It turned out the fault was with the MagSafe charger which wasn’t functioning. We once took a MacBook Air to an Apple Store because it wasn’t charging. Thus, you will consume charge cycles even if your MacBook is mostly plugged in, with only the occasional hour or two on battery power. Using 50% of the battery life one day before recharging and using 50% the next day will mean one charge cycle has been notched-up. It should be noted that a charge cycle doesn’t necessarily mean entirely running out of juice from a full charge. This is important because during each charge cycle the battery loses a small fraction of its ability to hold charge, which is what causes the capacity to drop over time. This measures how many times 100% of the battery charge has been used-up. What is a good battery cycle count for MacBook?Īnother figure worth noting within CoconutBattery is the Cycles Count figure, which is also known as the charge cycles figure. It just won’t last as long as it once did, and a Replace Soon status message will almost certainly appear. However, the MacBook will still report the battery is charged 100%. A MacBook Pro that had an original design capacity of 5,400mAh and now stores only 3,700mAh has lost just over 30% of its capacity, for example. Apple doesn’t explain how it generates the battery life status reading but it’s probably divined by measuring the maximum charge the battery can currently hold against its original capacity when new.ĬoconutBattery will display both these figures, measured in milliamp hours (mAh).

Perhaps surprisingly, Replace Soon is a mere warning rather than a demand and your MacBook should still function correctly on battery power, albeit with noticeably shorter battery life than when it was new.Īpps like the free CoconutBattery (above) let you dig-down into technical details to get more detailed information. It should be obvious that Normal indicates a healthy battery.

After the Condition heading at the top of the menu you’ll see one of four battery status messages: Normal, Replace Soon, Replace Now, and Service Battery.

Click the battery charge icon at the top right of the desktop near the clock.Your MacBook constantly monitors the health of its battery. Luckily it is easy to find out whether there is a problem with your battery.

If you just aren’t getting adequate battery life out of your Mac if could be due to a fault or it might mean your battery needs to be replaced or serviced. For that reason a three year old MacBook Air probably won’t last the 12 hours Apple used to claim, but it should last a reasonable amount of time. Of course, as your Mac ages you won’t get as much battery life out of it due to natural degradation, but there are a number of things you can do to minimise that, as we discuss in this article about

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