My Mac battery shows the wrong information

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Level 1

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My Mac battery shows the wrong information

So this is something that happened to my old Macbook and why I ended up upgrading to a newer model. My original MacBook Pro (2014) had this issue after many years of use, the issue being that when I'd open it or start it up it would tell me to plug it in as it had no charge, but upon plugging it in and logging in I could plainly see that it had roughly 70% left.

Anyway, I figured the battery was on its way out and I got a new laptop, but this morning the same thing happened. I opened up my MacBook Pro (2020) and it told me it had no charge. I thought that was strange but I plugged it in and low and behold when it opened up I had 56% still left. The battery is still at a normal condition and I have my Mac set to turn off each night so it doesn't waste power.

I thought it might be something to do with the new update so I checked to see if I'd missed one, but I haven't. I had to turn off my Mac and restart it to get my bluetooth accessories to work as well, so I'm hoping it's just a glitch, but with how my old Mac started acting with turning off at 70%, I'm just a little worried.

I hope this really is just a glitch in the matrix and that from now on things will be okay but the other day I did have my Mac turn off on me for no reason after booting it up.

I'd really appreciate if someone can give my a clue on what is happening. Is there something wrong or does my Mac just hate me?

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Oct 7, 2021 6:02 PM

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Answer 1

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HWTech

Level 9

56,714 points

Oct 7, 2021 8:53 PM in response to Ashere_09

I have seen this occur with some of our organization's USB-C Apple laptops I repair, but I have no idea what is going on here. These USB-C Apple laptops have very strange behaviors and this may unfortunately be a normal "feature". I really dislike these USB-C Macs and will not recommend them to anyone (yes, I've seen a lot of very odd and disturbing behaviors as well as many design flaws).

It can be very hard to identify some battery issues since they can only be detected at certain charge levels and sometimes only when the laptop is working hard so is using lots of battery power. I now run a system stress test while monitoring the discharge rate of the battery hoping to detect an anomaly. You should first try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected plus try an SMC Reset if you have an Intel Mac.

I recently had an Intel Mac with the T2 security chip which had an intermittent issue powering on (not even battery symbol) which I tried "Reviving" the T2 firmware after which I did not see the issue again.

Revive or restore an Intel-based Mac with Apple Configurator 2 - Apple Support

Revive or restore a Mac with Apple silicon with Apple Configurator 2 - Apple Support

You can also have Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider to examine the laptop and to run their Apple service diagnostics which may be able to detect more issues than the consumer diagnostics.

Keep in mind even an experienced tech may have trouble figuring out the problem especially for an intermittent issue that may be hard to reproduce in the shop.

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My Mac battery shows the wrong information

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