Sidestep MacBook Optimized Battery Charging When Necessary

ByEmily Dolloff

Have you ever run into a situation where the battery icon in your menu bar is stuck at 80% even though your Mac has been plugged in for hours? Luckily, there are several easy workarounds, but first, let us explain what’s going on.

In the past few years, Apple has added optimized battery charging features to many of its battery-powered products, including the iPhone, the Apple Watch, and the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. In all cases, Apple’s goal is to increase the lifespan of your devices’ lithium-ion batteries by reducing the amount of time they spend fully charged.

With the iPhone and Apple Watch, Apple achieves this by learning your charging patterns and delaying charging past 80% in certain situations. The optimized charging algorithm then charges the device to full just before you’re likely to unplug it. For most people, that probably happens overnight, so the device is ready in the morning.

With the MacBooks, the background is slightly different. Many people use their MacBooks at desks, often connected to large displays, so they spend a lot of time plugged into power. In the past, that would keep the battery fully charged and generate heat, both of which shorten the lifespan of lithium-ion batteries. So once again, Apple’s optimized battery charging technology tries to hold the battery at 80% and charges it to full only when it thinks you’ll need to use it away from the desk. If you seldom take it anywhere, it could be held at 80% most of the time.

That works best when you have a regular schedule, but it’s easy to end up in a situation where you need to grab your MacBook and head out—such as for an overnight trip—where you won’t be able to recharge easily. If the optimized battery charging algorithm wasn’t expecting that, you could find yourself with a battery that’s only at 80% to start, significantly reducing your battery life.

There are three ways to work around this problem, depending on how troublesome it is for you:

  • Resume charging: If the optimized battery charging algorithm has paused charging at 80% but you want to leave with a full charge, click the battery icon in the menu bar and choose Charge to Full Now. That will take some time, so make sure you initiate the final charging early enough. This workaround is most helpful if you only occasionally need a full charge.
  • Disable optimized battery charging temporarily: Let’s say you’re on that overnight trip and need to be sure that your MacBook is fully charged for your 6 AM flight home. To ensure you don’t wake up to a partially full battery, you can temporarily disable optimized battery charging. In macOS 13 Ventura, choose System Settings > Battery, click the ⓘ next to Battery Health, turn off the Optimized Battery Charging switch, and click Turn Off Until Tomorrow in the dialog that appears.

    In macOS 12 Monterey and earlier, choose System Preferences > Battery, deselect Optimized Battery Charging, and click Turn Off Until Tomorrow.
  • Disable optimized battery charging permanently: Some people have unpredictable schedules. While the optimized battery charging algorithm may simply throw up its hands and allow your battery to charge fully at all times, if you find yourself continually fighting it, follow the steps above and click Turn Off to disable it permanently. Be aware that this may reduce the overall lifespan of your battery.

If all this seems fussy, it’s because Apple was criticized some years ago when it introduced optimized battery charging for the iPhone without informing users, some of whom were upset by the seemingly unpredictable charging behavior. Apple now makes the controls accessible to users, which is good but adds complexity.

Although we recommend leaving optimized battery charging enabled in most situations, there are times when it’s reasonable to turn it off to ensure you have as much power as possible for the upcoming work session.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Konev Timur)

Social Media: Has your MacBook’s battery ever been stuck at 80% when you would prefer to have a full charge? We explain what’s happening and how to work around Apple’s optimized battery charging features.

Similar Posts

  • Errata

    Last week a typo slipped by our proofers. Command+M is not open a new document but that command is Command+N. Sorry about that. To make up for it here are a couple more keyboard combinations you might find handy:

    **Command-Option-Esc** – If an app stops responding, you might need to force it to quit. You can do that with a right click on the app icon in the dock, but it’s even easier if you hit this keyboard shortcut. This will bring up the Force Quit dialog, which you can then use to make that non-responsive app quit. You might need to Command-Tab you way out of an active frozen app first, though, or use **Command+Shift+Option+Esc** to quit the currently active app.

    **Command-Option-P and R** – Here’s one that might challenge your fingers dexterity. Fortunately, you will hardly ever have to use it but it is used to reset your non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM). Information stored in NVRAM can include speaker volume, screen resolution, start-up disk selection and recent kernel panic information. If you are asked to reset your P-Ram or NVRAM here’s how you do it.

    1) Shut down your Mac
    2) Turn on your Mac
    3) Immediately after you hear the start up sound, hold down the command, option, P and R keys
    4) Hold those keys down until you hear the start up sound again and then release them.

  • Hey Siri, What Can You Do?

    So, I am a little embarrassed to admit it but I bought an Amazon Echo to check out how Alexa compares with Siri. I’m a gadget guy so we will see if we find it useful and if not, I am sure I can find it a home on eBay. I use Siri more and more these days. My most common uses are asking her to settle trivia disputes with Grace or setting the timer for 5 minutes. But there is a lot more that Siri can do!

    Make Relationships with Siri
    When you speak Siri commands, you can refer to people by relationship, rather than name. So, if you want to call your father, you can say “call my father” instead of saying “call Bruce Leibowitz.” But to do this, you need to introduce Siri to your family. First, make sure you have a “card” in the Contacts app for yourself, and then go into Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, scroll down to find and tap My Info, and select your card. Next, make sure you have a contact card for your father, and then tell Siri, “Bruce Leibowitz is my father.” Or, if Siri doesn’t hear you correctly, open Contacts, edit your card (not your father’s!), scroll down, tap “add related name,” tap the default relationship to pick “father,” tap the info “i” icon, select your father’s card, and tap Done.

    You can even use Siri to remember other types of relationships. Artie used to bring manure from his uncle’s farm for my garden and ended up with the nickname, “the spreader”. If I tell Siri “Art Hendrickson is my spreader” I can now just say “text my spreader…” and Siri knows who I am talking about. This works for nicknames but also for lawyers, accountants, doctors or any nickname you want to tell Siri about.

    Take a Picture
    Instead of fumbling to launch the Camera app on your iPhone you can just say “take a picture” and Siri will automatically open the Camera app and you can snap away.

    Siri Converts
    Need to know how many millimeters are in 4 inches? Just ask Siri and you will find that there are 101.6 mm in 4 inches. This works for currency exchange rates, too. Ask Siri how many Euros are equal to $100US you will find that 87.73 Euros is the exchange rate today. Siri has some other strong calculation features too. You can ask Siri how many calories there are in that fish sandwich or to calculate a 20% tip on your restaurant bill. You can ask her to solve math problems involving fractions and other math functions that will be faster than opening the calculator app and punching in the numbers.

    Settling Up
    Okay you can use Siri to look up baseball stats or other information to settle a dispute but what if you are at loggerheads and just want to get a random answer and don’t have a coin to flip. You can ask Siri to “roll the dice”, “flip a coin” or pick a random number.

    Name that Tune
    Siri is integrated with Shazam to help you figure out what song is playing. Just ask her “what song is playing?” and she will listen and let you know and probably try to sell you the song, too!

    Find that Photo
    Siri can search your photo library for you. I know how frustrating it is if your are like me and have literally thousands of photos. You can say something like “find that photo from Daytona Beach from last March” and Siri will launch Photos and take you right to any photos taken at that place and time.

    Siri Takes You Out
    Siri can make your restaurant reservations for you, too! Tell Siri “make a restaurant reservation for four at 7PM” and she will respond with available restaurants nearby and if you have the Open Table app installed can make the reservation for you or give you the phone number to call.

    Are We There Yet?
    If you are using your iPhone for navigation you can just say “ETA” and Siri will let you know how much longer you are gonna be on the road.

    Leave Me Alone
    Siri can do a lot for you but sometimes you just want alone time. You can tell Siri to turn on “do not disturb” and you will not be bothered. Or tell her to “turn on airplane mode” and she will turn off Wi-Fi and cellular signals.

  • Ick, it is tax time and while I love Turbo Tax, I hate doing taxes. It is not that I have a problem paying taxes, especially when I see my tax dollars doing things for the public good but it always alarms me to see how much I am paying for unnecessary wars and an ineffective congress. Grace stays far away as I work on the taxes as I grumble and fret.

    It looks like it might be a rainy weekend here in Key West so I can work on that and do some much-needed motorcycle maintenance. I can’t wait to get my hands on one of the new iPad Pros to compare with its big brother. I don’t know if it will turn around the decline in Apple’s iPad sales but it does represent a new powerful digital tool.

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Emily & Hadley_

  • Sonos and Apple Music

    A little over a week ago things became official: Apple Music is now available to those who use “**Sonos.**”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/?mmfg%5B0%5D=Sonos For some of us this wasn’t a huge announcement. I have been using the beta version now for several months and have been enjoying my Apple Music playlists as well as my own personal play lists on my iPhone. I have been a huge fan of Sonos for about two years and not being able to listen to Apple Music was my one complaint about the system, but not anymore!

    Apple Music isn’t the only great thing about Sonos either, did you know that you can also control your Sonos system from your computer? I admit, I didn’t realize this at first. With a huge focus on how easy the system is to set up and control from your iPad or iPhone, this is one feature that’s often overlooked. With a simple “App download”:http://www.sonos.com/controller-app on your computer, you can open up your entire (in most cases) music library for listening through your Sonos system. Another great feature of the Sonos App is the ability to set a sleep timer. If your someone who enjoys falling asleep to music, but prefers it doesn’t stay on all night this is a huge feature even if it is a bit hidden. The more info icon within the Sonos App hides a lot of features, including the sleep timer.