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I use a Mac Book Pro. I want to prolong the life of the battery as long as I could.

One of the thing that I do is to limit my Battery charge to 70% only. (Using Aldente)

Another thing that I want to do is, slow charging of the battery. My default charger is a 96W charger which is a fast charger. Fast charging as we know is not good for the battery. I have tried with a 35W charger, but that is not sufficiently high enough to charge the battery and run the machine as well, due to which the battery power drops.

Now I can try with a slightly higher rated charger, but I want to keep that as a last option. Is there any any way I can limit the current so that the battery charges very slowly, using third party software or by making some config changes?

Or a complete alternative to this is to limit my battery charge to lets say 50% and keep it always plugged in? But I have noticed that the base of the machine alaways remains hot, which again is not good for the battery.

So I want something which does a slow charge and also keeps the battery cool. Any Ideas ?

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    Regarding temperature: If you have one of the ≤2019 Macbooks with Intel CPU I highly recommend [volta.garymathews.com/](Volta) which allows you to limit CPU power consumption. Pretty much solved my noise and overheating problems with a barely noticeable impact on performance when I set the power limit to 20W. Per default the CPU is unlimited and will draw up to 120W until it runs into thermal throttling at 95°C or so.
    – Michael
    Commented Jan 22 at 6:46
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    "Fast charging as we know is not good for the battery" [citation needed]
    – GammaGames
    Commented Jan 22 at 17:51

1 Answer 1

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Charging wattage

My default charger is a 96W charger which is a fast charger. Fast charging as we know is not good for the battery. I have tried with a 35W charger, but that is not sufficiently high enough to charge the battery and run the machine.

You cannot manage the amount of current flowing from the charger; this is not how this works. First, current is drawn, not pushed. The device (MacBook, iPad, iPhone, etc.) negotiates with with the charger to deliver what it’s asking for. Secondly, the wattage rating on the charger is the maximum current output, not what it delivers all the time. Your 96W charger could be outputting just 3 watts at any time.

Charging to 70/80%

There is no need to do this. Overcharging a battery can cause damage to it, but the Apple engineers have already designed, built, and calibrated the battery charging so that it never charges to 100% of the battery’s full capacity. Plus, with the built in battery management features of macOS, you’re not adding much if anything at all in the way of prolonged battery life.

Or a complete alternative to this is to limit my battery charge to lets say 50% and keep it always plugged in? But I have noticed that the base of the machine alaways remains hot, which again is not good for the battery.

The base remains hot for one of two reasons: continual activation of the charging circuits because your Mac wasn’t designed to use a charging ceiling of 50% and/or you’re using the machine for what it was designed for. Suffice to say, what you interpret as “hot” is well within spec.

TL;DR

I advise you not to pursue this. Trying to micromanage your battery in this way could have deleterious effects. Your best course of action is to either budget for an eventual battery replacement or keep you AppleCare+ contract in effect.

Further reading

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    As a point of reference to the battery management Allan is referring to - I have a 2021 MPB (Ventura) which sits on an arm in my office connected to a 27" display. It never leaves the office, and is never unplugged from power. macOS charges the laptop to 80-something percent and stops there.
    – IconDaemon
    Commented Jan 21 at 18:09
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    Every time I see this type of question - & variants on it crop up a a lot - I'm tempted to think, "Can I do better myself by patiently watching & controlling than an onboard chip dedicated to the task; one that never sleeps, never gets bored." Answer, invariably, no.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jan 21 at 19:28
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