What should I limit my battery charge level to?

[Isamilis]

Yep, it becomes second nature before too long. My iPhone 12 Pro Max, I'm doing the 40-80% and I can pull it off the charger, without even thinking about it, almost on the dot 80% every time. It's actually quite cool. But I've noticed that doing this on my devices this year (2020 MBP, 2020 iPad Pro 11') - the capacity is actually increasing a little.

Isidor's book - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071NJZCGF - actually talks about this - within the first 100 cycles, batteries can actually increase a little in capacity. I guess this is especially true if they're treated nicely (not at 0, 100% extremes).

My MBP, vs my 2017 MBP is seeing some really nice battery %s after 6 months. See attached for 1-5 months. Below is 5-6 months.

I do AlDente at 70-80%.

View attachment 1739737

Wow, thank you for the book reference. Btw, what happen if I set 70% in AlDente (but still plugged the charger), other than it just stopped the charge? When will the charge started again? Or it will on-off to maintain the charge at 70%? Thanks!

 

[BigMcGuire]

Wow, thank you for the book reference. Btw, what happen if I set 70% in AlDente (but still plugged the charger), other than it just stopped the charge? When will the charge started again? Or it will on-off to maintain the charge at 70%? Thanks!

From what I’ve seen on my MBP over the months - it says not charging and runs off of wall power completely. I’m not completely sure if it bypasses the battery completely or not but I like to think it does. My cycles for my 2020 MBP is 6 using AlDente.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I've been following this thread and similar topics for a while now. I've just received a new Top-case for my Macbook Pro 2019 15" with a new battery from November 2020. I've set Al Dente to 60% because I mainly use it on a charger nowadays. I know from previous experience that the calibration will go bad after a little while, I am just wondering how to re-calibrate the battery without going to a few extreme cycles of 0-100%

Is it even possible to recalibrate the true capacity from time to time without doing full cycles? thanks

Worst I’ve seen is 10% personally. Just unplugging it for 5-10 mins on battery did it for me and brought the % back to actual %. So I run it for a few mins on battery once or twice a month to keep the % accurate but I’ve never seen worse than a 10% difference if coconutBattery is right.

 

[GigabitEthernet]

Can somebody summarise in short for me.

For my M1 MBP, which I have plugged in most of the time, I should be running it down to 40% off the charger and then capping to 80% when plugged in. Rinse and repeat?

And the same for my iPhone, which is also often plugged in as well?

Does fast charging these devices have any impact?

 

[OSX15]

Can somebody summarise in short for me.

For my M1 MBP, which I have plugged in most of the time, I should be running it down to 40% off the charger and then capping to 80% when plugged in. Rinse and repeat?

I would suggest capping it at 70% max with a charge limiter and once a week drain it from 70% to 40%
this will be enough for the battery. It may lose accurate battery calibration data, but this is reversible by just removing the upper charge limit later and charging the battery to 100% and draining it to about 20% a couple of times. This scenario is recommended if you are using the device mostly plugged in.

And the same for my iPhone, which is also often plugged in as well?

it is recommended not to let your battery run under 20%
Charging should optimally be done to max 80% for longevity reasons.

Does fast charging these devices have any impact?

Yes, fast charging of any kind will increase heat and stress on batteries. Best for batteries is slow charging.
But consider there are many more factors; in recent Intel MacBook Pro’s for example, the power drawn when doing heavy CPU/GPU tasks can (almost) exceed the power supplied by the wall charger, resulting in a very excessive drain from the battery and therefore increased heat. you don’t have to worry about that since you have the M1. Some peoples MacBooks are full of dust inside, restricting thermal airflow and preventing a optimum heat dissipation. But very unlikely you will already experience this since you have a fairly new device that also has a much lower thermal profile. In general don’t stress over this too much but just remember that high cell voltage (keeping battery fully charged all the time) together with heat are your two worst enemies. Also prevent your device from deep discharging (getting below 20%)

 

[srbNYC]

Newcomer to AlDente. Just installed the 2.1 Alpha on my M1 (based on the info on this thread; thanks, everyone!). Does it automatically update or prompt to update when they release a new version?

 

[TBoneMac]

So I want to limit my battery charge on my MacBook Pro. Anyway, what should I limit it to? 80%? 70%? Or 50 or 40%? Apple suggests to store their battery at 50%, so maybe at that? I'm going to be running off of AC power, by the way.

Thanks!

___

DISCLAIMER:

Before some smartass decides to tell me that it won't help increase the longevity of my battery, I don't need your opinion. My motive is to keep the battery cycle count low to increase resale value when I sell it next year. I know a bunch of smartasses will try to tell me that there's no difference, but a fact you can't argue with is that a lower cycle count increases resale value.

Once again, if you want to be a smartass, please don't comment. I mean I'm not stopping you, but I'll pretty much just ignore you. So don't waste your time telling me how it won't help my battery health. I know, and I don't give a f. It's not the point of the discussion, keep your comment spam somewhere else.

___

Edit: It seems like, despite my disclaimer, people still want to tell me that what I'm doing is inconvenient for me. No, it's not. I set my battery max charge level to 50% and I forgot about it. I'm not worried about my battery health at all. I have peace of mind that my battery's going to last a bit longer since it's constantly at 50%, rather than 100%. This is not a routine I do every day, I literally just set it once a few weeks ago and forgot about it. And since my laptop is tethered all the time I've never needed to make full use of the battery. Keep this in mind before you comment.

What you’re suggesting is extremely unethical.

You’re basically asking people “how can I make it seem like my battery cycle is lower than it is so that I can rip someone off in the future”

What you’re doing doesn’t improve the battery life at all and all you’re doing is ripping someone off in the future since they will assume that the battery is almost new when it really is not.

The fact that you’re cussing and telling threatening people to “keep this in mind” etc.. is also a red flag. Why should we be worried about what you have to say. Lots of people here are essentially pointing out that this will not improve the battery life and you attack//ignore them or add an edit into your post. Your battery will not last longer like this and selling the battery like this is unethical unless you tell the person beforehand that you did all this to the battery to make it look like it has less cycles.

You’re trying to get extra money for resale but you should not be getting any extra money for the resale because the battery is still being used that’s the problem here.


—

Apple computers already have a battery health management which does something like this anyways, you may “believe” that it would work better if it kept the charge around 50%, well then use an app to do that. But at least tell the person you’re selling the macbook to that you did this And that you’ve used it a lot - do not try to sell it as if the battery has barely been used.

 

[BigMcGuire]

What you’re suggesting is extremely unethical.

You’re basically asking people “how can I make it seem like my battery cycle is lower than it is so that I can rip someone off in the future”

What you’re doing doesn’t improve the battery life at all and all you’re doing is ripping someone off in the future since they will assume that the battery is almost new when it really is not.

The fact that you’re cussing and telling threatening people to “keep this in mind” etc.. is also a red flag. Why should we be worried about what you have to say. Lots of people here are essentially pointing out that this will not improve the battery life and you attack//ignore them or add an edit into your post. Your battery will not last longer like this and selling the battery like this is unethical unless you tell the person beforehand that you did all this to the battery to make it look like it has less cycles.

You’re trying to get extra money for resale but you should not be getting any extra money for the resale because the battery is still being used that’s the problem here.


—

Apple computers already have a battery health management which does something like this anyways, you may “believe” that it would work better if it kept the charge around 50%, well then use an app to do that. But at least tell the person you’re selling the macbook to that you did this And that you’ve used it a lot - do not try to sell it as if the battery has barely been used.

Wait what? Charging only to 80% most definitely does reduce capacity loss over time.

Second, there's no way to fool Apple's readings into making people think they have a good battery when they don't. That's not possible. ????

How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries - Battery University

Discover what causes Li-ion to age and what the battery user can do to prolong its life

batteryuniversity.com

After 5 years a battery stored at 100% is going to have a LOT less capacity than a battery stored at 50% or even 80% over 5 years.

Tesla even does this by trying to discourage the use the full 100% by recommending not charging to 100%. This is a fundamental of li-ion/poly batteries - if you only use a tiny % of the capacity, it's going to SIGNIFICANTLY extend the life of the battery. Satellites operate on this principle and use batteries for decades this way.

While Apple's batteries do a pretty good job of keeping within 5-6% of design capacity after a few years (my experience), MacBooks can see some extreme conditions (heat, daily usage, constant AC usage) - so limiting the charge to 70% or 80% can have a massive impact on the battery's health over time. Yes, Apple's own optimized charging helps but you still spend a lot of time at near max capacity which has a detrimental effect on the longevity of the battery.

My 2017 MBP I had plugged into the wall most of its life. My 2020 MBP I've got set to 70-80% Al Dente. Comparing the two with coconutBattery over time is showing a significant difference even after just 6 months. My 2020 MBP has almost the same capacity it had (Apple's own reporting) the day I bought it.

 

[Mike Boreham]

What you’re suggesting is extremely unethical.

You’re basically asking people “how can I make it seem like my battery cycle is lower than it is so that I can rip someone off in the future”

I think you are misunderstanding what the thread is about.

There is nothing unethical going on here.

 

[marklcfc]

Mine always charges to 100% regardless of the setting enabled for it to go to 80%. It used to stop at 80% until about a month ago and now it just goes to 100 even when I've ran the battery down to below 10% once and it still went back up to 100.

 

[srbNYC]

Help. Just restarted my Mac, and kept getting the repeating “AlDente.app” will damage your computer. You should move it to the Trash. pop-up. I did command-I and checked "Override Malware Protection," which stopped the pop-up—but when I try to open the app, I get You do not have permission to open the application “AlDente.app”.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Help. Just restarted my Mac, and kept getting the repeating “AlDente.app” will damage your computer. You should move it to the Trash. pop-up. I did command-I and checked "Override Malware Protection," but when I try to open the app, I get You do not have permission to open the application “AlDente.app”.

Wow really? ! Oh my.... did Apple add that app to their malware detection list? My wife and I run this app and we haven't gotten that yet. Though we don't restart much.

I'd just uninstall and reinstall it if you want. How interesting.........

 

[srbNYC]

Not being able to launch it is troublesome as well, because the AlDente folks warn to set it to "100%" before uninstalling, because it will leave whatever prior setting you had in place.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Not being able to launch it is troublesome as well, because the AlDente folks warn to set it to "100%" before uninstalling, because it will leave whatever prior setting you had in place.

You can do an SMC reset (the very long hold power button restart) to reset it to 100% too. All AlDente does is set it there I think. I've noticed if I crash Mac OS it goes back to 100% too. lol.

 

[Mike Boreham]

You can do an SMC reset (the very long hold power button restart)

I thought SMC reset on M1 was a full shut down for at least 30 secs, though not seen an Apple doc saying this.

I haven't seen "very long hold power button restart" mentioned before. Isn't that just going to force shutdown the Mac, like you have to do when its frozen.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I thought SMC reset on M1 was a full shut down for at least 30 secs, though not seen an Apple doc saying this.

I haven't seen "very long hold power button restart" mentioned before. Isn't that just going to force shutdown the Mac, like you have to do when its frozen.

You know, I don't know. I've heard it too but I've never actually done it. I crash my Mac enough (developer here) to have it reset on me enough times that I don't need to SMC reset for Al Dente. LOL.

Help. Just restarted my Mac, and kept getting the repeating “AlDente.app” will damage your computer. You should move it to the Trash. pop-up. I did command-I and checked "Override Malware Protection," which stopped the pop-up—but when I try to open the app, I get You do not have permission to open the application “AlDente.app”.

https://github.com/davidwernhart/AlDente/issues/178 Looks like someone reported it on the GitHub.

 

[srbNYC]

Yes, I deleted and reinstalled, and again had to check the override malware button. Still says I do not have permission to open.

Cannot find any online confirmation on how to reset SMC on a Silicon Mac. Everything I see says it's for Intel only, specifying T2 chips etc. I hope my Mac isn't permanently set to charge only to 63%. Will try a minutes-long shutdown, but I'm skeptical.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Yes, I deleted and reinstalled, and again had to check the override malware button. Still says I do not have permission to open.

Cannot find any online confirmation on how to reset SMC on a Silicon Mac. Everything I see says it's for Intel only, specifying T2 chips etc. I hope my Mac isn't permanently set to charge only to 63%. Will try a minutes-long shutdown, but I'm skeptical.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295 Interesting - you're right appears it is only an Intel Mac thing! (Resetting SMC). I'll keep looking.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I just asked on the Al Dente GitHub. Will let you know if they respond @srbNYC.

Edit, HAH , you're on there already .

 

[srbNYC]

I just asked on the Al Dente GitHub. Will let you know if they respond @srbNYC.

Edit, HAH , you're on there already .

Ha! I just signed up at GitHub to tackle this. Fun!

 

[Mike Boreham]

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295 Interesting - you're right appears it is only an Intel Mac thing! (Resetting SMC). I'll keep looking.

You are probably seeing the same as me, but this link is one place where the shut down for 30 seconds is mentioned.

Overall though my impression is that it is not possible.

 

[herzozo]

Hey guys, I've just tested and my MacBook charged above the limit that was previously set in AlDente so I assume it's gonna charge to 100% for me & everyone else affected by this!

 

[zlatans]

Yes, I deleted and reinstalled, and again had to check the override malware button. Still says I do not have permission to open.

Cannot find any online confirmation on how to reset SMC on a Silicon Mac. Everything I see says it's for Intel only, specifying T2 chips etc. I hope my Mac isn't permanently set to charge only to 63%. Will try a minutes-long shutdown, but I'm skeptical.

You could try to override the % level you specified via AlDente by using a similar app. Have a look here: EternalPower. I have used it on my MacBook Air M1 while AlDente was still in a development phase for M1 chips.

The developer of EternalPower was one of the users who managed to make it work for M1 chips under this discussion in the AlDente space on Github.

I just hope that is not blocked as malware too.

 

[jeyf]

iPhone batteries and not a big issue:

i had my iPhone7 (that i cant remember when I bought it) just replaced its battery. Did it at the genus bar, replaced while i wait, took 1hr and $50. Even with the covid situation. I am on my way for another 3-5years.

 

[srbNYC]

Hey guys, I've just tested and my MacBook charged above the limit that was previously set in AlDente so I assume it's gonna charge to 100% for me & everyone else affected by this!

So far, I'm up to 52% and watching very intently!