The Best Ways to Manage Your MacBook's Battery Health
Battery life is one of the best parts of recent MacBooks. The M-series processors means you can potentially go a couple days without visiting a charger. I rarely even notice my laptop has a battery unless I'm traveling.
But that kind of battery life doesn't last forever. Batteries degrade over time, and to a certain extent that's inevitable. But there are things you can do to slow the decline.
According to Battery University, a website with all sorts of detailed articles on how batteries work, there are two main factors that diminish battery life over time: environmental conditions (mostly temperature) and cycles. "The worst situation is keeping a fully charged battery at elevated temperatures," the site says.
The temperature thing is worth keeping your mind: It's never a good idea to leave your laptop in a hot car, for example, particularly if your battery is fully charged. You should avoid using or storing the laptop in extreme temperatures.
But while it's relatively easy to remember not to expose your laptop to extreme conditions, it can be hard to manage how charged the laptop is. The good news is that modern Macs are designed to do this automatically, and you can use third party software to take matters into your own hands if that configuration doesn't work for you.
Optimized Battery Charging
MacBooks running macOS Big Sur (released in 2020) or later have a feature called Optimized Battery Charging, which is enabled by default. The idea is to allow your battery to fully charge only when you're likely to unplug your laptop; otherwise, keep it around 80%. "Your Mac learns your charging routine and aims to ensure that your Mac is fully charged when unplugged," according to Apple's official documentation.
What this looks like is going to vary depending on your habits. I've personally noticed that if I plug my laptop in at my desk to work, it will hold off until the afternoon to fully charge it—that's because I tend to leave my laptop plugged in during the workday. If you tend to charge your laptop overnight, your MacBook will charge to 80% for most the night but not charge fully until the time you tend to grab your laptop and leave for work.
You can force your MacBook to charge fully by clicking the battery icon in the menu bar then clicking Charge to Full Now. You can disable the feature in System Settings—in the sidebar click Battery then click the information symbol (an "i" with a circle around it) next to the Battery Health row. From here you can turn off Optimized Battery Charging.
For most users, though, I'd recommend leaving this on. It extends the life of your battery without really impacting your day-to-day usage.
If you want to control the timing
What if you like the basic idea of Optimized Charging but want to take more directly control? That's where Battery Toolkit comes in. This is a free application that lets you set your own rules for how full the battery should charge. As we've covered before this application lets you customize exactly how charging works on your device.
With this application, you can choose a custom range for your battery, meaning it won't start charging until the battery dips below a certain threshold and won't charge above another. You can manually tell your Mac to fully charge using the application's menu bar.
The basic idea is to let you manage your Mac's charging manually, which is why I can really only recommend it for power users who specifically want to ensure they get every bit of life out of their battery. The downside is, if you want your MacBook to be fully charged, you're going to have to remember ahead of time. In exchange, you'll have a battery that potentially lives longer.
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