the SSD in my Mac Pro started failing it would exhibit similar, yet seemingly randoml, behaviour that you mention related to other users' reports. Sometimes my Mac Pro would boot up and sometimes it would not. Sometimes the AHT would complain about the temperature sensor and sometimes it would not. Sometimes I could work for quite a while and then I would get a kernel panic. Sometimes I would get a kernel panic after every 10 minutes. Eventually I could not boot up at all from the internal drive, but I could still access the drive perfectly fine using target disk mode.

TLDR: A battery should not be at 2% after 32 cycles and how long the OP has had the Mac for. It needs to be returned to Apple for them to fix it whether that involves replacing the battery, the sensors or the entire logic board, or all of the above.

It is possible for the OS to wrongly state the status of the battery or some other component of the Mac (for whatever reason). I am not saying that that is in fact the case here.

My battery currently shows (via the OS software reading) a current charge of 100%. If there was an error in the code that reads the current charge, I could see a reading of 50% , even though the battery has a much different charge capacity at said moment. For you to tell me software can't make that kind of mistake is implausible, especially when we are currently using an OS that has software bugs in it as it is running.

You have no way of knowing the real state of the OP's laptop anymore than I do. He could have a battery failure, a sensor failure, or an erroneous alert that was triggered by a software bug. The proper thing to do is to run the Apple Hardware Diagnostics test as I suggested, and then contact Apple to ascertain what should be done about the alert he got, as well as the results of the test.

If he had optimized charging turned on, his battery wouldn't be charging every moment it was plugged in per the OP. If that was the case and the message he saw was erroneous, then there may be no cause for concern, depending on what Apple said. Apple may request the laptop for review to see if there is an actual problem that needs repair. In doing so, Apple may not find any problems with his M1 per their hardware tests. If that latter is the case, that doesn't mean there isn't a hardware problem. it also doesn't mean there isn't a software glitch that alerted him to a problem that wasn't real. Apple makes the call.

All I was trying to do was start the process of getting more information and informing the OP of what I have read from other M1 owners about this same message, before you felt a need to correct me for a wrong I didn't commit. I said nothing wrong in my posts. The problem is your projection of what I said.


I am done with this particular conversation.

 

[wytwolf]

Istat menus does not read the battery condition for m1 mac's at this time. It's right on their website.

Known and common issues

Makers of iStat Menus, Skala and other great apps.

bjango.com

My M1 MBP will show as "not charging" for the first few seconds, but will then switch to charging.

 

[theSeb]

OP, click on the battery icon on the Mac OS toolbar (not any 3rd party software) and grab a screenshot of that.

click on this

 

[theSeb]

It turns out that the whole thing is indeed a software error within iStats, which to me is severely disappointing and unacceptable. They should not be releasing software which shows incorrect values when they cannot figure out how to calculate something, or get something from the underlying libraries. Instead show unknown, or something along those lines.

Battery Health as shown by iStats Menu?

My M1 MBP is showing a battery health of 2%, with a condition of "Service Battery". The battery itself works fine, excellent battery life so far. Just a glitch in the way iStat Menus reads the battery status? Does anybody see "normal" readings please?

forums.macrumors.com

The last post is interesting though about the user uninstalling and reinstalling iStats. He claims iStats then shows the correct values.

 

[macintoshmac]

Is anyone else experiencing this?

View attachment 1726922

I noticed on Friday that Condition was stating Service Battery but it was unplugged and I thought it'll sort itself out. But now I'm plugged in after a reboot and it's not looking good. It might be holding a charge at 82%, not sure yet.

Am going to call Apple in a mo.

Please see Power in System Report under About This Mac. Do not rely on and get anxious with third-party software when it comes to hardware information. Coconut Battery is the only third-party software I trust for battery information. Not even iStats.

 

[trailmonkey]

Thanks for feeding back everyone. Yes, it does indeed appear that iStats is at fault so I'll be ignoring that for now - even if I get round to reinstalling it. The native battery reading says all is good. What did seem weird though was that when it did stick on 82% for over 20 minutes (iStats and native readings). Then it did charge as normal up to 100%.

Re Coconut, I remember some people of this parish stating a few issues last year (although they might have been the iOS version). Might give it a go later.

 

[theSeb]

Thanks for feeding back everyone. Yes, it does indeed appear that iStats is at fault so I'll be ignoring that for now - even if I get round to reinstalling it. The native battery reading says all is good. What did seem weird though was that when it did stick on 82% for over 20 minutes (iStats and native readings). Then it did charge as normal up to 100%.

Re Coconut, I remember some people of this parish stating a few issues last year (although they might have been the iOS version). Might give it a go later.

The delayed charging sounds like you have activated OSX battery management.

 

[lcubed]

why is your charger showing as 30 watts? didn’t it ship with a 60 watt charger?

 

[theSeb]

why is your charger showing as 30 watts? didn’t it ship with a 60 watt charger?

MBA comes with a 30W charger

 

[Toutou]

On the first screenshot I believe there's a power plug instead of a lightning symbol on your battery -- that means that macOS is not charging, it does that on purpose to save your battery when it's not expecting you to be needing it soon.