2026 retrospective
This advice is now the opposite of what Apple recommends. Modern lithium-ion batteries degrade faster from deep discharge cycles. Since macOS Catalina (2019), “Optimized Battery Charging” stops at 80% automatically. Apple recommends keeping your MacBook plugged in when possible and removed the “calibrate by full discharge” guidance around 2012.
This advice is now the opposite of what Apple recommends. Modern lithium-ion batteries degrade faster from deep discharge cycles. Since macOS Catalina (2019), “Optimized Battery Charging” stops at 80% automatically. Apple recommends keeping your MacBook plugged in when possible and removed the “calibrate by full discharge” guidance around 2012.
3 simple rules:
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DO NOT leave your charger connected when the battery is charged, even when you go to sleep.
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DO let it discharge completely, when using it wait till it reaches 0%, when sleeping it leave it alone, when you’ll wake up and you’ll open it, a resume from suspend to disk will greet you. OSX FTW.
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Monitor it and show off OSX performance counters to your friends (images courtesy of CoconutBattery.app and System Profiler.app)
