my battery will only charge to 99%, why?

i just talked to an apple expert. if you are running OS X 10.8 on MacBook Pro, your battery only charges up to 99% for security purposes. It lasts your overall battery life longer. Don't stress.😉 If you are running OS X 10.8 on MacBook Pro Retina, your battery will only charge up to 93%-95% for security purposes. Your general battery life will last longer. This is an advantage so don't stress.

Sorry, but I don't know about MacBook Air.

Maybe call 1(800)MY-APPLE and they will help.

Hope you found this helpful.

🙂

99% is effectively 100%. Remember that 99% is 99% of current charging capacity, not 99% of design capacity.

Your battery likely needs calibrating. The battery is likely fine and actually fully charged. Apple has a great FAQ describing how to do this:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1490

Tim

The MBP with an internal battery does not need to have the battery calibrated. The battery charging operation of your computer is normal.

This is normal. The batteries used in these computers are designed to avoid short discharge/charge cycles in order to prolong the overall life of the battery.

When setting the Mac OS X battery status menu bar icon to display charge state by percentage, you may notice that the reported charge stays between 93 or 95 percent and 99 percent.

To allow the adapter to recharge the battery to 100%, simply allow the charge to drop below 93%. The adapter will automatically recharge the battery to 100%.

Portables with built-in batteries

Current Apple portable computer batteries are pre-calibrated and do not require the calibration procedure. These computers use batteries that shouldbe replaced only by an Apple Authorized Service Provider.

MacBook

MacBook (13-inch, Late 2009) and later

MacBook Air

MacBook Air, all versions

MacBook Pro

• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009) and later
• MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009) and later
• MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2009) and later

100% is relative. I use Coconut Battery (available at macupdate.com) that tells me my MBP battery can hold 101% of factory design. And that 101% changes a little bit after each "use down to 40%, then recharge" cycle -- sometimes up, sometines down.

So sometimes your 99% may be more than 100% of factory design.

All is relative when you start counting exact mAh values instead of "rounded to nearest %".

I have the same issue.

A month ago, my battery was drilled and dead. So I went to an Apple Store and they have replaced the battery.

Days later I've noticed my battery percentage shows 99% instead 100%.

I was very dissapointed because I had to spend money in this new battery.

Hopefully I've found your post.

Hey, I have this issue sometimes, but it's nothing noticable, I normally have it connected and shows a 99% of charge, but when I disconnect it and re-connect it, it actually shows 100%, and once I unplug it, it drops at 99%.

Hope this helped you!

Later.

Further information in:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1909

BTW: Now my MBP is showing 100%. Strange isn't it ?

Regards,

Martin

Wow, Thank You for your post, it really worked. I waited to get down from 99% to 92% started charging my macbook pro and few minutes later i got a complete charge to 100%. Excellent..

I have a problem. When I asked Siri how to get my battery percentage to 100 she said that she was not allowed to change that setting. I'm not mad, just curious. Is there a reason our battery's can't reach 100%? Even when I plug it in and it says battery at 100%, I ask Siri and she says it is still only at 99%. Why?