Macbook Air - Intermittently Charging , Now not at all

Same problem here, it's kind of annoying. I tried someone else's adapter, and then my MacBook Air charges fine. When I switch back my own charger doesn't charge.

One more here in the "me too" category.

11 inch Macbook air. The Charger worked fine for months. Now, about 60% of the time, if I connect the power cord, no indicator light, and obviously no charging. I also note the charger brick itself does not get the slightest bit warm. If I leave the power cord plugged in (Sometimes for more than an hour) it will rectify itself, given time. Its very strange.

I have no access to another charger yet, so I can not test this, but multiple sockets including home and work, ruling out issues at the source.

So, the scenario is the power cord, plugged in, no light, no charging. Left alone (and I have repeated this at least 20 times now) the light eventually comes on, charging begins and all is well.

The only variable that I can think of is room temperature. Which I dont think should vary too much in the rooms that i have been in.

Heat up the power brick using a blow dryer for a couple of minutes. It may sound stupid but I did it when my MBA started choosing when it was going to charge and the led did not light up.

Reply and tell me if it works for you guys.

I can't believe it - I was having the 'no charging' problem and I took your blow drying advice and it starting charging a minute later. Go figure, and I live in SoCal. I started having intermittent charging problems beginning about a month or so ago. tried different outlets, reconnecting power from mac side and outlet side, etc. Thanks for the hot tip, Stone.

After reading these last couple of posts, I decided to try to "warm up" the power cord/brick by placing it on top of my radiator, and bingo! It works, for 2 days now, whenever I try to plug it in and it won't charge, leaving it by the warm surface for 5 min and then trying to charge again has been working like a charm. WTH?! Thanks for this crazy tip!

I am having the same issue with a Mac Book Air 4,2. I have tried multiple power bricks with no luck and the heat up didnt work for me. I think there is an underlying problem int he MBA itself as it is completely random when it decides to charge vs state Battery not charging (green light)

Same problem with my MBA. The blow dryer trick worked. Only problem is that I got the MBA for travel and it kind of defeats the purpose if I have to pack a blow dryer too. Has anyone determined what causes the problem?

Same problem here with a late 2010 MacAir - the adaptor is inconsistent. I've tried several solutions, some of which are mentioned here, and oddly enough, the only thing that works is warming up the adaptor. I have solved the problem now twice by warming the adaptor before connecting it...but there's got to be more going on here. I'm assuming that a lot of us are experiencing a problem that simply has a temporary solution (warming the adaptor) because the problem persists (adaptor stops charging a couple days later).

Hopefully someone figures this out and posts their story.

I have the same problem as everyone on this post and the "warm up" trick works great for us too!!

will work for a while as a good workaround, but now I am really curious as to the root cause here.

The same problem with my Mac Air (13", late 2012), when I plug the adaptor the power supply icons told me "battery is not in charging, the power supply is power adaptor", but it is OK when using laptop just without battery charging.

I have not tried the "warm up brick" method but I suppose it works, coz this was only occuried recently--so cold in this days. The issue may related to the temperture of enviroment around.

My thing here is a little difference, some times I really NEED this function! I use my Air as a desktop Mac for a whole day, always using adaptor, but I recognised that continuous charging current is harm to the battery, so I wonder if this function is optional, whether I plug in I could choose charge/no charge the battery.

Any authoritative explaination from Apple? I really wanna use this function when I need, if it is no harm.

As an electrical engineer I must admit it took all the courage I had to try this out on my now non charging MBA! But I'm an open minded guy who doesn't salt his food until I taste it so what the heck. I did however feel like I was on a hidden camera for a local radio station’s practical joke. When I first read of this possible work around I happened to have a sore back and had a heating pad handy. So looking over my shoulder to be certain no one was looking I placed the charger between me and heating pad and waited a few minutes for the charger to warm up. On plugging the charger back in and attaching the mag connector, presto my MBA is now charging!

Now for those of you on warranty and having the charger work each and every time you return to store you might try this. If heat makes it work maybe cold makes it stop, so try putting the charger into a plastic ziplock and put it in an ice chest to deliverer the charger to the store for testing! lol

I paid extra for the quality of an Apple product so if this thread of all you folks packing hair dryers around doesn’t embarrasses them... it should.

I don't think Apple's even addressed this problem yet. I came across this method when my charger stopped working a couple of months ago and my warranty was expired by a couple of weeks. I unintentionally left my (thought to be dead) power brick on my heater and out of the blue, the light pops up... After about 4 months, this method still seems to work great.

I understand it is a hassle to carry some sort of heater around with you as this is supposed to be a portable laptop, but since I use mine mostly at home, it sure beats spending 80 bucks for a new one.

Also, Unfortunately, you can't choose when to charge your macbook when it is plugged in as the only workaround is to unplug the magsafe from the computer...

Hey folks,

I wanted to provide a quick update on this thread as I know many folks are having this issue. I took my laptop in (under warranty) and as many others wrote the laptop didnt reproduce the problem right away. I had taken a few short video of the charging issue before I went to the store and was able to show the tech aka Genius how the mac was showing green and stating "battery not charging". Long story short, after a about 5 minutes of trying I was able to reproduce the issue and the tech ran several test that did not show any issues.

The tech reset the SMC and a few other acroynyms I couldnt write down fast enough, but whatever he did it has definetly improved the battery life as well as reduced the frequency of how often the laptop wouldn't charge.

I did however get both the battery (661-6055) and the I/O Board (922-9963) replaced under warranty and the problem reared its ugly head again today. So if you are not under warranty please dont waste teh $150 dollars on these parts because it did not fix this issue.

So my suspicion would go back to this being an adapter issue except that I have 4 seperate power adapters and every one of them has the same exact issue. One of which is brand new out of the box a week ago.

I have been a huge Apple fan for years and I own a ton of their products, this is my first negative experience but given the large number of consumers experiencing these similar issues, i think its time for Apple to stand behind their customers and resolve this.

Hope this post saves someone $150.

Before I read all of these posts I was having same problem so I wanted to find out if it was my MacBook Air or power supply. I took both into the Apple Store and showed them that it didn't work. They took a different power supply, plugged it in my notebook and it worked so i'm thinking - buy a new power supply. For fun we swapped out the slide in plug (can be the short piece or the longer cord) and used a different plug with my power adapter - that made the entire power supply work. We then took my plug and connected it to a different power adapter and that worked too. The tech and I were both scratching our heads after this but he ended up just swapping his plug with mine since both configurations worked and I left happy (but still confused as to the root of the problem). I didn't plug it in back home for a day and then it didn't work again... Very frustrating. I handled the adapter, took out the plug from the adapter, inserted it back in several times. After about 5min it worked again. I've repeated this several times now and the only common thing I can find is that it's winter, the adapter gets cold and after several minutes of handling it or coming up to room temp it starts to work.

I think there is a poor connection in the adapter that moves with temp changes.

***This design needs to have a failure analysis done and corrected. With this many people having this same issue I'm guessing that there is something wrong either in the design or the manufacturing process.***

I also started having the intermitent charging problem and read the post about warming the block.....it worked, like everyone else is posting. But I am too lazy to get my hairdryer out so I took a heat pack I use, made with a tube sock filled with rice and microwaved it. Worked like a charm, the charger worked within a minute of wrapping it with the warm sock. Would be easier for traveling than a dryer for those who are on the move, also the instant hand warmers...just some brain storming. Hope Apple takes this problem seriously or they will start to lose loyal customers. Glad for all the great info I found here!