MacBook Air Portable Genius, 4th Edition

Cycling the MacBook Air Battery

The MacBook Air lithium-polymer battery doesn’t suffer from the memory effect. This means you can run MacBook Air on battery power for as long as you want — 2 seconds, 2 minutes, 2 hours, or whatever you need (within the confines of the battery’s capacity, naturally). However, all lithium-based batteries slowly lose their charging capacity over time. You might be able to run MacBook Air on batteries for 4 hours today. However, later on you’ll only be able to run the computer for 3 hours on a full charge.

You can’t stop this process, but you can delay it significantly by periodically cycling the MacBook Air battery. Cycling — also called reconditioning or recalibrating — a battery means letting it completely discharge and then fully recharging it again. To maintain optimal performance, you should cycle your Mac’s battery once every two months or so.

Paradoxically, the less you use MacBook Air, the more often you should cycle its battery. If you often go several days, or even a week or two, without using MacBook Air, you should cycle its battery at least once a month.

Before getting to the steps, bear in mind that properly cycling the MacBook Air battery includes leaving the computer off for several hours. Therefore, cycle the battery only at a time when leaving it turned off won’t be a problem.

Follow these steps to cycle the MacBook Air battery: ...