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Lately my macbook randomly shuts down when working on it. I can work on it for about 2 hours, shut it down, but when I want to start it again later the same day, it will start and immediately after login turn back off. When I try restarting at that point the dead battery sign comes on. I know the battery is not dead, because when I plug the laptop back in, the battery is still at 40% or higher. I don’t know what I have to do, I need my macbook on the go. I’m a repairing guy, but I need tips on where to start looking. Than again I started looking online, and found out that there is a graphics card return program. Could my macbook be considered under this program with the problems i’m having? Update (10/09/2016)
This is how it looks right now after my first discharge and charge Update (10/10/2016)
@danj I’ve done another discharge, and this is the result after. Maybe i should indeed take the battery off and try that to give the reset. What tutorial should i follow to do this?
First you should get an app that can help you see the battery condition. Here’s a free one: CoconutBattery. As to why your system is shutting down while it has still lots of power is often a messed up SMC. What happens it the SMC holds a high and low watermark (the batteries charge) so it can go into power save mode so you don’t loose what you are working on. I would reset it following this Apple T/N: Reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac. Then after your system is fully charged let it fully discharge at least two times this will reset the low water mark to be at the correct level.
Hi Guys. I had the same problem with my battery, showing 40% and shutting down. I did everything as suggested so, in the end I contacted Apple support as my MacBook Pro still had Apple cover. They did everything over the phone but could not solve the problem. So, they arrange an appointment at one of their stores. One of the Tech guys there did a system check and came back five minutes later and said it’s the battery even though all the checks showed the battery was ok. He showed me a graph on his test system, if your battery is ok it shows a white dot in a green box and it should move from top left to bottom right. But the white dot in my test , was showing it was moving vertically down in the green box. He said it shows the battery will fail, and that’s why you are getting the problems. If the dot is in the green box the system will always say the battery is ok but it’s not. They changed the battery and have had no problems since. Michael
Dan, does it matter at what battery charge level you should do the SMC reset? That is, should it be done when the battery is low or when it’s fully charged? And the other question - should the magsafe be plugged into the computer while doing the SMC reset? The Apple support instructions do not specifically point out this detail.
How do you check the low-water mark? Is it one of the measurements in coconutbattery?
Hi I am seeing this strange behaviour where my MacBook 2015 shuts off with 75% battery remaining. I have tried resetting the SMC three times but to no avail. I must admit I haven’t been able to drain down the battery as it shuts off after 75% and I can’t check the status without connecting to ac source again. The coconut battery status shows a discrepancy of nearly 5% between the OS status and the reading on the coconut app. Also it shows a design capacity of 44% does it mean the battery is in poor health?
I have had my laptop Mac AIr 2013 repaired in Kathmandu, I reside in Nepal… It used to shut me down when playing I-tunes, and then had to restart it and still had 65% of the battery going, so how cold it does that. SO, in Kathmandu they said the battery was faulty, maybe it was not…I bought it only 2 years ago…now after the repair, last month, my ’new battery’ made in Singapore, is continuing to shut me down. Just now and with 75%. the technician said I can bring it to their store here, I wonder if he knows about what you are explaining here about it? Or have they simply not changed it with a new battery? Anything in these banana republics can happen. What should I do? I paid 40 dollars for the Battery! What is this coconut battery?
Same question. I have done everything mentioned above multiple times. It keeps shutting off at 60% charge. Coco shows battery in green with 90% design capacity. How can I drain it further if it keeps shutting off? Update (07/26/2019) Here is CoconutBattery Pic
Power adapter connected at point of picture b/c I have to plug it back to to turn the computer back on. Showed same prior to laptop turning off. If I try to turn it back on without cord, it just shows the low battery symbol.
I took this up with Apple who ran a log gathering app and the result is that my SMC is faulty, and confirmed as a manufacturer fault! So advice is to go a Genius bar and get them to run overnight tests, or in first instance contact Apple and request an escalation to the tech support team. If you have been having heating problems with the fans running more than you expect, then you may also have a known GPU heat sink problem - Graphics Processor Unit, where the heatsink material was useless and dried up so no heat transfer and this would over heat the motherboard, and in my experience this could have a detrimental effect on the SMC as well.
Hi guys. I’ve changed my MBP battery and i have the same issue. When the charge reaches 30% then it directly goes to 7% and few minutes later the MBP shutdown. I know that the battery is faulty, but i want to ask you: is this a kind of battery that get old first than a normal one? I mean, even if it drops from 30 to 7 %, now the battery lasts at least 5 hours. But after 5 cycles, the maximum capacity dropped significantly. So i’ve to consider if i can keep this faulty battery (since i use the MBP mainly at home under charge) or if i have to replace it cause it won’t last long anyway. Thank you all.
Hi I had the same issue and after exhaustive tests by me I managed to get Apple to agree that the MBP had a faulty SMC which is an inherant problem with a range of built MBPs. Mine is a late 2013 Retina 15”. If yours is around the same period you can get Apple to check. In the UK we have a 6 year warranty cover so if yours is late 2014 and still same issue then you are covered.
I had the same problem with a macbook air, and managed to solve it with these hints. I reset the SMC, and made a OS installation USB stick. When booting using the stick, my mac didn’t shut down immediately, and I was able to run the battery down. I had to reboot a few times when the battery was low. After charging back to 100% my mac is now all well.
I have a new battery, my MBP mid 2012 poweroff on 65%, and when connect the power battery is 1%, I repeat the process 4 times, but not result, poweroff on 60-65%.. Please helppp. Thanks. Ricardo
03/18/2021: I solved my issue by doing the following: UNPLUG THE MACBOOK AND LEAVE IT UNPLUGGED UNTIL STEP 9Use it until until it diesHold shift+control+option+power for 10 seconds (resets the SMC)Turn on the MacBookRepeat steps 2 through 4 until it stays dead (I had to do this 5 times before it was officially dead)Hold shift+control+option+power for 10 seconds (resets the SMC)LEAVE THE MACBOOK ALONE FOR A MINIMUM OF 5 HOURS!!!Attempt to turn on the MacBook, IF IT DOES NOT TURN ON PROCEED TO STEP 9Plug in the MacBook and let it fully charge to 100% , disable anything that prevents this from happeningUse an app like Coconut Battery to see if things match. If not, try this one more time. I knew steps 2 through 5 worked because my MacBook would shut off at 62% BUT after the third reset it finally jumped to 6% and I was able to run it unplugged for a ridiculously time. This worked for my 2017 MacBook Pro 13” (two thunderbolt ports) that only had 152 charges on the battery. I used to leave it plugged in pretty much all of its life.
I have a similar problem: I own a mid 2014 15” MBP with the original battery (it now has about 1100 cycles, with 70% health, as displayed by Coconut Battery) However the battery didn’t present any problem besides reduced battery life (I can get at most 3 hrs), which is not a big deal for me. Since a couple of weeks ago, though, my mac started to have a strange behaviour when I turn it on and the battery is lower than 50%: it boots up, I enter the password and it loads correctly, but after 20 seconds it shuts off, displaying the “dead battery” sign. The best part is that as soon as I plug it in, the mac suddenly turns on and gets back to the point I had left it before shutdown (no request of password, no loading screens…) and I can unplug it and it will work normally, with no problem whatsoever. I can’t really understand whether this is a hardware or a software problem! This is what I tried so far: SMC reset PRAM reset Safe mode mode (the problem persists) Repaired the disk in Disk Utility (Recovery mode) Any suggestions to try and address the problem? Is battery calibration even a thing on MacBooks?
