Here’s Why Your MacBook Stops Charging At 80% And How To Fix It
If you’ve been noticing that your MacBook’s charging has a tendency to stall out at around 80 percent, this is most likely an intentional feature. Starting with macOS 10.15 Catalina, Apple instituted something it calls Battery Health Management (viaApple) — a built-in software feature that purposely throttles your laptop’s battery charging levels in an effort toprolong its lifespan.
What this means is that any Intel-based MacBooks running macOS Catalina or above will likely have this feature turned on by default. When it’s turned on, your MacBook will basically monitor your usage habits and formulate a schedule. Then it will automatically pause charging at around 80 percent until roughly an hour or so before it expects heavier use.
Apple’s reasoning is that lithium-ion batteries — such as the ones found in MacBooks — slowly lose effectiveness due to the passage of time and frequent recharging. The older your MacBook gets, and the more times you charge the battery, the more its overall capacity is reduced. Through this Battery Health Management, Apple is cutting back on the number of times the battery is going through a full charging cycle to cut back on the general strain and help it last a bit longer in the grand scheme of things.
What if I don’t want that?
Provided your MacBook meets the proper criteria (has an Intel processor and is using macOS 10.15 Catalina), you have a few options when it comes to adjusting your Battery Health Management settings. Though if you’re running a version of macOS that predates Catalina, or your MacBook is using an Apple Silicon CPU (viaApple) instead of Intel, your charging limitations are probably not due to settings andrepairsmay be in order.
