In short: I would say (just like the guides) - use your Macbook plugged in anytime that you can and use your battery if you have to
What I can say from my experience is that:
1. first of all it's not worth it to be obsessed with the battery health
, though I tend not to live by that rule
At least when it comes to my 13" MBP
2. Second thing is that: I've found a way that works best with my MBPs...
When I had purchased my 13" I used to plug in to charge and then use it on battery and drain it to 80% (sometimes 50%). That didn't work well for me as the battery health dropped to 88% (it has 30 cycles now and is 6 months old). So now I use it plugged and drain it to 90% every 3, 4 days. The health has went up to 90,4%. I also leave it off and plugged in on some days for 2, 3 hours when I get back from work (I work on my 15" then).
As for the 15". I bought it a couple of weeks ago. It was year old almost to the day back then, had around 12 cycles, 92% battery health. It hasn't been used much by the previous owner (he switched to MBA as he was an architect and driving a motorbike
to work. Anyways. It was with the 15" that I'd found the way to get the battery health up.
The 15" is my desktop basically, docked at my desk, connected to an external display, so it's plugged in most of the time. I was afraid that it would hurt the battery even more. But quite the opposite happened. I let it drain to 90% every 2 or 3 days, but I use it plugged almost all the time. And in those 3 weeks the battery health (and battery max. charge) have increased. The health has gone up from 93 to 97%. That's what I wanted, so I stopped obsessing about it. Not completely, but significantly I would say
But there's the 13" - I hope to get back a couple % on the 13" as well, by using this "method".
I'd found that when you charge your computer and the charging stops at 95%-9X% (the indicator says it's fully charged), while it usually is higher like 97-100%. What I do is I unplug and use it on battery until it drops 2-5% and then plug it back in. This second full charging gets the battery higher than the previous one (usually to 99 or 100%=to the max) almost every time and the "Battery health" app shows increase in health and capacity. Small increase, (like 0,2%), but a steady increase so to speak. In time this adds up to 1% and so on.
Maybe it's an obsession, I know I won't get the battery back to its original capacity, but every mAh counts for me as I want to keep my MBPs for a longer while without paying for a new battery.
Anyways, hope that helps. It really works for me.
