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I have the infamous "battery not charging" problem on my 2014 Retina MacBook Pro. The power source shows as "Power source: power adapter".

I checked system info and I have 1100+ cycles, which I guess is a lot. So my guess is that the battery is dead, and so it stopped charging.

Right now, the battery percentage shows 6% and seems to be staying that way. It is not increasing at all.

What worries me is every time I reboot, the battery seems to drain a bit, meaning that after sufficient reboots the battery will eventually reach 0% (as my MacBook isn't charging), and at that point I won't be able to boot up again at all.

Should I set all my energy settings to "never sleep", "never turn off", etc. to prevent any rebooting, so that the battery does not drain any further?

What can I do short of buying a new computer? I don't think there is Apple service where I am for the next few weeks. I would buy a new charger, but it appears that the charger is not the problem (or at least there is a good chance it isn't).

Coconut Battery status: 8440 mAh, Full charge capacity 6973 mAh (guess that means my battery is 82% healthy?), Cycle count: 1177, macOS battery status: good.

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  • Could you possibly comment on the health of the battery, using a tool like coconutBattery? Although you've solved your problem, it seems like it might be an interesting factor to consider.
    – Oion Akif
    Apr 2, 2018 at 1:18
  • Sure: 8440 mAh, Full charge capacity 6973 mAh (guess that means my battery is 82% healthy?), Cycle count: 1177, macOS battery status: good. It seems I am still far away from a dead battery, even though I am above 1000 cycles? Not sure how to interpret that.
    – user1721135
    Apr 2, 2018 at 5:58
  • Thanks for the info and the edit to your answer. I still think your question could do with a bit of work as it seems to be veering towards an XY Problem. I'll suggest an edit to better reflect your question.
    – Oion Akif
    Apr 2, 2018 at 6:08
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    The mac can boot with a dead battery if on power. You can get the battery replaced. Check the power supply first.
    – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen
    Apr 2, 2018 at 7:24

3 Answers 3

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I found the answer to my charging problem in another question:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/301722/41731

Please make sure to upvote the answer I linked.

Short version: yank the cord forcefully and horizontally out of the notebook. Repeat it a couple of times, until the orange light starts and it starts charging. Visit the link for more information.

For reference, this is what my pins look like after the yanking (sorry, don't have a before foto):

enter image description here

The second pin from the right maybe looks kind of intended still, it could be the ground pin, but I don't actually know.

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  • Wow - was your ground pin stuck too? that's the one single point of failure for sure.
    – bmike ♦
    Apr 1, 2018 at 20:47
  • At the moment it is not clear which question this answer is answering – the question asks whether a MacBook can run off of AC power, but this answer seems to address how to fix a malfunctioning AC adaptor. It would be nice if you could update your answer to be a bit clearer.
    – Oion Akif
    Apr 2, 2018 at 1:19
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    Thx, edited my answer. @bmike it appears so. One of the pins did look kind of stuck and it still does a little to be honest. But maybe it got unstuck just enough to charge again.
    – user1721135
    Apr 2, 2018 at 5:52
  • What the... this actually worked! Noticed there was no light on my cable. Carefully removing it didn't do the trick, but forcibly yanking it like answer suggests got the light back!
    – atkayla
    Mar 20, 2019 at 2:07
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Well - there are a lot of questions in the first version of the post, so here’s some general advice.

  1. For non-removable batteries - don’t remove them unless you have no other option and feel they are a fire risk or they are bulging and of-gassing and you worry that physical damage will happen or you can’t get service to prevent a fire risk due to overcharging past the service life.
  2. All Apple products will run much slower when the battery is failed or disconnected.

For the slower - this can be a very noticible - like 2/3 as fast as normal or worse slowdown for some benchmarks. Think of a water service where the water coming in to the building depends on how much is in the tank supplying the house, how much pressure is present to push the water and how large the pipe supplying the house is.

Apple designs the battery to serve as a local tank to cover quick surges that can’t fit in the pipe. You run slower when you don’t have that “accumulator” or “capacitor” to store bursts of energy.

As to the safety, when a battery is done it needs to be removed from service since if you continue to charge them - the chemistry can’t take the energy and the cells are designed to safely off gas that energy in a permanent chemical change and there are bags to contain that gas / growth. The pressure of that expansion will eventually remove the battery from the device and cause anyone to see that the Mac is deformed. So it’s never safe to keep a battery in forever - especially when it says “service battery” or the charging chip literally disconnects itself from the charging software and says - no more charging.

You probably are at low risk for a couple weeks and will want to get a backup of your files in case you need to call for service and arrange to ship the Mac to a place where it can be repaired. Battery exchanges are low cost compared to the price of a new or used Mac in most cases, so unless you need a new computer - fix the battery. If you do sell it - just get a quote on the battery and know the value of your computer is less that amount unless the person is buying it for scrap or spare parts.

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  • OK but can I assume that I will be able to boot, once battery is at 0%? Also the battery, while plugged in, doesn't drain at all. It just stays at 6%. So its not used at all? Right now the macbook is not slower. Not sure if relevant, but system info says the battery is "OK".
    – user1721135
    Apr 1, 2018 at 16:54
  • Keep using it as long as it says OK and doesn’t physically swell / deform the case / prevent the trackpad and keyboard from functioning. Yes - the system will run as long as the power charger is supplying enough voltage to run the pre-boot checks.
    – bmike ♦
    Apr 1, 2018 at 16:57
  • Weird! I tried the answer to this question: apple.stackexchange.com/questions/301710/… yanked the cord horizontally. Suddenly the green light started again! But still it shows "not charging". Any idea what that means?
    – user1721135
    Apr 1, 2018 at 18:27
  • OK, I yanked it some more and now it charges. Insane.
    – user1721135
    Apr 1, 2018 at 18:35
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I just had this problem - solved simply by resetting the SMC. This takes around 30 seconds - definitely recommend that you try this first.

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