Magsafe charging light

[appleminion]

When inserting the magsafe charger should the light turn orange right away to indicate its charging? Or does is usually take a while (5- 10 seconds for it to recognize?) Early 2015 rMBP takes a while for it to recognize but don't know if that's abnormal or not.

 

[yjchua95]

When inserting the magsafe charger should the light turn orange right away to indicate its charging? Or does is usually take a while (5- 10 seconds for it to recognize?) Early 2015 rMBP takes a while for it to recognize but don't know if that's abnormal or not.

In all my portable Macs, the light always lights up as green for a few seconds first before turning orange. It's normal.

 

[appleminion]

In all my portable Macs, the light always lights up as green for a few seconds first before turning orange. It's normal.

Yeah i know it lights up green first and then orange. However, when I first plug it in there is no color at all for like 5 seconds, then it turns green and orange. Is it normal to show no color first?

 

[Samuelsan2001]

yep

Yeah i know it lights up green first and then orange. However, when I first plug it in there is no color at all for like 5 seconds, then it turns green and orange. Is it normal to show no color first?

Thats what mine does...

 

[joe-h2o]

Yeah i know it lights up green first and then orange. However, when I first plug it in there is no color at all for like 5 seconds, then it turns green and orange. Is it normal to show no color first?

That's normal.

The charger supplies a very tiny current when it senses no connection.

When you plug it into a MBP the chip in the magsafe end is powered up and reports the charger model to the MBP. At that point it turns green for "power supplied and connected to MBP". This is also when the charger flips on and makes the full voltage and current available at the plug end. The charge system will then start shortly after and send the signal to the magsafe plug that it's charging, thus flipping the light to orange.

If you measure the voltage across the power pins when the magsafe is not connected you'll see that it is supplying almost nothing.

The light itself is controlled by the small chip in the plug based on the voltage reading it senses on the centre pin, so it's not necessarily an accurate reflection of what the MBP is doing - for example, sometimes it can misread the signal and the light doesn't come on, despite the fact that the MBP is clearly charging the battery (according to OS X and other apps that monitor this).

All this boils down to a short delay when you plug it in before it gives you the visual indication of what it is doing, which is totally normal.