Make Your MacBook Battery Last Longer With This Setting

[Ferrandix]

I have never had any issues with charging to 100% my phones and macbooks for decades, not sure how much of a difference this would make.

Not denying this "Lithium-ion batteries generally degrade fastest when held at a high state of charge", but just that maybe the difference is not noticeable for most users? I'd like to see some stats/tests about how much more batteries degrade when fully charged vs 80% etc (any info/links are appreciated)

i tried for years, and there is not enough noticiable difference

 

[MilaM]

Personally I never saw the point in stressing when your phone would charge to 80% battery, in order to prevent battery capacity dropping to 80% slightly quicker lol.

It depends on how you are using your devices. There definitely are scenarios where setting a lower charging limit is very useful. I'm thinking about long periods of desk work with a MacBook or charging your phone for hours every day in a car.

 

[Alfonson]

I've never had a problem with batteries being charged to 100%, after a year my iPhones were always around 99% to 100% health. I paid for that battery capacity and I definitely using it. Charging caps are the first thing I disable.

Same argumentation for using the setting: I paid for the capacity and I definitely want to keep it.
Btw if you one of those mentioned in the article (with their device plugged in most of the time), you are not using it anyway.

 

[HouseLannister]

I have never had any issues with charging to 100% my phones and macbooks for decades

Charging to 100% isn't the problem. Leaving it charged at 100% for days on end is the problem. If you primarily use your laptop plugged in like a desktop, might as well limit it and only charge it to 100% when you are taking it out of the house. For road warriors who are always on battery, you should just charge it to 100%.

 

[Pangalactic]

Amazing! Now from a very slowly degrading 100% capacity I can have 80% from the get-go!

 

[numberfive]

completely worthless gimmick on iphones, doesn’t help with battery life at all.

 

[baryon]

I have never had any issues with charging to 100% my phones and macbooks for decades, not sure how much of a difference this would make.

Not denying this "Lithium-ion batteries generally degrade fastest when held at a high state of charge", but just that maybe the difference is not noticeable for most users? I'd like to see some stats/tests about how much more batteries degrade when fully charged vs 80% etc (any info/links are appreciated)

Yeah someone on YouTube did a huge volume stress test with a bunch of iPhones, charging and discharging them for many months. One group had the 80% limit enabled, another one didn't, and he barely noticed a difference in battery health.

In my experience the only thing that really degrades battery health is how many charge cycles you put into it, i.e. how much you actually use it. Big batteries tend to be far more resilient, and they are far more likely to just die prematurely due to bad cells and manufacturing defects than actual normal use.

 

[wikiverse]

Wasn‘t there a real life experiment on MR with this setting on iPhone that concluded the trade off is not worth it at all? You lose 20% of your battery capacity but gain battery anxiety just to be almost exactly at the same point in the longterm like someone who conveniently used the complete battery capacity to its full extent. Battery degradation is completely natural even without charging so you can’t avoid it over the years by simply limiting yourself and your usage by 20%. Live your life to the fullest, use your devices to the fullest.

An iPhone is different to a MacBook. A lot of people use MacBooks at a desk and are constantly plugged in - including people using certain monitors - which can pass-through power to the mac even without a separate charger. This is useful for those people and I wish it had happened sooner.

 

[robvalentine]

A few extra percent might not make a difference. Personally I always ask for the degradation numbers when I buy battery powered Apple devices second hand and would not buy one that is significantly below 90 percent.

I don’t think that the vast majority of people do, or are aware you can check. I’ve never hobbled my battery and the lowest I’ve ever had a battery go after two years was 93%

 

[roncron]

Rounded corners improve battery life 😛.

Obviously. And for maximum battery life, the windows should be perfect circles. ;-)

 

[MilaM]

I don’t think that the vast majority of people do, or are aware you can check.

I don't think that's true. When you look for used devices on different marketplaces probably more than half of the sellers actively advertise the battery stats. The typical buyer of a new device might not care.

 

[Nada Ting]

Laptops were designed to run on battery power, not power adapters. Constant charging will affect battery life, and charging from 20% to 80% wastes 40% of the battery's capacity, causing more charging cycles which puts more stress on battery performance. 10% to 90% charging is much more efficient and occasional draining to 0% or spiking to 100% do no damage at all.

 

[RaphaZ]

My M1 Max already does that for me. 😊



View attachment 2621304View attachment 2621305

How do you have so many energy modes? Is it just from the M1 Max?

 

[mejsric]

Ideally there should be the option to completely turn off Battery charging when plugged in.

bypass charing

 

[CLS9]

It doesn't really work. I set mine to 80% and it charged to 80% once, then back to 100% even though it was still set for 80%. So I toggled it off and on and it charged to 80% once more. But only once more. It charges to 100% all the time so clearly, it's a useless setting no matter whether it saves the battery or not. My MacBook batteries have all lasted for years without doing this.

 

[emulator]

As far as I've noticed, my macbook has learned my usage patterns and is stopping at 80% on its own when it estimates I won't unplug it. So does my iphone. Both on <before the low contrast UI> OS versions.

I suppose Tahoe needs battery care more because the stupid special effects use a lot more GPU and thus more battery...

Same, I guess that's what the "Optimized battery charging" button is for.

 

[Ja50n]

Ideally there should be the option to completely turn off Battery charging when plugged in.

I have a Dell laptop with this feature. It seems that the new issue is calibration creep, where the computer is no longer certain of what the battery’s state of charge truly is, but keeps reporting the same percentage to me. It feels like a lot less than 60% of the capacity for the first cycle after unplugging it, though.

 

[CharlesShaw]

Years ago I had my 2013 MacBook Pro on and charging for over a year, until one day I noticed the trackpad was wonky. The battery had swollen. And I had an iPhone that I left charging 24/7 (I rarely use my phones) for a couple years and its battery was eventually swollen. If I ever have that use case again, I'll limit the charge.

 

[Mazda 3s]

Charging to 100% isn't the problem. Leaving it charged at 100% for days on end is the problem. If you primarily use your laptop plugged in like a desktop, might as well limit it and only charge it to 100% when you are taking it out of the house. For road warriors who are always on battery, you should just charge it to 100%.

It's the same way you don't charge your EV batteries to 100% and leave it there (unless you have LFP, where you need to charge to 100% every once in a while to calibrate). You charge to 100% occasionaly for road trips, but most of the time, it's recommended that you charge to a daily limit of 80%.

I follow that same recommendation. I charge our EVs to 80% daily and to 100% for the initial leg on long road trips.

Smartphone/laptop batteries degrade as well—you can't avoid it. But you can at least limit it. My MacBook Air spends 95% of its time in a vertical stand on my desk attached to a Thunderbolt 4 dock and a 49-inch monitor. I previously used AlDente to limit my battery to 80% when plugged in -- makes no sense to leave it sitting at 100% sitting on my desk. I deleted AlDente as soon as this macOS update became available.

 

[klspahr]

I bought my iPhone 15 pro max on Sept 2023 and set it to only charge to 80% from day one. By Nov 2025 I had to have the battery replaced.

I bought my iPhone 11 Pro Max on Sept 2019 and fully charged it from day one. In Nov 2022 I needed the battery replaced.

Hmmmmm

 

[UrfinJuice]

Ideally there should be the option to completely turn off Battery charging when plugged in.

The Battery Tollkit App can do this, as far I remember

 

[klspahr]

One other thought, anybody that has worked with lithium batteries knows that charging (and discharging) is controlled through a Battery Management System (BMS). Just because it is plugged in doesn’t mean power is being applied to the battery pack. I can’t believe a company like Apple would produce an expensive, power packed device and not design a sophisticated battery management system to protect the device.

I got my wife an iPhone 11 Pro the in Sept of 2019 and her battery was still working great when we replaced with an iPhone 16 pro. She doesn’t even consider battery longevity for a moment.

Hmmmmm

 

[turbineseaplane]

A very welcome feature to have built into the OS now.

 

[spartan1967]

Seems like a good option if you purchased your MacBook as a long term investment & use a monitor more than as a stand alone laptop. With those new M5 chips, I certainly use this feature. If you do a little planning, you can click the battery in the menu bar & charge it from say 85% to 100% in no time before you leave.

 

[Siliconguy]

"Depending on your usage, however, your Mac may still regularly reach 100 percent."

This M1 Air always charges to 100%. That feature never worked on it. The iPad does stop at 80%.

When 27.1 comes out I'll see if it finally does work on the MBA.