MacBook Pro is not charging upon updating to Sequoia

FIXED!!!! Just wanted to let you know I had your EXACT SAME ISSUE , with the exact same model mac and after 2 days trying almost everything to fix it and calling back and forth Apple support to no avail, I finally fixed it myself.

The way it worked for me is this:

1. I booted the macbook in recovery mode (at this point my mac had like 4% battery life), of course connected to the power. To do that just shut down your mac and then hold the power key until you see the boot options appear and select options. click continue.
2. Once this loaded, I removed the power from my mac, i got the alert the battery level was low of course, opened safari and started browsing to make sure that the battery level would go in the "reserve" level. (your mac will tell you when the battery is in the reserve, for me it was when i hit 3%.
3. After doing that, plugged power back in, and BOOM, started charging.
4. rebooted, everything works fine now, it charges.

My suspicion is that some kind of bug was messing up with the battery data and it needed the battery to be in a different "state" (in this case reserve battery) in order for it to start charging.

Let me know if doing this fixes it for you too!

P.S.

Some other people reported success by simply unplugging-plugging the battery back. but this requires to open your macbook and these new ones are not exactly very amateur friendly, so I wouldn't do that if you don't feel confident in your take-down skills.

I hope this helps!

MagSafe charger? Using the charger that came with the MacBook Pro 14"?

Do you see a red or amber LED light on the MagSafe connector?

At what charge level is the battery? Is it 80% or close to it?

Do you leave the Mac plugged into power most of the time?

If the answer is a MagSafe connector with an amber light and the battery is at approximately 80% and you normally leave it plugged in most of the time. Then congratulations you just discovered a very nice feature where macOS tries to preserve the overall lifespan of your batteries. Ion-Lithium batteries do not like being charged to 100% and constantly kept at that level. They also do not like being drained completely. Excessive heat or extreme cold is also not good for Ion-Lithium batteries.

Click the battery on the menu bar and click Charge to Full Now. Run your MacBook Pro on battery more often. When it's charged actually unplug it and use the battery as it is designed. Going to lunch and your MBP could use some more charge? Plug it back in and unplug it when you return.

While you can turn off Battery Optimization that will result in the battery wearing out faster.

The setting is to be found in Settings -> Battery -> Battery Health click the tiny i in a circle to the right and turn off Optimized Battery Charging.

I've opened back cover and detached battery from the logic board and reassembled immediately.

Then, nothing has changed. it doesn't charged at all.

So, I've detached battery again and leave it about an hour.

After reassembled battery, now it has fixed and started charging.

But' I'm still afraid of next OS update.

raycraven wrote:

2. Once this loaded, I removed the power from my mac, i got the alert the battery level was low of course, opened safari and started browsing to make sure that the battery level would go in the "reserve" level. (your mac will tell you when the battery is in the reserve, for me it was when i hit 3%.

3. After doing that, plugged power back in, and BOOM, started charging.

4. rebooted, everything works fine now, it charges.

Maybe this calibrates the battery.

I have done this a few times to my iPhone SE 3rd party battery when it has suddenly started to report greatly diminished battery % like a freshly charged battery very soon dropping 100% → 60% even in very light use and good mobile coverage. I have fixed this by:

Charge it to 100%, and keep charging it for at least two more hours.

Use your device until it shuts off due to low battery [this takes quite long because the apparently % reading is just plain wrong so I have had to enable GPS, put the display brightness to the max and surf the net so this phase does not take too long at 1% battery reading...].

Charge it uninterrupted to 100%.

After that the ~60% battery health is restored to the previous ~100% or whatever it was before that hiccup.

Tried all the suggestions here but none of them work. Tried safe boot. Tried emptying the battery, with and without safe boot, tried opening up and disconnecting the battery. The only thing I can do is trickle charge with the laptop off and closed with the mag safe charger.

M1 Max 2021 14" here. was working fine until I upgraded from Ventura to Sequoia. Apple have defo got a bug they haven't caught here and I hope they fix it soon as it has turned my laptop effectively into a paper weight.

Did your battery go from normal state to reserve state? (your macbook should tell you right around 1 or 2% that it went into battery reserve) I think that change of state what was fixed it for me while i was in recovery mode.

THANK YOU!! Sequoia 15.2 macbook pro Intel I5. My battery recharging same issue. Wouldn't charge. Macbook only used power from power cable. I didn't get down to 4% like you. But doing the recovery mode boot up seemed to kickstart the recharging.

Updated from Sequoia 15.2 to 15.3 on my 2019 MBP, and the battery wouldn't recharge anymore. It seemed that the laptop would not take any power from any USB charger at all from any USB-ports -> the battery was only depleting. There was also no way to revert to an older timemachine backup either, as the laptop had less than 50% charge left, this also prevented a system reinstall.

I got the system working normally again (knock on wood...) by resetting the SMC.

I hope this helps someone else who's going through the same problem.

Check the Activity Monitor (with View > All Processes): is there some rogue process consuming CPU when the Mac should be idling?

Welp.. Sorry about that. Do you have a backup you can restore?

None of these is the cause or the case. There is obviously a bug in macOS Sequoia that prevents charging. Starting in safe mode didn't solve it, however while I was on startup option screen the charger got recognized, however it's back to not charging after the restart and I couldn't reproduce the charging phase by restarting into start up options.

Gonna wait for Apple to fix this. This is real real bad....

This is a terrible bug. I almost returned a brand new Macbook Air M3 15". I was on the phone with support for like an hour.......I'm supposed to call back. TIM FIX THE SEQUOIA CHARGING BUG I JUST BOUGHT A BRAND NEW LAPTOP FOR THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS and I CAN'T CHARGE IT. Stuck on 9%/10% like some other users. Really? This is some Microsoft level stuff.

When I spoke to Apple customer service I got nowhere. One customer support agent was adamant it was a hardware issue and wasn't software and wouldn't pass up the chain that there was possibly a fatal firmware flaw that was bricking the power management system during the upgrade. The only option I have left is either to do an expensive hardware mainboard replacement or wait and hope Apple comes up with a fix or an extended warranty program for this issue.

All I can advise is that if you suffer from this issue, call Apple support and keep on them to inform them of the issue. Every agent I have spoken to hasn't heard of this issue before, so it's obviously a rare issue.

For me the fix was to reset the SMC:

Reset the SMC of your Mac - Apple Support (CA)

Hope this helps others experiencing the same issue.

I have the same issue on MacBook M1 after updating to macOS Sequoia. In my case the icon on top shows that it is charging but says the battery is no charging. System settings show battery health with no problems.

Please help is definitely the scream I'd like to send to Apple