New Battery Health Management Feature

[Sarpdoruk Tahmaz]

I have a 2018 Macbook Pro 15". A week ago I got my battery replaced because it was swollen. I leave my MBP plugged in while I'm working and I unplug it when I turn it off. This has been the case for me for the past 1.5 years and that is why I had 29 cycles on my swollen battery. Since I got the battery replaced I thought I'd try the new Battery Health Management feature introduced in 10.15.5 Beta (19F72f). I have been using it for 3 days just to test it. Since this is a new feature, there are no clear explanations on how this feature actually works and I thought I'd share my thoughts so here they are;

My MBP had 50% charge on it when I pugged it in today. I started working and a while after it stopped charing because it reached 100%. I have worked for at least 4 hours and it stayed on 100% the whole time. 15 minutes ago, although it is plugged in, current charge started to decrease like it was unplugged. I monitored it constantly and it has decreased to 87% before it started to charge again. Now it is 92% and still going up. I think what Apple trying to do here is to make the MBP use its battery from time to time in order not to let it sit at 100% all the time.

I would like to know your story regarding this new feature if you have any.

 

[matthewadams]

In the same boat, got my battery replaced as well just this week (same model, same reason, same use) and are therefore looking forward to avoid this in the future. I can't afford to install the beta right now though. Have you tried installing coconutBattery to see what the actual charge is?

 

[russell_314]

I have a 2018 Macbook Pro 15". A week ago I got my battery replaced because it was swollen. I leave my MBP plugged in while I'm working and I unplug it when I turn it off. This has been the case for me for the past 1.5 years and that is why I had 29 cycles on my swollen battery. Since I got the battery replaced I thought I'd try the new Battery Health Management feature introduced in 10.15.5 Beta (19F72f). I have been using it for 3 days just to test it. Since this is a new feature, there are no clear explanations on how this feature actually works and I thought I'd share my thoughts so here they are;

My MBP had 50% charge on it when I pugged it in today. I started working and a while after it stopped charing because it reached 100%. I have worked for at least 4 hours and it stayed on 100% the whole time. 15 minutes ago, although it is plugged in, current charge started to decrease like it was unplugged. I monitored it constantly and it has decreased to 87% before it started to charge again. Now it is 92% and still going up. I think what Apple trying to do here is to make the MBP use its battery from time to time in order to not let it sit at 100% all the time.

I would like to know your story regarding this new feature if you have any.

I'm excited to see Apple putting battery management on their MacBooks like they have on the iPhone. I can see how some people won't like it because if they unplug their battery it might be at 87% instead of 100%. I remember hearing on some of the 15" MacBook pro models the batteries were defective so perhaps that was the issue you had rather than it was just worn out.

 

[Sarpdoruk Tahmaz]

Have you tried installing coconutBattery to see what the actual charge is?

Yes, my readings are from coconutbattery.

I can see how some people won't like it because if they unplug their battery it might be at 87% instead of 100%.

If you know that you are going to need the battery life for the day, turning off the battery health feature off would make your mac charge up to 100%. When you are done, turning it on would prevent your battery from charging up to 100% again.

 

[matthewadams]

There's also this tool called "AlDente" which I coincidentally found today while trying to find out more about 10.15.5:

GitHub - AppHouseKitchen/AlDente-Charge-Limiter: Menubar Tool to set Charge Limits and Prolong Battery Lifespan

Menubar Tool to set Charge Limits and Prolong Battery Lifespan - AppHouseKitchen/AlDente-Charge-Limiter

github.com

You can set a limit to the battery charge yourself. My Macbook is at my desk almost always so I might as well go ahead and limit it to 80%.

 

[Sarpdoruk Tahmaz]

There's also this tool called "AlDente" which I coincidentally found today while trying to find out more about 10.15.5:

GitHub - AppHouseKitchen/AlDente-Charge-Limiter: Menubar Tool to set Charge Limits and Prolong Battery Lifespan

Menubar Tool to set Charge Limits and Prolong Battery Lifespan - AppHouseKitchen/AlDente-Charge-Limiter

github.com

You can set a limit to the battery charge yourself. My Macbook is at my desk almost always so I might as well go ahead and limit it to 80%.

This looks promising, thank you for sharing.

 

[tommiy]

Thanks for this. The battery monitor in 10.15.5 looked a promising reason to upgrade but I'm not happy with the associated risks that brings at this point in time. This will allow me to get the feature but also stay put on my current version.

 

[bobdole992]

Have you all tried AlDente? How easy is it to revert back to your original SMAC settings? Is it just a matter of deleting the software or do you have to actually change it back to 100%? If you reset your SMAC, does the software just go back to 100?

Has anyone used 10.15.5 and seen what it does to their battery in coconut battery? Does it actually stop it at 80% ever?

 

[Sarpdoruk Tahmaz]

Has anyone used 10.15.5 and seen what it does to their battery in coconut battery? Does it actually stop it at 80% ever?

I have been using it for quite some time and no it does not stop charging at 80% instead it fully charges your battery then after several hours have passed, like 4 to 6, it starts to use battery as a power source even though you are plugged in.

 

[throAU]

Now it is 92% and still going up. I think what Apple trying to do here is to make the MBP use its battery from time to time in order not to let it sit at 100% all the time.

Or maybe (cynical view) apple are using this to up the battery cycle count to 1000 quicker, so that by the time you do complain about battery issues, they can point to the cycle count and say you've exceeded the design cycle count.

 

[Sarpdoruk Tahmaz]

Or maybe (cynical view) apple are using this to up the battery cycle count to 1000 quicker, so that by the time you do complain about battery issues, they can point to the cycle count and say you've exceeded the design cycle count.

Interesting point of view but I would like to stay on the positive side thinking that Apple implemented this feature to actually lengthen the battery life of their products.

 

[bobdole992]

I have been using it for quite some time and no it does not stop charging at 80% instead it fully charges your battery then after several hours have passed, like 4 to 6, it starts to use battery as a power source even though you are plugged in.

How low does it go? Have you tried AlDente with 10.15.5? This software seems like it would be the perfect solution for people that leave their laptops attached to power 95% of the time. I'm a little scared to try it because I don't want to ruin my mac so I'm hoping someone can tell me if they reset their SMC if the softwares changes basically become null/void? I gathered from the software that it runs on startup so that also makes me feel sort of good about it in that if it's not running then it won't work after a restart? Can't find any info on this though.

 

[Sarpdoruk Tahmaz]

How low does it go? Have you tried AlDente with 10.15.5? This software seems like it would be the perfect solution for people that leave their laptops attached to power 95% of the time. I'm a little scared to try it because I don't want to ruin my mac so I'm hoping someone can tell me if they reset their SMC if the softwares changes basically become null/void? I gathered from the software that it runs on startup so that also makes me feel sort of good about it in that if it's not running then it won't work after a restart? Can't find any info on this though.

With CPU turbo boost off it easily achieves 10 hours maybe more. I haven't tried AlDente myself because I'm trying to experiment with this new battery management feature to see how it will adapt itself to my usage.

 

[bobdole992]

seems like AlDente would be way better than the feature on the mac for users that stay plugged in most of the time. If only someone were using it and could answer some questions...

 

[Camarillo Brillo]

I saw al dente recently and wanted to give it a try too, but the disclaimer scared me away:

Disclaimer:

I do not take any responsibility for any sort of damage in result of using this tool! Alltough this had no negative side effects for me, AlDente still taps in some very low level system functions that are not ment to be tampered with. Use it at your own risk!

 

[tommiy]

I'm currently running al dente. I can not answer all your questions at present but once installed you get a menu bar slider to set the battery limit. The battery charges to that limit +/- a small percentage and then stops charging. You can change the figure upwards and after 5 minutes or so the battery will start charging again. To remove I simply set the value to 100% and then used the menu bar to exit the application. Then moved the application to the trash. It does leave behind the helper but simply go and delete that. Everything then charges back to 100%. I've not tried exitting and killing the application at a value less than 100% and resetting the SMC etc to see what happens. Other than that I am happy to keep my battery at 80% given I'm currently not mobile at all. Now I do not need 10.15.5 or even risk that install to get battery management.

 

[FastLaneJB]

I have been using it for quite some time and no it does not stop charging at 80% instead it fully charges your battery then after several hours have passed, like 4 to 6, it starts to use battery as a power source even though you are plugged in.

I'd assume that while this is in theory going to increase the cycles a bit (Depends how far it discharges). Apple must know what they are doing here in theory and that this must be better than staying at 100% for a long time...

Will be a long time of course after this feature is added until we'll be able to judge if there's any benefits from it.

 

[me55]

I used it for a couple of days and it works just as advertised (2018 15") but the app feels like a project in progress. The setting will stay after the app has been closed, it even stays after a system restart. To reset it back to default either open the app and set the max level to 100% or reset the SMC with the Apple instructions.

The only reason I uninstalled it is that my computer crashed twice while sleeping when this program was loaded. It has never done that before, and after uninstalling never did it again.

 

[FastLaneJB]

I used it for a couple of days and it works just as advertised (2018 15") but the app feels like a project in progress. The setting will stay after the app has been closed, it even stays after a system restart. To reset it back to default either open the app and set the max level to 100% or reset the SMC with the Apple instructions.

The only reason I uninstalled it is that my computer crashed twice while sleeping when this program was loaded. It has never done that before, and after uninstalling never did it again.

Yeah I don't think I can trust my new laptop to that then, makes me feel a little uneasy that it's a bit of a hack. I think I'd be more comfortable running 10.15.5.

Laptop arrived today rather than Monday so have it now. Quite a few things to try and get it setup but will probably try 10.15.5 out on it for the Battery Management feature.

 

[tommiy]

2017 MBP running it for 2 weeks now without any issues at all. As it says it just sets a key in the SMC management. Seems fine for myself. Especially compared with the other potential problems that are inherited by a Apple minor upgrade that continually and increasingly break other things. And if you have a new 16 inch MBP the by the looks your probably have Kernel panics out of the box by the threads here and on apple community. If your a person wanting stability and usable external monitors to use while working from home then I'd suspect you will be waiting a while for an Apple correction. I'm on 10.15.1 and not really by choice but by needing to upgrade to resolve Apple introduced issues from the supplementary Mojave updates resulting in issues with external monitors being connected, the WindowServer process going high CPU (see the other thread on WindowServer and KP now) and an inability to manage the resolution of external monitors. I have 2 MBP, one on 10.14.5 that works perfectly and one that is on 10.15.1 that has resolution issues with external monitors waking from sleep, but at least it works compared to the issues in 10.15.4 threads here. Personally I think I would now rather have the visibility of the application and its source code rather than leave it to blind trust. With 11k views that thread has all the issues I have seen since 10.14.6 regarding each Catalina release upgrading firmware and that causing issues. Unfortnately Apple has made it that you can not role back the firmware so even trying a external SSD drive install can result in your existing functional MAC inheriting firmware related issues with no way of returning to a working environment. One question I have been asking is why does every release of Catalina have firmware changes.....

To each their own but personally, this allows me to set my battery at a level that i want, does not need me to upgrade and inherit the next release issues, and has not caused me a single problem since installation. I wish I could come close to saying some thing even remotely close on Catalina.

 

[FastLaneJB]

Laptop arrived early. Had a bit of a play with it and loading up software, decided on this one to stick with the native Apple way so I’ve put on 10.15.5 public beta. I’ll be coming out of that as soon as the final launches which I suspect will be soon. I believe it’s required for a new xcode which is in turn needed for the new iOS 13.5. Seeing as that’s needed for the virus contact tracing API there’s major time pressure for Apple to get that out of the door.

Anyway just wanted to start this laptop off the right way. It’s on 100% battery health so will see how this hopefully works out as I’ve had this on right from the start pretty much.

Guess it won’t be protected when I go into Boot Camp though. Maybe I can find a Windows app that will help there. I won’t be in that too often but still.

 

[evec]

We create a open source APP view of Mac/IOS Battery Information:
https://github.com/sicreative/BatteryStatusShow
As 1.5.1 new version we added the function some as AlDente to adjust the change level,
Theory is some, as our APP without use any helper which will run in background,
instead we require every time change of this value need input admin passwd,
Please feel free to give any feedback.

 

[bobdole992]

We create a open source APP view of Mac/IOS Battery Information:
https://github.com/sicreative/BatteryStatusShow
As 1.5.1 new version we added the function some as AlDente to adjust the change level,
Theory is some, as our APP without use any helper which will run in background,
instead we require every time change of this value need input admin passwd,
Please feel free to give any feedback.

per the dev of AlDente, it's not possible to do this without a helper tool.

 

[Honza1]

Experience with AlDente: works as advertised. Started AlDente, set 80% as max target value. It is keeping ~83% max charge. No ill effects, actually, AlDente is not even running now. No need, the max charge target stays as advertised by author.
Interesting observation: Target is 80%, normally charges to ~83% and stays there. In the morning (after overnight sleep) I have 79-80% battery left. I think this is Apple method of preventing users to see (and complain about) sleep battery drain ;-) Charge to few % more than 100% but do not show anything higher than 100% - and sensibly long sleeps will look like there was no battery drain = no complains about it.
I assume Apple Battery Health management will be doing similar thing. With some AI logic to pick optimal user profile from few options.

 

[tommiy]

Yes I set mine at 80% and it regularly sits at 83% when the 'Not Charging' comes on. Still. Works well. Fits my need. Allows me to avoid the feeling of needing to install 10.15.5 until I see if all the external monitor and kernel panics are resolved.

One question I had not answered previously, a SMC reset, resets AlDente back to 100% as it reads the value from SMC at start.