Macbook Air - Intermittently Charging , Now not at all

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!

I'm having the same problem... tried smc update... didn't try the hair dryer, switch power adapter from my mbp.... tried different power outlets... search everywhere else on the internet for a solution.

frustrated and silly as it may sound, i just simply wiggled the mag plug around while connected and miraculously the green light came on, followed by the amber light for charging. If i had to guess... perhaps the mag plug seat on the mba itself is bad, creating a poor connectivity? I was able to replicate, unplug, plug, no light, wiggle for about 5-10 seconds, then eventually the green light would come on... i tested moving the mba around while connected and so far so good... still connected, still charging.

Wow, I thought I was going nuts! I spilled some coffee on my adaptor point and then plugged it straight back onto the macbook air before realising it, milky coffee on both points...dahhhh. So I thought this problem that occurred soon after was the result of that, entirely my fault, despite having lovingly cleaned the two ends. I do all sorts of things to get it to work again a lot of which are described above, I live and travel in very hot climates so never the warming up bizzo, but most of the others and frequently speaking to it and begging pathetically seems to work as well!!! It always eventually comes on but it is not reliable and I can not have an unreliable travel laptop which is why I went and bought the newest MBA yesterday. I am now doing the whole wiggle thing to keep the migration from the old to the new going for the length of time required. I decided to investigate if anyone else has the problem before handing down the laptop to my son. Heaven forbid it starts on this new one!! A word from Apple would be gratefully appreciated as I am an Apple junky circa 1989 with a home filled with a Monster new 27" iMac dual HD etc, 21" iMac, now two MBA's, a series of each generation of iPad including new iPad mini distributed to all family members along with several iPhones, Apple tv's and on and on and on. You do not get much more loyal then I and I probably know more than most of the young things on the Genius bars instore (there was no Apple support bods in the early days so you had to be your own). I will wait to see Apples reply on this forum before calling and making my own investigations now I know this is a common fault and needs to be rectified or in the very least respectfully acknowledged. In the mean time any new revelations on how to keep it going by other users would be gratefully received!

OK, add me to the list. I've been using an old charger downstairs for a 15 months, and it's worked flawlessly. I;ve been saving my new charger upstairs, and I almost never use it. Today I needed it and it didn't work. I did all the swtiching and cross-checking of entension cords and slide plugs. And then I came here and read this thread.

Thus it was that I put the new charger on the bed underneath the old one, which was warm from charging since I had finally gone downstairs and brought it up. And—wait for it!—it's charging! A little heat did it.

Now, it's below zero outside here in Canada, so it's not like it was warm to start with. But hey, I was working up here all afternoon, so it wasn't that cold!

BTW, one more note. My MBA (11") came supplied with a smaller charger than the one that came with my old white MacBook. Thus the old one charges my MBA but the new one does not charge my old MacBook. I'm told that's normal. But I wonder if Apple just got caught supplying a too-small charger, and they should go back to the old one. If memory serves it's 85W versus 65W distinction. Just one new peice of information.

I have had this problem on and off over the last 3 months too (since winter arrived really). SMC reset not working, tried different plugs etc.

Luckily i found this thread, but even so I sceptically tried warming up the power block on a radiator.

Bingo..it works again 🙂