Is there a way to manually stop MacBook charging at 80%?

Lawrence Finch

Your point may be a bit too subtle. I think you need to re-iterate the "punchline" for full effect of what you intended to say.

My MacBook Pro with m3 has been plugged into my docking station for 2 months and the charge never settles at 80%. It has never dropped below 100%

steve626 wrote:

I would not worry about this. The differences between Apple's algorithm for battery management and what you are trying to do might make a difference of a few percent in the lifetime of the battery, maybe one way it lasts for 10 years and the other way it lasts for 10 years and 1 month ... but it is unclear which one is actually best. I would simply let the health management software decide.

Excellent advice!

Looking back on my experience with my last MacBook Air M2, when I simply let the battery health management software decide, I got disappointing results: the software had a pretty poor learning curve and didn't keep the charge at 80% nearly as often as it needed to.

As a result, this computer, in just under 2 years of operation, has already experienced battery wear of more than 10%, which is quite a lot. I control the charging of my current macBook manually and have more than impressive results: after 7 months of use, the battery health level is 100%.

I gained experience in controlling battery charge ranging from 30% to 80% on my iPhones, which I successfully sold in trade-in programs after 2-3 years of operation with battery health of more than 93-94% and always received the maximum possible amount of compensation .

In order to remove my laptop from charging in time, in a couple of days I wrote the BatWiser program for my needs, which I kindly posted in the public domain. Good luck!

Fully agree! And talking feature request:

Ideally, macOS would allow you to put a hard stop at 60 % rather than 80 % on iOS.

Why?

Because this is the load stage in which you typically process (long term) storage of batteries. Then you could work with your plugged PowerBook without having to think about health issues.

60 % would not be practicable with an iPhone which is constantly mobile (in your pocket). But for a PowerBook which is used 90 % of its time sitting on your desktop for probably 70 % of the user: 60 % would be perfect !

Recharging from 60 % to 100% doesn't take long nowadays.

And, people typically know a head if they really need 100 % charge due to traveling or other reasons.

If Apple only would take their own green initiatives seriously, they would deliver this feature right away! ;-)

phil2mac wrote:

My apologies, if this sounded male - I thought "dude" includes males and females. Blame my poor English being German. To your question: The discussion is around constantly plugging in your MacBook to power while using it .

Unplugging batteries is not harmful as such. But the more you use a battery, the sooner it will die. Just think of the motor in your car: If you are constantly driving, it will die soon. If you constantly leave it in your garage, it will live for ever.

Same with batteries. Only - but important - difference to the motor:

A battery is used being discharged and being charged. In general, batteries dislike (are physically stressed) either being fully discharged (0 %) or being fully charged (100 %). Therefore, older MacBooks gave you the possibility to remove battery while working. As long as you were plugged to power, there was no need to use/harm your battery.

Newer MacBooks will (and have for as long as I can remember) stop charging when full. You are not harming your battery by leaving your MacBook plugged in.

So, your suggestion to unplug your iPhone or PowerBook to save your battery is contradictory to what you want to achieve (save lifetime of battery).

No, my suggestion was a slightly flip response to the people who are overthinking this whole thing and who think that leaving the MacBook plugged in above 80% will harm it.

Hope this helps!

Helps what? Modern portable Macs have very sophisticated power management features. If you try to fiddle with them, thinking you know more about how it should work than Apple, you're not helping the battery and are just wasting your time. It is, however, your time to waste. Of course, it will probably cause you battery to age more quickly, too.

And to avoid you presuming again that you are somehow more experienced with Macs than I, my first portable Mac was a PowerBook 100. Not, I grant you, the first "portable" Mac, but pretty close.

I am planning to buy Dell s2722QC as an external monitor to my macbook air m1. It has 65W USB-C display + charging port. I would probably be sitting 8hrs/day on desk using my monitor connected to macbook using this type C. So the monitor would charge my mac whole day. Will this affect the battery health or internal components of my macbook?

PratikAwaik wrote:

I am planning to buy Dell s2722QC as an external monitor to my macbook air m1. It has 65W USB-C display + charging port. I would probably be sitting 8hrs/day on desk using my monitor connected to macbook using this type C. So the monitor would charge my mac whole day. Will this affect the battery health or internal components of my macbook?

No.

Yeah, but apparently the apple solution to this is wonderful, mine is the same, the battery protection software doesn't work, in trying to be smart, apple have demonstrated they are incapable of making even the most simple thing work. Of course it may be that they intend to reduce the life of batteries intentionally cauing people to purchase more product, or am I being cynical (I suspect not)

The 3rd party tool mentioned, incidentally, works perfectly.

Can you tell the sequence please? Because I did stop manually when it charged up to 80%, and then pulled out the cable due to the reason if I keep the cable plugged in it charges further. What I don't like.

So now I was letting the cable in, because the system said that is using cable, but it was charging.. and it went up to 100%.. So now I should leave it in? Because it says The Mac uses charger.. But this way how is it going to go down to 80% and stay there? I hope it makes sense. Thanks a lot!

I have the problem.

I've a big monitor, the monitor is being used by 2 different devices which one of them is a Macbook. The monitor charges Macbook even it's in sleep mode. So I remove its type-c cable from Macbook.

Caleb_M1 wrote:

I also express this opinion. There is still a demand for limiting it.

Tell Apple:

Product Feedback - Apple

It takes a while for Optimized Battery Charging to learn your routines.

You can always unplug it when it gets to 80%. But, I think that may interfere with the learning process.

And after many many years of saying it wasn't needed for iPhones.... its magically now an option on iPhone 15. All we need is a little bios setting like on a Dell.