What do you guys think about this battery's health? It's suggesting to replace it soon, how soon are we talking?

[raghiid]

 

[theMarble]

You should replace it if you want a healthy battery in your MacBook as it has over 1000 cycles but is not urgent, here is my Retina's coconutBattery for comparison:


Mine has nearly 1000 but the health is much worse (64.2% vs 74.4%). You can get new batteries from iFixit and from eBay (if it has good reviews).

 

[raghiid]

You should replace it if you want a healthy battery in your MacBook as it has over 1000 cycles but is not urgent, here is my Retina's coconutBattery for comparison:

View attachment 1947304
Mine has nearly 1000 but the health is much worse (64.2% vs 74.4%). You can get new batteries from iFixit and from eBay (if it has good reviews).

Would you say a better strategy from now on is to use it plugged in most of the time? Would that technically 'suspend' its current health state or is that just nonsense?

 

[theMarble]

Would you say a better strategy from now on is to use it plugged in most of the time? Would that technically 'suspend' its current health state or is that just nonsense?

I had my Retina plugged in 24/7 for over 2 years and it worsened the battery health. These days I unplug it when it reaches 100%, then plug it back in once it reaches 70%.

 

[raghiid]

I had my Retina plugged in 24/7 for over 2 years and it worsened the battery health. These days I unplug it when it reaches 100%, then plug it back in once it reaches 70%.

Alright! I think I'm going to follow your advice. Thanks!

 

[theMarble]

Alright! I think I'm going to follow your advice. Thanks!

No problem! Though at 1000+ cycles I would still recommend at some point replacing the battery. It is easy to replace in your model. ifixit.com has a good guide.

 

[raghiid]

No problem! Though at 1000+ cycles I would still recommend at some point replacing the battery. It is easy to replace in your model. ifixit.com has a good guide.

Yes I will absolutely look into that but some time in the near future! I'm still getting about 4-5 hours out of this baby. More so if I'm just watching a movie/show in a dim room!

 

[aurora72]

Here is a screenshot from my MacBook Uni/Lat 09 for you to compare. The battery shows as %74 healthy in the app but in reality it feels perfectly healthy i.e. no sudden jumps in time Remaining during battery power, no unexpected surprises. Considering its 10+ years of age it feels and works perfectly. macOS version: Mojave.

 

[raghiid]

Here is a screenshot from my MacBook Uni/Lat 09 for you to compare. The battery shows as %74 healthy in the app but in reality it feels perfectly healthy i.e. no sudden jumps in time Remaining during battery power, no unexpected surprises. Considering its 10+ years of age it feels and works perfectly. macOS version: Mojave.

View attachment 1947749

That is crazy impressive!
If you don't mind me asking, do you use it plugged in all the time? And if/when you unplug it, do you let it reach really low levels?

 

[MBAir2010]

That is crazy impressive!
If you don't mind me asking, do you use it plugged in all the time? And if/when you unplug it, do you let it reach really low levels?

i my macbook air form 2010 has a great battery life considering the age as well.
the MacBook air was always plugged in except for 2 nights since 2010.

-hoped this helped!

 

[raghiid]

i my macbook air form 2010 has a great battery life considering the age as well.
the MacBook air was always plugged in except for 2 nights since 2010.

-hoped this helped! View attachment 1947775

Thanks!
Your battery's age is about 4000 days with 600 loadcycles, and mine's in the 2000's with 1800 loadcycles, serves me right!

 

[MBAir2010]

Your battery's age is about 4000 days with 600 loadcycles, and mine's in the 2000's with 1800 loadcycles, serves me right!

seems to me computers and parts were designed made to last waaaaay back in 2010.
there is a MacBook pro 2010 17 someone is offering very cheap i might purchase soon because the thing still rocks!
just wondering if that model has the keyboard backlight, and i probably need a new battery i suppose
which is the topic of this thread!

 

[aurora72]

That is crazy impressive!
If you don't mind me asking, do you use it plugged in all the time? And if/when you unplug it, do you let it reach really low levels?

Actually I had mild issues with this battery when I bought it 2nd hand but I fixed them quite easily. The issues were mainly related to the battery being unused for a long period of time and the Mojave's unreasonable way of evaluating the battery health (Lion and Mountain Lion had no such problems)
As for the question, I use it plugged in most of the time. But later I've found out that in order to increase the battery life, it's best to keep the charge level between around %80 - %40. So I've downloaded and installed a very basic app called Charge Limiter version 1.5. With this app you can set the maximum charge limit. When you open the app it just asks for a number up to 100 (percent) The generally suggested number is 80, so I enter 80. After that it pops up the notification dialog below.

When I unplug it, I usually avoid reaching too much low levels. Actually I discharged to very low levels only once or twice in order to recalibrate the battery when I first bought it.

 

[raghiid]

Actually I had mild issues with this battery when I bought it 2nd hand but I fixed them quite easily. The issues were mainly related to the battery being unused for a long period of time and the Mojave's unreasonable way of evaluating the battery health (Lion and Mountain Lion had no such problems)
As for the question, I use it plugged in most of the time. But later I've found out that in order to increase the battery life, it's best to keep the charge level between around %80 - %40. So I've downloaded and installed a very basic app called Charge Limiter version 1.5. With this app you can set the maximum charge limit. The suggested limit is %80 so I set it to %80 so the battery is charged at about %80 level. In the picture below you can see the app in action.

When I unplug it, I usually avoid reaching too much low levels. Actually I discharged to very low levels only once or twice in order to recalibrate the battery when I first bought it.
View attachment 1947881

So the app is merely a notifier? Notifying you when the battery reaches 80% so you can unplug, or is it actually setting a ceiling for the battery and preventing it from charging past 80 even while plugged in?

 

[aurora72]

So the app is merely a notifier? Notifying you when the battery reaches 80% so you can unplug, or is it actually setting a ceiling for the battery and preventing it from charging past 80 even while plugged in?

Oh no, it 's not a mere notifier. It does what you say latter: It sets a ceiling for the battery and so prevents it from charging past 80 even while plugged in (I've just edited the related section in my message) And it seems to keep this charge limit setting even if you change the harddisk and boot another version of macOS because several days ago I plugged in my Mountain Lion installed HDD and noticed that it wasn't charging beyond %80. I wanted to change that limit on M.Lion so I've installed the same app on M.Lion but it didn't work. None of the older versions of it worked either. I wish this app had a M.Lion compatible versions too.

 

[raghiid]

Oh no, it 's not a mere notifier. It does what you say latter: It sets a ceiling for the battery and so prevents it from charging past 80 even while plugged in (I've just edited the related section in my message) And it seems to keep this charge limit setting even if you change the harddisk and boot another version of macOS because several days ago I plugged in my Mountain Lion installed HDD and noticed that it wasn't charging beyond %80. I wanted to change that limit on M.Lion so I've installed the same app on M.Lion but it didn't work. None of the older versions of it worked either. I wish this app had a M.Lion compatible versions too.

Interesting! That sounds like something I might try. Thank you!

 

[f54da]

Battery looks good to me. 3rd party replacements are garbage. If you're planning to use plugged into power for all time, set a charge limit to around 3.7 volts (check via "ioreg -l | grep CellVoltage") which might be anywhere from 20-40% SOC. Otherwise try to minimize number of cycles and limit max charge to ~60% or so.

 

[B S Magnet]

Actually I had mild issues with this battery when I bought it 2nd hand but I fixed them quite easily. The issues were mainly related to the battery being unused for a long period of time and the Mojave's unreasonable way of evaluating the battery health (Lion and Mountain Lion had no such problems)
As for the question, I use it plugged in most of the time. But later I've found out that in order to increase the battery life, it's best to keep the charge level between around %80 - %40. So I've downloaded and installed a very basic app called Charge Limiter version 1.5. With this app you can set the maximum charge limit. When you open the app it just asks for a number up to 100 (percent) The generally suggested number is 80, so I enter 80. After that it pops up the notification dialog below.

When I unplug it, I usually avoid reaching too much low levels. Actually I discharged to very low levels only once or twice in order to recalibrate the battery when I first bought it.
View attachment 1947881

Thanks for the heads-up on this utility.

I’ve been looking for something like this for a while. I got excited to learn of its existence here… until I discovered the developer’s “source code” on that link isn’t source code at all, but just the same AppleScript application found in the main binary download — meaning, for now it can’t be compiled to run on Intel OS X/macOS builds older than what the developer integrated into the compiled code. I’m not yet sure whether that means “nothing older than Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra/etc.”, but I do hope the developer will make that source code available.

 

[f54da]

Thanks for the heads-up on this utility.

I’ve been looking for something like this for a while. I got excited to learn of its existence here… until I discovered the developer’s “source code” on that link isn’t source code at all, but just the same AppleScript application found in the main binary download — meaning, for now it can’t be compiled to run on Intel OS X/macOS builds older than what the developer integrated into the compiled code. I’m not yet sure whether that means “nothing older than Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra/etc.”, but I do hope the developer will make that source code available.

Just compile smcutil and write to the BCLM key. Works fine on any os version.

 

[B S Magnet]

Just compile smcutil and write to the BCLM key. Works fine on any os version.

A heads-up on my coding skills:

They don’t exist, except when I can tinker with pre-existing source code to try to comprehend what’s being done and to try to accommodate the environment for which I want to compile it. Even then, only sometimes can I make something actually work. I’m not a developer.

Which is to say: thanks for the reply and your tip. Hopefully someone else with those skills can apply that to create a utility like this for older OS X builds (for me, this would include Snow Leopard).

 

[f54da]

A heads-up on my coding skills:

They don’t exist, except when I can tinker with pre-existing source code to try to comprehend what’s being done and to try to accommodate the environment for which I want to compile it. Even then, only sometimes can I make something actually work. I’m not a developer.

Which is to say: thanks for the reply and your tip. Hopefully someone else with those skills can apply that to create a utility like this for older OS X builds (for me, this would include Snow Leopard).

My bad for being cryptic. I thought "smcutil" utility was well known but it appears it's not common enough (since google didn't point to the correct repo as the first result). Grab the .c and .h file in https://github.com/hholtmann/smcFanControl/tree/master/smc-command - stick them in a folder, run "gcc -DCMD_TOOL_BUILD -framework IOKit smc.c", ignore any warnings, and run the resulting binary with "-k BCLM -w 4a" where 4a is the hex value of the charge limit you want. Might need sudo when you're running the binary.

You can also set BFCL to change the level for green light on magsafe (default is 95), but that gets cleared after reboot so I never bother (or create a startup script to do it if you really want)

 

[raghiid]

A heads-up on my coding skills:

They don’t exist, except when I can tinker with pre-existing source code to try to comprehend what’s being done and to try to accommodate the environment for which I want to compile it. Even then, only sometimes can I make something actually work. I’m not a developer.

Which is to say: thanks for the reply and your tip. Hopefully someone else with those skills can apply that to create a utility like this for older OS X builds (for me, this would include Snow Leopard).

Maybe this will help?

GitHub - DevNulPavel/osx_battery_charge_limit: Intel-only Macbook (OSX) limit maximum battery charge using SMC

Intel-only Macbook (OSX) limit maximum battery charge using SMC - GitHub - DevNulPavel/osx_battery_charge_limit: Intel-only Macbook (OSX) limit maximum battery charge using SMC

github.com