I see it - coconutBattery shows 0 - .06 watts charging with. Mac OS says what you listed. Thanks!
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What should I limit my battery charge level to?
- Thread starter JohnDoe12
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I see it - coconutBattery shows 0 - .06 watts charging with. Mac OS says what you listed. Thanks!
The battery is actually pretty much always trickle charging. Take a look at this.
Also, don't worry about running the code, you can look at the source code. It's pretty simple
Have you noticed that since the last OS update, you find your plugged in MacBook Pro might only charged to a level several percentages below 100%? Opening the top, using my MBP, then closing the top seems to make the device "kick in" and charge to 100%. Is this a new thing from Apple to conserve battery lifetimes?
So I got the Charger Limit script. I am setting the limit of my MBP at 55% and when I know I am traveling, I will charge it to 100%. Hopefully this will avoid all the problems I had with keeping it 100% charged.
FWIW, my OS is Mojave 10.14.6. And will be for the foreseeable future.
FWIW, my OS is Mojave 10.14.6. And will be for the foreseeable future.
Yup.
www.ifixit.com
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I will cycle it when I take it on the road, but using it plugged in at the office, I will limit it to 55%.
How to Care for Your Laptop’s Battery (So It Lasts Longer)
The best laptop battery strategy is never using a battery. Okay, fine: here are the realistic ways to maintain good capacity on a battery you actually use.
www.ifixit.com
I will cycle it when I take it on the road, but using it plugged in at the office, I will limit it to 55%.
Yup.
.How to Care for Your Laptop’s Battery (So It Lasts Longer)
The best laptop battery strategy is never using a battery. Okay, fine: here are the realistic ways to maintain good capacity on a battery you actually use.
I will cycle it when I take it on the road, but using it plugged in at the office, I will limit it to 55%.
Is this safe ? how long have you been using this ?
My MBP battery got a little bit swollen for second time now, I'm going to replace it soon and will use this for the brand new battery. Just curious would this be safe ?
You can look at the script. It’s safe. I’ve been using since my MBP’s battery was replaced due to swelling a few months ago.
Yup I have tested it and using it now.
It is working great at the moment.
This battery only last me just 2 years, got it replaced under applecare 2 years ago.
Lucky I clean my mac every 6 months and open the bottom cover and found the battery a bit swollen.
It is working great at the moment.
This battery only last me just 2 years, got it replaced under applecare 2 years ago.
Lucky I clean my mac every 6 months and open the bottom cover and found the battery a bit swollen.
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Just make sure to increase the charge level when you travel. I charge it to 80% (typically) when I travel. It is extremely rare that I allow 100% charge. Since you are pumping electrons into the system, when it is near 100% charged, electrons may do more damage before finding a place to occupy. Higher the charge, it will take a longer time for an electron to find a "hole" - i.e., a positive charge for pairing. Thus, the likelihood of causing damage increases as the charge near 100%. So I try not to charge more than 80% unless I absolutely know I won't have access to a power source for longer than 5-8 hours.
Note that when using charge limiter, your recorded number of cycles will increase every time you reach your set maximum... So you may end up with a HIGHER cycle count using Charge Limiter.
Trickle charging is something that must never be used with Lithium batteries as it will cause Sudden Unplanned Disassembly. In other words the battery will explode. Charging of lithium batteries must always be stopped when it has reached the maximum charge. Usually the battery is allowed to discharge for a bit and then charged to full again.
Low and High charge level and high temperature is bad for lithium batteries's lifetime. You should avoid charge levels below 30% and above 80% when possible. 50% is usually best for the battery's health. You should also make sure the machine is as cool as possible. For example don't use your laptop flat on a surface, but somehow lift it off the surface.
You can read more about batteries at Battery University.
Using these battery charge limiters doesn't affect how the battery is charged, it simply changes the maximum charge level. Apple's Battery Health Management feature also changes the maximum charge level, but as I understand, it does it after the battery's health has already dropped. These third party limiters allows you to preserve the battery's health before anything bad has happened to it.
I like using AlDente. It has a nice menu bar item that allows you to change the max charge level, if you for example want to top the battery to full.
Low and High charge level and high temperature is bad for lithium batteries's lifetime. You should avoid charge levels below 30% and above 80% when possible. 50% is usually best for the battery's health. You should also make sure the machine is as cool as possible. For example don't use your laptop flat on a surface, but somehow lift it off the surface.
You can read more about batteries at Battery University.
Using these battery charge limiters doesn't affect how the battery is charged, it simply changes the maximum charge level. Apple's Battery Health Management feature also changes the maximum charge level, but as I understand, it does it after the battery's health has already dropped. These third party limiters allows you to preserve the battery's health before anything bad has happened to it.
I like using AlDente. It has a nice menu bar item that allows you to change the max charge level, if you for example want to top the battery to full.
But what does it say in System Info? Does is say Fully Charged: Yes, Charging: No?
Monitoring my battery over the last week since I got it back from being replaced, I've noticed that when the menu says full/not charging, system info still says charging until the charge remaining get to within a hair of 100%.
I’ve read that on modern MBPs - disconnecting the battery results in the CPU being down-clocked significantly to prevent the charging system from getting overwhelmed. I used to do this on my old Dell Latitude D-830 ... after losing some work due to a cable being unplugged by family, I decided that there are bigger things in life to worry about, lol.
Seeing the threads on the MBP 16 battery degradation definitely has me saddened. I would have hoped that by now we‘d be seeing even better batteries, not worse. Looks like Apple is baking into the next update a lot of battery saving features for Airpods - etc. But most likely in typical Apple fashion it will not be completely customizeable and only run when it wants to run.
I could never get the optimized charging to work for my iPhone and the battery saving feature for MBP was “ok” - I still would have preferred a: “Only utilize 40-80% of battery capacity” option.
With the cost of these devices >$1000 (even for iPads) ... no wonder why people are trying to keep the batteries on these things going for 3-4-5 years. My bank account can’t handle a 2-3 year upgrade cycle for that cost.
Are you sure about this? I haven't tested it out myself. I've read this but this seems kind of strange if it behaved this way.
By the way, even if it increases your cycle count, it doesn't matter from a battery health standpoint. The battery health is not a function of battery cycles, but it is related to it under normal circumstances. So basically, as long as you can ignore that number, it will be fine. Unless you're worried about resale value, then you probably want to keep it as low as possible.
But then again, I'm wondering if it's true that cycling up to the limited charge increases the number of cycles. I don't think it should, unless this was the behavior built-in to the battery chip, which would be a really strange thing to do. Cycles are supposed to count FULL cycles.
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"I decided that there are bigger things in life to worry about, lol."
Why don't you just set the max limit to 80% or something. Then forget about it. No worry, no hassle.
Exactly - yep, I’ve done this with the app in this thread thanks to this thread!
Didn’t mean to come off as dismissive, I’d pay $ for Apple to make a checkbox that only allows 40-80% of the battery to be used, running off of power completely once it hits 80%. This app does a fine job. Just a little upset that of all the years I’ve used MacBooks and laptops, NOW there is an app for this. Lol.Now for my iPad to get this.......... <cough>.
Exactly - yep, I’ve done this with the app in this thread thanks to this thread!
Now for my iPad to get this.......... <cough>.
Got it! No worries, no offense taken. I'd love an option like that as well, but they likely don't allow it to force convenience on users. Thankfully we have these tools to do it for ourselves.
Too bad about the iPad! I'd love a feature like that too. I just use the built in feature for now.
The charge limiters doesn't change how the battery is charged. They only change one value that controls the maximum charge level. I am pretty sure that the cycles are calculated as full cycles regardless what the maximum charge level is. The cycles are usually counted by the electronics on the battery itself. Lithium batteries are actually "smart" devices that have electronics built-in that can among other things kill the battery in case something goes wrong to protect the user.
Exactly - yep, I’ve done this with the app in this thread thanks to this thread!
Now for my iPad to get this.......... <cough>.
Apparently the ThinkVantage (or something like that) that comes on lenovos have the feature of limiting max charge...
Yeah I've had the privilege of trying to use Dell's software 10+ years ago attempting to limit max charge. A samsung laptop I had did the same thing. Both had the habit of saying the laptop was at 80% charge when in reality, it had dropped to 0% and instantly shut off when I disconnected (may be a windows thing?).
.It looks like Apple has managed to avoid this.
Throwing some data in the ring. My work laptop is a 16" MBP which usually sits at the office plugged in most of the time (includes overnight and weekends), minus the time in meetings. Main use is for programming and compiling, and can run pretty hot. I've had it for 5 months and it's already at 93% battery capacity with 70 battery cycles. Whether the drop is from sitting at 100% charge, or the heat, or a mix of both, I don't know.
On the other hand, my old 2015 13" MBP had 500 cycles and was still at 85% capacity. It would be used off the charger a lot of the time as I was in college, and would only be on charger when using it at home (and never charged overnight). It also rarely got hot since my use cases were fairly simple (Word, Powerpoint, ssh).
Apple introducing the battery health management feature to avoid the battery sitting at full charge 100% of the time must mean it is bad for it. It seems to drop off to 90% and recharge back to 100% only once a day, and I'm not sure how much that helps. I'm going to give AlDente a shot on my personal MBP since I use it at home on charger most of the time. I'll keep it somewhere between 50-80% to see how this affects the battery over the next few months. It won't get nearly as hot as my work laptop though, so the comparison may not be as good as I'd like.
On the other hand, my old 2015 13" MBP had 500 cycles and was still at 85% capacity. It would be used off the charger a lot of the time as I was in college, and would only be on charger when using it at home (and never charged overnight). It also rarely got hot since my use cases were fairly simple (Word, Powerpoint, ssh).
Apple introducing the battery health management feature to avoid the battery sitting at full charge 100% of the time must mean it is bad for it. It seems to drop off to 90% and recharge back to 100% only once a day, and I'm not sure how much that helps. I'm going to give AlDente a shot on my personal MBP since I use it at home on charger most of the time. I'll keep it somewhere between 50-80% to see how this affects the battery over the next few months. It won't get nearly as hot as my work laptop though, so the comparison may not be as good as I'd like.
Another interesting bit of info... I installed Charge Limiter on my 2013 mbp15 (which does not support 10.15.5 battery management) and set the limit to 80%. It reached 85% and stopped charging (which the author of CL said is expected). Menu bar says Battery Not Charging, Power Source: Power Adapter. System Info says Fully Charged: No, Charging: No. But... the light on the magsafe still shows orange.