How-To: Calibrate Your Laptop Battery
I recently wrote about extending your MacBook’s battery life via a firmware update. Today I am going to outline how to extend your battery life by calibrating it so that it holds its charge properly. After all, running out of juice with when you’re on the go is the worst possible scenario in the electronic world!
As a general rule, you should calibrate your battery every month or two to keep it running in top form.
To calibrate your laptop’s battery:
- Plug your laptop in and let it charge completely (your battery icon in the menu bar will be completely full and the charger’s connector light turns green).
- Keep the laptop plugged in for another two hours (after it is fully charged).
- Disconnect your laptop from power. Use it until it falls asleep from low battery.
- Turn off the laptop and let it “rest” for about five hours.
- Plug your laptop back in and let it fully charge.
It is completely fine to use your laptop during all of these steps (except, of course, when the computer is asleep).
Calibrating your laptop battery every few months is a great way to ensure you get the longest life out of it. If you’ve had your laptop for a little while and want to know the current maximum capacity of your battery, you can use the free coconutBattery utility.
coconutBattery isn’t just a tool which shows you only the current charge of your battery – it also shows you the current maximum capacity of it in relation to the original capacity your battery had as it left the factory. You also get information about the battery-loadcycles (how often did you fully load your battery), the current charger (coconutBattery even warns you if you plugged in a wrong charger for your Notebook) and last but not least information about the age of your Mac.
Tweet This (57)
James on May 29th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Maybe I’m missing something here.
Is this officially proven to actually calibrate and extend the battery life or is it just your own opinion and personal benchmark?
Staff Comment Jenny Kortina, TheAppleBlog on May 29th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
It’s the official method from Apple
jason on August 15th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
my laptop battery will not charge any more its like frozen on the power meter how can i fix that.
Rolf Schmolling on May 29th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Hi,
I believe it is very difficult to “switch off your laptop” while it sleeps because of low low battery… so this step should be ommitted. Just basically let it rest without beeing plugged in for about 5 hs…
regards, Rolf
Christian Oliver on May 29th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Wouldn’t this work on the iPhone and other Li-ion batteries?
Marissa on May 29th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
I’m interested to know if this works for the iPhone too.
Bala on September 25th, 2009 at 2:55 am
Yes, it works with ipods too. In fact this holds good for all Li-ion batteries.
Eric Knibbe on May 29th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Another tip: if your battery is old and eventually drains itself to the point where it refuses to recharge, and the host Mac won’t even recognize it, take the battery out and let it sit for a few days. It’s worked twice for me now.
Laura on May 30th, 2009 at 8:29 am
Great article! tHanks. My pro is not even 6 months old and giving me terrible battery life!
appledont on June 2nd, 2009 at 5:18 am
Hi All.
I have MacBook v 1.1, 38 months old and 291 cycle of baterry charge with remaining capacity 5080mAh (CoconutBattery). My firs battery was replaced due to malfunction. LiIon (LiPol) batt. dont like deep discharge (dont make so often battery formating) and dont like high current charge. But LiIon battery is relatively imune to short cycle recharging with small current (regardless of remains energy stored in batt.) and continual charging(or continual plugged power adapter) In my case charge current is step changing in 56% and 75% of full capacity during recharge. MY recommendation – 1, when you transport your MacBook with power adapter unplugged in “sleep mode” for longer as 2-3 hour – shut down your MacBook. 2, when you discharging battery watch 55 or 75% of discharge when it is possible recharge battery. For instance – 3 times discharging from 100% to 75% – battery cycle counter increase only about +1 after 3x recharge. 3, when you working (or leaving) plug and connect power adapter to your MacBook, even if it is charged for 100%. 4, When you start working plug power adapt to MacBook even if is fully charged. (In 100% charge battery is not charged and not drained). Good luck. appledont
XCool on June 3rd, 2009 at 8:40 am
I’ve been using this method on all my battery-powered devices, MacBook, iPod touch, etc. Heck, I do this even for my PS3 controllers.
As of today, my Late 2008 MacBook’s battery continues to hover around 4300mAh maximum capacity – original capacity is 4100mAh. Data provided by coconutBattery.
Here’s a screenshot: http://twitpic.com/6j64z
Naren Bharatwaj on June 22nd, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Is my battery in a good condition? i’ve posted the screenshot in this link.
http://twitpic.com/863wx
Naren Bharatwaj on June 22nd, 2009 at 11:47 pm
Is my battery in a good condition? I’ve posted the report given by cocunutbattery in the link below!
http://twitpic.com/863wx
Mia on July 18th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
The most thorough and informative information I have found. Enjoyed it immensely.
PlayStation 3 on July 19th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Nice to see people doing charitable stuff.
Chin Yau Chia on July 28th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
My MacBook, 22 months old, was constantly on, well, almost. I seldom shut down and I am a heavy user, typically using more than 12 hrs per day.
I always connect to power source when possible, regardless of the battery level. And it has now reached 390 load cycles, and still having a good 93% and lasted for almost 4 hrs if I am not charging.
Lately I encountered problem where battery drained faster than usual.
I found out that it was Cooliris, a media browsing plugin for Safari, and Windows XP on Virtual box, causing the fast drain issue.
I still need to run Virtualbox occasionally, but have removed Cooliris, now battery comes back as normal, and I noticed that the fan spin slower.
Perhaps beside calibrating battery, background application is something that we need to watch out as some app just take too much CPU cycle even running background.
Buy Laptop on August 4th, 2009 at 2:24 am
This is a very good post! Some of us don’t really pay attention to our laptop battery life when we buy-laptop and therefore we don’t even know how to extend our laptop battery life, until we learn that the laptop battery seems to last shorter than it should be.
Very nice posting!
batteryxia on August 9th, 2009 at 2:52 am
In my case charge current is step changing in 56% and 75% of full capacity during recharge. MY recommendation – 1,laptop battery when you transport your MacBook with power adapter unplugged in “sleep mode” for longer as 2-3 hour – shut down your MacBook. 2, when you discharging battery watch 55 or 75% of discharge when it is possible recharge battery. For instance – 3 times discharging from 100% to 75% – battery cycle counter increase only about +1 after 3x recharge. 3, when you working (or leaving) plug and connect power adapter to your MacBook, even if it is charged for 100%.
batteryxia on August 9th, 2009 at 3:05 am
Lately I encountered problem where battery drained faster than usual.
I found out that it was Cooliris, a media browsing plugin for Safari, and Windows XP on Virtual box, causing the fast drain issue.
I still need to run Virtualbox occasionally, but have removed Cooliris, now battery comes back as normal, laptop battery and I noticed that the fan spin slower.
Perhaps beside calibrating battery, background application is something that we need to watch out as some app just take too much CPU cycle even running background.
Anthony on September 11th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Well it’s a very good post coz i found it as a guidelines in my laptop battery from now on and maybe others might find it very interesting and use it as a counter measures for their latop batteries.
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bart on October 14th, 2009 at 6:12 am
This works I tried it, my macbook holds charge like a trooper since I did this once a month.
Soff on October 24th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
It works for PC’s too. At least HP has a battery option that is called calibrate (or i believe you can create it). When you unplug your computer, put in that mode and then follow the rest of the steps.
The Review Site on November 11th, 2009 at 2:11 am
Good post congratulations.