Letting MacBook Pro battery die while closed

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Level 1

8 points

Letting MacBook Pro battery die while closed

Hey All.

A PC guy here.
My wife always wanted a Mac Book, so I got her a Pro a few years back.
I was always under the impression a computer should be turned off if you're not planning to use it again soon.
What seems to happen more often than not with her MacBook Pro, is that she will leave it unplugged after simply closing the "clam shell" (?).
When I go to use it and there is no battery, of course it must be plugged in to receive enough charge to boot up. Then it proceeds to freeze a little and load up unsmoothly.

My main question here is: Is this inherently harmful to her laptop?

Just a curious thought it all.
Thanks!

MacBook Pro

Posted on Mar 16, 2018 7:05 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

IdrisSeabright

Level 10

154,991 points

Mar 16, 2018 7:16 AM in response to Rookwood

No, there is nothing inherently harmful in letting the battery drain until the device powers off. The exception would be if you then left it in that state for a long time (think months). If you leave a lithium ion battery completely discharged for a long time, it may never take a charge again.

See this article from Apple:

Batteries - Apple

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Answer 2

y_p_w

Level 6

17,642 points

Mar 16, 2018 11:07 AM in response to briandallas

briandallas wrote:

It's also not harmful to leave it plugged in. It won't overcharge.

It might be a good idea to use the battery sometimes. A lot of batteries that swell seem to be in devices that NEVER go off of the power adapter.

Other than that, it's not necessarily unsafe or damaging to let a battery go down to "0%" and then auto shutdown, as long as it's an orderly "save to disk" and not where there's a sudden, unexpected shutdown. 0% is not the absolute floor for the battery. There's a certainly amount of reserve capacity to prevent a battery from getting into a deep discharge state that can cause substantial loss of capacity or even complete battery failure. It would need to be charged within a reasonable amount of time to avoid the possibility of self-discharge bringing it to a deep discharge state.

There are different recommendations for how to get the maximum life out of a lithium-ion battery, but those can be rather esoteric discussions given that Apple doesn't allow the kind of battery management programming that could achieve that. There are a lot of tradeoffs between convenience and ultimate longevity.

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Answer 3

Mar 16, 2018 11:44 AM in response to y_p_w

y_p_w wrote:

briandallas wrote:

It's also not harmful to leave it plugged in. It won't overcharge.

It might be a good idea to use the battery sometimes. A lot of batteries that swell seem to be in devices that NEVER go off of the power adapter.

Swelling is not caused by leaving the device plugged in all the time. If that were the case, it would rarely be seen in phone batteries, where, in fact it's far more come. Swelling is a function of age in batteries.

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Answer 4

Rookwood Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 16, 2018 7:18 AM in response to IdrisSeabright

Thanks for that!
Since it came "back to life" a little clunky I always thought letting it die while unplugged and closed was ... bad.
But thanks for the quick reply!

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Answer 5

Mar 16, 2018 7:19 AM in response to Rookwood

It's also not harmful to leave it plugged in. It won't overcharge.

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Letting MacBook Pro battery die while closed

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