Battery discharching when plugged in MBA M1

[grrrz]

This is driving me nuts; for the last three or four days when I wake the computer from sleep in the morning the battery is draining and it drains pretty fast until around 90% (or is it me trying to plug or unplug the charger). I have two charger (one of which goes through a usb-c hub which is my normal setup.
I installed coconut and it says that while the battery is discharging the battery is getting "charged with 5W" (about 3 to 7W) and the charge in coconut is significantly lower than the one showed in OSX. (85% in coconut vs 90 in OSX)
It makes absolutely zero sense.
And YES I know there's an optimization system; that's disabled right now btw; but the optimization system is supposed to not charge above 80%; not CUT THE POWER AND DRAIN THE BATTERY (is it? there's no mention anywhere of this anyway). If someone has a reliable source as to the fact the computer actually cuts the power and drains the battery on purpose I'd like to see it. I know there's natural drain but it should happen over the course of weeks or months.
So I haven't tried to let it do its thing for now; and always try to get it back charging; but no matter what I do (plug / unplug / change the charger) it takes a significant drop (90% or below) to get it to charge again.
I've seen a lot people reporting this; being told it is normal but it's clearly not (and if it is it should be clearly explained somewhere).
I'm thinking it's a calibration problem so I'll probably try letting it discharge fully or at least to 20% and back up. But If you have anything solid on this please let me know.

 

[Krevnik]

Two things I’ll point out:

• Charge calibration is a NiMH battery thing, and it doesn’t apply to Lithium batteries. Lithium batteries also don’t like full discharges as it shortens their lifespan. They have their best longevity if you can keep them between 20-80%.
• Since Lithium batteries also don’t like being held at full charge, you do want to cycle it occasionally. If macOS is doing this intentionally, it’s for this reason.

While Apple does talk about a battery health management feature, they don’t do a great job of telling people what it actually does to manage health, and it’s not the same as optimized charging. It can’t be disabled on M1 either: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211832. The Intel version of the feature can be disabled: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211094.

Edit: It does look like the behavior predates the M1 too: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251537683

 

[JPack]

As already explained, this is normal.

This is battery health management at work and people have seen this a year and a half ago since macOS 10.15.5.

If you continue to leave the MacBook connected to the charger, it will put charging on hold permanently around 80% until the next time you use the battery.

You’re not going to find a detailed explanation from Apple in a support document. This isn’t Microsoft. Apple loves to do things in a black box.

 

[grrrz]

ok; thanks for your replies. It's really not cool that there is no actual explanation about this; so battery health management and battery optimizisation would be two different things. Also it just started doing this now so why now and why pretty much every day? Are you actually certain this is a feature not a bug? (again cutting the external power to leave the mac battery powered, then charging it back again at a certain point). The fact some people report it does that doesn't mean that it should be normal behavior.
People seem to be super confused about this, in other threads people brought their mac to apple store; had their whole motherboard changed for something that would be "normal", are people working at genius bar and such not aware of this either?
What I expect is it behaves consistantly; if it doesn't charge above 80%; so be it; but sometimes it does; sometimes not; sometimes it would unplug your power supply for you just for the heck of it, and sometimes it will take two minutes before actually charging when I plug the power; even at 50% battery.
It seems macs do more and more things behind the back of the user without a single explanation (like randomly powering back on the mac and the network during sleep; which leads me to unplug the ethernet every night so I don't have a bright light coming on in the middle of the night)
do you suggest I use something like aldente like other people do? not sure it's a good idea. I have no problem with leaving the mac at 80% but it doens't does this consistently either, it will always end up fully charging if I unplug the power even briefly. I do use my laptop as a desktop 95% of the time; but I need the battery to work for those other 5%.

 

[Krevnik]

ok; thanks for your replies. It's really not cool that there is no actual explanation about this; so battery health management and battery optimizisation would be two different things. Also it just started doing this now so why now and why pretty much every day? Are you actually certain this is a feature not a bug? (again cutting the external power to leave the mac battery powered, then charging it back again at a certain point). The fact some people report it does that doesn't mean that it should be normal behavior.

One of the ways to prematurely age a Lithium battery is to rarely use it, while also holding it at 100%. That can cut the lifespan of a battery by up to half compared to holding at 80%.

So, the behavior of discharging a full battery that’s mostly plugged in is something I’d expect from a battery health management system. That said, the daily discharge is odd, but keep in mind I’m not a battery engineer. It’s also not something I’ve seen, but I leave battery optimization on and use my laptop unplugged about half the time, so I’m probably not triggering this behavior.

But because of the lack of documentation here, random people on a forum aren’t going to be able to answer the question of if it is a bug or not. Only Apple’s engineers can when there’s no documentation on what “normal” is in this specific case. All I can say is that this behavior is consistent over the last few years they’ve had this system.

People seem to be super confused about this, in other threads people brought their mac to apple store; had their whole motherboard changed for something that would be "normal", are people working at genius bar and such not aware of this either?

People working at the genius bar are not technicians. They are customer support. Their training is generally going to be equivalent to what is available on the public documentation.

That said, the lack of public documentation on this with the idea that “it will just do the right thing” is not great.

What I expect is it behaves consistantly; if it doesn't charge above 80%; so be it; but sometimes it does; sometimes not; sometimes it would unplug your power supply for you just for the heck of it, and sometimes it will take two minutes before actually charging when I plug the power; even at 50% battery.

The big difference between Aldente and Battery Optimization as I understand it is that Apple’s solution uses predictive ML models to try to determine when you’ll need 100% battery, and charge for you. Like my phone tends to wait until 5am to charge to 100% from 80% because I always pull it off the charger at the same time every day. Battery health is likely using other models to determine when to start cycling an always plugged in battery at 100%. The use of ML models can lead to inconsistent behavior while training the model with your usage, or if your usage doesn’t have predictable patterns.

Aldente might be a better option for you if all you really want is “hold the battery at 80% to avoid aging until I say I need full charge”.

It seems macs do more and more things behind the back of the user without a single explanation (like randomly powering back on the mac and the network during sleep; which leads me to unplug the ethernet every night so I don't have a bright light coming on in the middle of the night)

I wonder if Power Nap can still be disabled on M1 machines, since that’s what is going on there.

 

[grrrz]

@Krevnik
ok thanks for the detailed answer. I tried to trigger the "charge to 80%" by using the mac without charger this morning and waited until 78% to plug it back but it just charged back fully (with optimized charge on). I know I had it triggered once or twice but again it's not consistent. I don't have a 9 to 5 job so a predictive AI system is totally useless for me; I will sometimes leave for a week and maybe use my laptop on battery a lot; then not at all for a month. Next time it starts to drain the battery I'll leave it be to see what it does and if it's ok to just not care.
I don't know about Aldente; I'm not super confident about letting a third-party app deals with my battery (when it's already such a mess). also some people report problems with it.

as for power nap; there's no way to deactivate it; in fact the M1 has a dedicated CPU core that's always on and deals with sleep mode (like a phone). I mean this is not a big deal for me; it's just pretty much useless and since I have an RJ45 adapter it wakes up the hub for this at random hours. I don't use my computer for messages and I can wait 20 seconds to retrieve my morning mails.

 

[geapgr]

This is driving me nuts; for the last three or four days when I wake the computer from sleep in the morning the battery is draining and it drains pretty fast until around 90% (or is it me trying to plug or unplug the charger). I have two charger (one of which goes through a usb-c hub which is my normal setup.
I installed coconut and it says that while the battery is discharging the battery is getting "charged with 5W" (about 3 to 7W) and the charge in coconut is significantly lower than the one showed in OSX. (85% in coconut vs 90 in OSX)
It makes absolutely zero sense.
And YES I know there's an optimization system; that's disabled right now btw; but the optimization system is supposed to not charge above 80%; not CUT THE POWER AND DRAIN THE BATTERY (is it? there's no mention anywhere of this anyway). If someone has a reliable source as to the fact the computer actually cuts the power and drains the battery on purpose I'd like to see it. I know there's natural drain but it should happen over the course of weeks or months.
So I haven't tried to let it do its thing for now; and always try to get it back charging; but no matter what I do (plug / unplug / change the charger) it takes a significant drop (90% or below) to get it to charge again.
I've seen a lot people reporting this; being told it is normal but it's clearly not (and if it is it should be clearly explained somewhere).
I'm thinking it's a calibration problem so I'll probably try letting it discharge fully or at least to 20% and back up. But If you have anything solid on this please let me know.

I have had this problem too and I have been going through the answers and I am absolutely disappointed with Apple. i know what you're going thru. I have a MacBook pro 13 inch 2020 (intel 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports). I connect my MacBook Pro to a Samsung M7 32 inch smart monitor that power delivers to my MacBook. for over 7 months I would wake up in the morning and the battery was consistently and always at 100%. for the last 10 days or so I have been waking up and being served silly percentages like 94,93,90, 80, 77, and so on. it's totally random. there are even some "lucky" nights that i wake up in the morning with 100%!!!! (how's that for ya?!). although I respect the answers from the people that have answered that doesn't explain why this has only appeared in the last few days. a month ago we had that problem with overnight battery drain with Bluetooth, and ok, that was solved with 12.2.1 but i just feel that Apple hasn't solved the issue overall. somethings missing. also, if you check very hard, we're not the only two people having this strange behavior. furthermore, two points to the kind people weighing in, and thanks to them in advance a) I leave the MacBook with ALL apps closed before i go to bed, and it is charged at 100%. what is the reasoning behind letting it fall to 80%? at 100% it's not actually being charged at all 9at least I think so). b) can someone point out where exactly this carrying the charge from 100% to 80% is mentioned by Apple documentation?
+ some more info
1) when the MacBook Pro is powered by the brick and cable it comes with it doesn't show this behavior (I've tested it two nights in a row). maybe I had to test it more nights?
2) needless to say i have all the suggested setting on, but even if i play around with power nap and wake for network access, this doesn't help!
2) whenever the strange behavior appears then I see that at night, with all apps closed something seems to be disturbing the "nap" at constant intervals (see attached pic)

thanking anyone that could contribute to more info on this....

 

[satcomer]

Yea as I have seen with my own Mac book Air usb C cable can come out when a pet walks over it, especially at night!

 

[grrrz]

I have had this problem too and I have been going through the answers and I am absolutely disappointed with Apple. i know what you're going thru. I have a MacBook pro 13 inch 2020 (intel 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports). I connect my MacBook Pro to a Samsung M7 32 inch smart monitor that power delivers to my MacBook. for over 7 months I would wake up in the morning and the battery was consistently and always at 100%. for the last 10 days or so I have been waking up and being served silly percentages like 94,93,90, 80, 77, and so on. it's totally random. there are even some "lucky" nights that i wake up in the morning with 100%!!!! (how's that for ya?!). although I respect the answers from the people that have answered that doesn't explain why this has only appeared in the last few days. a month ago we had that problem with overnight battery drain with Bluetooth, and ok, that was solved with 12.2.1 but i just feel that Apple hasn't solved the issue overall. somethings missing. also, if you check very hard, we're not the only two people having this strange behavior. furthermore, two points to the kind people weighing in, and thanks to them in advance a) I leave the MacBook with ALL apps closed before i go to bed, and it is charged at 100%. what is the reasoning behind letting it fall to 80%? at 100% it's not actually being charged at all 9at least I think so). b) can someone point out where exactly this carrying the charge from 100% to 80% is mentioned by Apple documentation?
+ some more info
1) when the MacBook Pro is powered by the brick and cable it comes with it doesn't show this behavior (I've tested it two nights in a row). maybe I had to test it more nights?
2) needless to say i have all the suggested setting on, but even if i play around with power nap and wake for network access, this doesn't help!
2) whenever the strange behavior appears then I see that at night, with all apps closed something seems to be disturbing the "nap" at constant intervals (see attached pic)

thanking anyone that could contribute to more info on this....

well I have kind of make my peace with it; now that the behavior is consistent. Not sure it changes something to use the default charger.
so basically what I do is check optimize charging and the battery will discharge itself and stay around 88/90%. I have still the option to charge it. The problem is as soon as I unplug the mac even for a second it will trigger a scheduled or immediate recharge to 100%; only to discharge it back a few days later. you have no control over that. it's not practical because I sometime reboot (because the ram keeps filling up after several weeks but that's another issue), and for this I have to unplug the usb hub (which is somehow not recognised when booting up) so it charges and discharges for nothing. To that I add the problem of the HDMI screen not being recgonised half of the time (that I've seen forever on macs); that's a quite a lot of small annoyances that make the experience not that smooth.

 

[dieselm]

Just use "Al Dente". You'll have full control over your battery charging.

AlDente

AlDente – Charge Limiter The ALL-IN-ONE charge Limiter App for MacBooks. Download Free Get AlDente Pro AlDente gives you the tools you need to extend the life of your MacBook battery. Why do I need this? Li-ion batteries (like the one in your MacBook) last the longest when operated between 20%...

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[dieselm]

Just use "Al Dente". You'll have full control over your battery charging.

I just updated to Al Dente Pro from the free version. They've really thought about all of this.

If you use your Macbook plugged in most of the time, I can't recommend this enough.