Can I leave my macbook charged at night?

EWU9 wrote:

Does it damage or shorten the life of the battery if I leave it plugged in at night and during the day?

No. You can't overcharge & charging automatically stops when your battery is full. Charge whenever you like, your battery has no memory effect.

As long as you give the battery a few hours of usage each week (not necessarily all at once), you can leave the machine plugged into AC power all the rest of the time with no ill effects at all.

You should avoid ever draining the battery completely, if you can. That's far harder on it than draining it down to 50% twice, recharging in between. Do what your work and life require, but be aware that you'll be replacing your battery much sooner if you regularly have to drain it all the way.

EWU9 wrote:

So is it ok if I just leave it charged all the time now?

Yes. If you look closely, you will notice that even with the charger, it will drop down to 95% and then charge back up. It has very sophisticated power management designed so that you don't have to worry about any of this.

I never thought of not turning my macbook off, is it better to leave it on sleep mode at night then and perhaps shutting it down once in a while? Do I also need to buy anything else just to protect it at night if it's on sleep mode?

You don't need anything. I never turn my MacBook Pro off.

1.) Should u turn MBP off if you are carrying it around with u?

I always turn mine off when I am taking it somewhere.

2.) So it seems it is ok to keep it on the charger all the time?

I thought it was best to drain the battery then charge it back up again.

I had no idea.

Battery life aside, leaving it on when traveling is not the best idea. If running, it needs air and room to vent heat. Also if you have an HDD instead of SSD the spinning platters and non-locked read/write heads could impact and cause platter damage.

Fiberluver wrote:

1.) Should u turn MBP off if you are carrying it around with u?

The only thing you need to worry about is making sure it goes to sleep after you close it. A few times there has been some problem where it didn't sleep. You don't want to carry arround a running machine closed. If it won't sleep, then shut it down.

I leave my MBP plugged into the power adapter when I sleep - and let the computer sleep as well. No problems in doing so and I enjoy 7+ hours on battery (although I do have a lot of cycles on my battery for a 4-5 month old battery).

Leave it plugged up and either manually put it to sleep or set automatic sleep to 45 minutes or under.

Clinton

I totally respect all of the great advice given on this thread, but it is worth noting that when my company gave me my aluminum case 15" MacBook Pro just over two years ago, it was a few of months old at the time used by someone else. Under my two years of use, the battery drained all the way to shut-down routinely. On planes, or when I went to sleep it was playing music and was drained in the morning, must have been enumerable times. It also endured power adapters during international trips where the electricity is 240 in Europe and Africa. I never once conditioned the battery. And, I virtually never EVER turned it off. Finally I notice about two months ago it wouldn't charge all the way and the battery was replaced. That MBP was also repaired twice for physical damage (drops). I got a MBP-Retina this week, still have the old one, and my teen-age daughter can't put the old one down even though she has her own Vista PC.

Anyway, while I have no doubt all of the advice given here is technically correct, while I'm no tech guru, and I'm not confronting any advice given in this thread, I'm just wondering if all of this careful battery management gives enough real world additional life to make it worth it? When I.T. tells me to start conditioning my battery I will; in the mean time, I'm just going to use it and try not to drop it.

GTCA: If your MBP was made after June 2009, its battery never needed calibration or "conditioning" in the first place. Running it on 240V power wouldn't have had any effect on it. Not turning it off is perfectly fine — I'm sure my late-2008 MBP hasn't yet been turned off for a grand total of ten hours in three and a half years. The only thing you did that was hard on your battery was run it flat on a regular basis, and if you hadn't done that, it might have lasted for another year or two instead of needing to be replaced after 2+ years of yeoman service.

I always leave it charging over night.

You may leave it plugged in, but it stops charging when it decides it has enough charge.

It's slightly less good for your battery

Since it stops charging, it has no adverse effect on the battery. Leave it plugged in as much as you want, just use it on battery alone once a month or more.

Another thing I do is never turn my MacBook off. When I'm done I just close the lid and perhaps plug the MagSafe in. I heard it's better to just close the lid instead of turning your MacBook off.

I use my MacBook for school and I always leave it charging over night. It's slightly less good for your battery but I'm not having any issues.

It will not have a significant adverse affect. Read the following link from Apple support:

http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

Ciao.

Yup just leaved it charged over night and perhaps do as I said and leave it in sleep when done and turn it off occasionaly.

You don't need to buy anything else.