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Do you leave your MacBook Pro on a charger for days?

dapa0s

dapa0s

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 2, 2019
533
1,076
I want to know what people here think about leaving your M1 pro/max Macbook Pros on a charger all the time.

Since I mostly use it on a desk I sometimes leave it plugged in for weeks, does anyone else do that? Does the battery really degrade that much by doing that? It always says on mine that "Power source: Power adapter", so I'm guessing it's not using the battery at all?

Anyone care to chime in?
 
dapa0s said:
I want to know what people here think about leaving your M1 pro/max Macbook Pros on a charger all the time.

Since I mostly use it on a desk I sometimes leave it plugged in for weeks, does anyone else do that? Does the battery really degrade that much by doing that? It always says on mine that "Power source: Power adapter", so I'm guessing it's not using the battery at all?

Anyone care to chime in?
Click to expand...

Weeks at the time. Had a battery inflated on an old 13 inch pre-2016 with MagSafe. Other than that no problems.
 
it will degrade faster for sure, but it all depends on your workflow.
best way to preserve battery health would be to charge it to 50-60% and then switch it off for a couple of years and then recharge to 50% and shut if off again, but what's the point of that?

having said that, with Apple Silicon Macs you don't have any performance penalties unplugged and it's really not a problem to remove the USB or Magsafe connector and let the battery discharge more frequently, as 100% at all times alone is not ideal.
There are also third party tools that limit your battery charge level cap to user definable values and charges of 80%, or even 50% if you are plugged in most of the time anyway would be preferable too.
 
Take it OFF the charger every 3rd day (at least), and let it run down to, say, 40-45% or so.
Then, plug it back in.

At night, I would do this:
Unplug THE CHARGER, either from the wall outlet or the Mac.
Let it sleep WITHOUT the charger, or just power it down.
Plug it back in, in the morning.

I don't trust ANY "software solution" to care for the battery (at least, not yet)...
 
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I just do whatever I need to do. Sometimes I leave it on the charger for a week. Sometimes I'll take it to another room, do some light work, and leave it there for a few days. The battery charge stays to where I'm not too worried about it dying on me, with my workload.

I kind of did the same with my old MBP but I had to drag the charging cable with me when I went to another room. It would last a couple of hours of web browsing, max.
 
unless it is smart enough to learn from your charging behavior that you will "never" unplug it and will be keeping it at 80% forever.

since i'm using my M1's unplugged all the time (other than charging) i don't really have a use for this, but it'd indeed be nice to be able to cap your charges manually with an option in the battery / system settings too
 
spiderman0616 said:
macOS is designed to be able to handle it. Turn on optimized charging and you'll be just fine.
Click to expand...

In my experience this feature is hugely overrated on all Apple devices and is next to useless for a Mac notebook unless it literally is plugged into the wall 24/7/365. The moment you dare use it as a portable, optimized charging immediately forgets everything that came before that moment. Your schedule has to be entirely habitual for it to work, which of course is not reasonable.

For the sake of sanity AlDente Pro is the ultimate solution. In my opinion anyways 👍
 
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As someone who has their MacBook Pro plugged in most of the time, I went to Aldente Pro specifically because the optimized charging did nothing for many weeks - it always just topped off and stayed at 100%.
 
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During the week the M1 MPB 16" is connected to a power source always because it is connected to a Apple Studio Display via USB-C.
I disconnect it only on the weekends when I am using the MBP not on my work desk.

But I don't care too much about this things. Even the former 2019 MBP was connected always to a power source without problems.
 
My 2011 MBP is plugged in all the time, I don’t use it that much now, since I bought the 2021 M1 MBP, but never had any battery issues the handful of times I used it unplugged.
But I’m obviously only a sample of one.
 
iSuzan said:
During the week the M1 MPB 16" is connected to a power source always because it is connected to a Apple Studio Display via USB-C.
I disconnect it only on the weekends when I am using the MBP not on my work desk.

But I don't care too much about this things. Even the former 2019 MBP was connected always to a power source without problems.
Click to expand...
This is exactly what I do. Just disconnected now for the weekend. Will reconnect to my Studio Display on Monday morning.
 
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