Should I enable battery health management feature?

[Jrcao]

I upgraded the macOS to 10.15.5 last month and the battery management feature was ON by default.Since then, the charge cycles have increased from 2 to 5. I don't know if that's good for my device.I always keep my MacBook Pro(2019,16'') plugged in. In that case, should I enable battery health management feature?

Any advice?

 

[Honza1]

Keep Battery Health Management (BHM) on. It is trying to protect your battery against damage caused by being always plugged in. Batteries die by combination of events - deep discharge (below 10%) is the worst one, permanently being on charger next, and number of cycles is really the last. Search in MBP forum here... Many keep complaining here that their battery died with small number (e.g. 80, 150, 200...) cycles on it - after being nearly permanently connected to charger for 2 or 3 years. BHM is trying to reduce this charger damage by trading it for some cycles. Apple knows best how to optimize the battery life.
Your battery can under optimal conditions get around 1000 cycles and still be above 80% capacity.

Now, there are other ways - AlDente and similar apps can limit max charge which may actually be better - but is manual and you need to control it. Generally, LiIon batteries have optimal life time when cycled between ~30 and ~70% charge. If one wants to actively decide what charge he/she will need next time, this may be better.

 

[Jrcao]

Keep Battery Health Management (BHM) on. It is trying to protect your battery against damage caused by being always plugged in. Batteries die by combination of events - deep discharge (below 10%) is the worst one, permanently being on charger next, and number of cycles is really the last. Search in MBP forum here... Many keep complaining here that their battery died with small number (e.g. 80, 150, 200...) cycles on it - after being nearly permanently connected to charger for 2 or 3 years. BHM is trying to reduce this charger damage by trading it for some cycles. Apple knows best how to optimize the battery life.
Your battery can under optimal conditions get around 1000 cycles and still be above 80% capacity.

Now, there are other ways - AlDente and similar apps can limit max charge which may actually be better - but is manual and you need to control it. Generally, LiIon batteries have optimal life time when cycled between ~30 and ~70% charge. If one wants to actively decide what charge he/she will need next time, this may be better.

Get it! Thanks for your reply! After reading your advice, I think this battery management feature by Apple is good enough for me.Maybe I don't need third-party apps.?

 

[steve62388]

I upgraded the macOS to 10.15.5 last month and the battery management feature was ON by default.Since then, the charge cycles have increased from 2 to 5. I don't know if that's good for my device.I always keep my MacBook Pro(2019,16'') plugged in. In that case, should I enable battery health management feature?

Any advice?

In your case, absolutely. It’s a perfect match for your use.

 

[jent]

Is there a way to know when macOS is utilizing this feature? My brand-new MacBook Pro has been draining despite being connected to power but the Apple Store Genius and AppleCare phone support never mentioned this feature, and the battery icon in the menu bar never says that it's the intended behavior, just something like "Battery is not charging / Power source: power adapter." I've been thinking that my new Mac has a faulty logic board but would love to learn more about this feature, yet the official Apple support page doesn't go into specifics about when the feature is invoked, so I'm uncertain.

 

[Honza1]

There are at least 3-4 other discussions here with description of this feature. Just look through the forum using search function.