Battery discharging while plugged in since updating to Ventura 13.6.2

macOS learns our charging habits, and it will keep the battery at 80% until just before it thinks you are going to take if off the charger.

Since you rarely take it off the charger, it keeps the Mac at 80%.

This is good, as before a lot of Macs had their batteries swell up, warp the case, cause the keyboard and trackpad to malfunction, and endanger the user and their home if the battery caught fire.

Not the fire, but the swelling, warped case, keyboard and trackpad errors was rather common for the Macs in the company I work for. Many of the employees just stuck the MacBook Pro in their office, on power, with the lid closed, and an external monitor (or 2), plus keyboard and mouse. Between 2 and 3 years of having the Mac setup this way, many of the users would have the swelling battery. I was one of them. At my company, I'm sure Apple was loosing money on the corporate Apple Care because of all the battery replacements.

Since that happened to me, 2 things happened. Personally, I started running the AlDenta app to keep my battery at 80%. And the second thing is that Apple change macOS to NOT keep the battery at 100% if it was on the charger all the time.

Have you tried rebooting the laptop?

Perhaps the configuration file is corrupt. You can try toggling the Optimized Charging option back on, reboot, then try turning off Optimized Charging. Otherwise you may need to locate the .plist preference file which holds the setting for Optimized Charging (probably the Battery .plist file).

If you rarely need to use the laptop on battery, then it seems best to leave Optimized Charging enabled because you do need to have the battery exercised once in a while. Plus keeping the battery at 100% can degrade the health of the battery which is why Apple usually has the laptop sitting at 80% charge most of the time when connected to power all the time.

AstroJett wrote:

I am using a 2021 16'' Macbook Pro with m1 Pro processor. As I don't travel with it I usually leave my macbook charger plugged in all day (most days, not every single day) so not to constantly run the battery out decreasing the battery lifespan. Before the latest update it remained at 100% charge while plugged in and the charger shows a green light. However since updating to Ventura 13.6.2 the battery has started discharging down to 80% while plugged in showing an orange light even though I have optimised battery charging disabled. At the moment it is at 100% charge as I clicked the battery icon and told it to charge to full but over the last few days it still does it's own thing and

decides to randomly discharge down to 80%

while plugged in. Maybe I am wrong but I think this is either a bug or planned obsolescence. Does any one else have this issue? I have looked through the battery settings and I see no way to stop it from doing this.

?

Seems normal.

Not sure why you would turn off the software for battery management...(?)

You do not have to micro-manage the battery charging, let the software work for you.

The rule of thumb—if you are near the mains leave it plugged in, if you need the portability then run on the battery only—this is how you optimize your battery charging and extend the working life of your battery by reducing the cycle count.

Determine battery cycle count for Mac notebooks

Determine battery cycle count for Mac laptops - Apple Support

About BHM battery health management:

M1/M2 SoC

About battery health management in Mac notebooks - Apple Support