Keeping a MacBook Pro plugged in all the time

I have an iPad Pro 11-inch which I hardly every use and an MBP 14" - both M1 models and both work fine. Unless I’m on overseas travel I basically never disconnect, or even turn off, my MBP. Sometimes I take my iPad with me if I’m going out for a long day, just in case I need to connect to servers or something. If there is improvement in what you can do on the iPad that would be great.

Side-note: I recently upgraded my MBP to 15.5. Before upgrading it had been up for 40 days. I notice when your Mac stays up for an extended period of time some things get excessively slow. Like I’ll edit a file in BBEdit and save and the time doesn’t update in the Finder for a really long time. But after restarting it’s instantaneous. I wonder what happens over time to slow things down. The reason I don’t like restarting is because I have all sorts of windows open.

When you are home, do you keep your MBP plugged in to an outlet all the time? Or do you only plug it in when the MBP needs to charge?

I leave it plugged in all the time. It shows this:

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doug

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It’s always been the rule of thumb to keep it plugged in for me. Especially, considering I use it with an external display connected, and last, but not least, – on the desk, not on laps.
Those who prefer using MBP unplugged, tend to need to replace the battery much faster, – that’s my another observation.

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Yep. I’ll quote Howard Oakley on the matter:

But don’t think that you’ve got to manage how your Mac manages its battery, let it get on with it.

It’s from one of his longer articles. Definitely an interesting read, especially if you’re wondering about how to long-term store a battery equipped Mac.

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To use an external display connected by HDMI to a MacBook, it must be powered. This can influence charging schedules. My M1 MBP spends time on the kitchen table with a Dell 27" display. Often in clamshell mode, but open for Zoom usage. I leave it on Mains power there. But I often carry the MBP for meetings and service calls so it gets chances to discharge. Visiting a relative who uses a small MacBook and a Large TV screen, I swap in my MBP, even to using the smaller AC adapter. I connect to my primary home desktop and keep up with accounting activities without using more power than the smaller AC adapter provides. (I’m lazy and only unpack my big adapter when it is needed.) After more than three years in service, the battery health is “Normal”.
I have never noticed slowdowns as experienced by douglearner – my CDO prompts me to reduce clutter by quitting unused programs which tends to hide memory leaks. And, since this is my beta test machine, reboots are more often than a casual user might require.

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Mine is also a M1 MBP connected to an external monitor. Mine is a 24" LG. As you mentioned, you reboot more often than I do. Before my latest boot for upgrading I had been on for 40 days.

I don’t know if the cause of the slowdown is memory leaks or filesystem clutter or what. I have 32 GB of RAM and 2 TB of SSD storage.

I also noticed of late that TimeMachine wasn’t always backing up hourly properly so I changed it to back up daily. I wonder if that’s just tied to the general slowdown and if I should switch back to hourly backups.

When we had to replace the battery on our 13-inch Intel 2017 MacBookAir last month Apple told us the reason the battery was failed is that we had kept it plugged in most of the time. This apparently is a well-known problem. So it’s possible Apple has fixed the problem on more recent models.

Well, on my MBP M1 (I think 2020) it’s been basically plugged in all the time (except when I’m on an airplane) and battery health shows this right now.

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Currently it is at 80% charged.

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How long have you had your M1? I’ve had mine 30 months, and my battery is at 82% health with only 95 charge cycles. Obviously, I keep it plugged in most of the time.

My 2012 MBP is always on (it’s my media server) and has always run plugged in and seems fine.

Cycle Count: 18
Condition: Normal

I suspect battery life wouldn’t be that great in such an old machine, but it works fine.

Since 11/7/2021. So that would be 43 months. I renewed the yearly warranty last November.

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I also have an M1 MBP and I leave it on all the time since I do online backups, but I’ve found it operates best if I restart every few days to clear the caches and the like.

Unrelated to my MBP, but a few months ago, I had a situation where my Mac Mini (over 10 years old) started having weird errors and failing to download podcasts from certain hosts. I basically leave it on for months at a time, but the first troubleshooting move to restart it didn’t fix the problem. I couldn’t find anything online to clear up the problem and it slowly got worse. Then, recently I had to unplug the Mini for about an hour when changing out the connected tv, and upon restart the problem was gone. It reminded me of some troubleshooting step related to turning off a computer for a few minutes to clear up some problem with the clock, I think.

Have read of this ‘plugged in’ problem on other forums. I have a 3-1/2 year old MBP M1 and initially left it plugged in all the time, but noticed that the battery management normally charged to 80% capacity and then halted. Limiting the charge levels to 80% is a known method to increase battery life. This probably the fix by Apple.
Then about one year ago it began charging to 100% capacity so I began plugging in when needed and tried to stop charging when it reached about the 80% level, but of course I’m not very good at monitoring so it varies a lot.

Battery cycle count is now at 341 cycles. This is over 60% of the estimated 500 cycle lifetime. Not good. Think I will switch back to plugged in all the time. That is Oakley’s advice and I want to think Apple understands what causes more lifetime degradation, max charge level or total cycle count.

Bought my M1 MBP in Aug '22 and except when traveling, keep it plugged into the power adapter pretty much 24/7. For power management I run the AlDente app and set it to limit the battery charge at 80%. (I bought the $11 annual plan, have no affiliation with the company nor any idea whether the app is a good or bad idea – please opine :-). Here’s my stats screen:

And 39 days later my MBP is getting noticeably slow again. I guess I gotta restart, though I hate restoring all the window sessions…

Would disabling “Close windows when quitting an application” help with that?

System Settings > Desktop & Dock > Close windows when quitting an application

I do wonder if there is a particular app that is causing the slowdown.

You can have the system reopen the windows that were open when you restart.

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Most of the windows do reopen. Except for Excel and FireFox. And Firefox remembers the history and I can reopen them.

The main nuisance are terminal windows. They all get disconnected and need to be reconnected one by one.