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I powered off my M1 MacBook Air a few (~3) months ago and I was surprised to find out that it had drained completely when I tried to power it on today. Why did this happen?

If I recall correctly the battery level was around 50% when I kept it in storage, so what caused the complete drain?

Will it harm the battery life? How should I store my MacBook without using it for a prolonged period of time and not harm the battery?

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  • A MacBook (and many laptops) do passive work in the background when not used. Like syncing data to and from iCloud, messages and email and such. “Find My” functionality assured devices are constantly communicating with Apple servers. I doubt this will affect battery life. I would not be concerned about this.
    – Giacomo1968
    Jan 13 at 15:49
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    @Giacomo1968 It's not going to sync data if it's shutdown, though.
    – benwiggy
    Jan 13 at 15:56
  • @benwiggy True. Assumed the MacBook was put to sleep. My bad!
    – Giacomo1968
    Jan 13 at 15:57

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I'm at a loss to explain why it didn't hold its charge if it was actually shut-down (off), rather than just sleeping. Always make sure that it has finished shutting down before closing the lid. Perhaps it turned itself on (Wake on LAN..? Scheduled startup?)

Apple's own documentation does say that storing a battery at 0% can put it into a 'deep discharge state', rendering it unusable. If that hasn't happened, you should be alright.

A one-off incident is unlikely to have much bearing on the overall life of the battery: as with our own health, it's the repeated, long-term behaviour that matters.

https://www.apple.com/uk/batteries/maximizing-performance/

Apple does recommend storing at 50%, so you've done everything right.

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  • Scheduled start was never enabled (I checked) and I don't think WOL is even support because there's no LAN port, the most similar option I could find is "Wake for network access" and it's turned off too. So that only leaves the possibility of an improper shutdown. I waited until the screen and backlight turned off before shutting the lid, but even if I did not do it properly, doesn't macOS go into hibernation automatically after a prolonged period of time?
    – John
    Jan 14 at 16:04
  • Also I checked the battery health and the capacity is still 100%, so I guess my battery is still good!
    – John
    Jan 14 at 16:05

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