Users of the new ARM-Macs have found that they cannot access an important function for battery management: The “Battery Health Management” can no longer be switched off on MacBook Pro and MacBook Air with M1 chip, it is constantly active. This emerges from a freshly updated support document that MacRumors discovered. In contrast to the variant for Intel Macs, there is no indication that the feature can be deactivated. The paragraph with information on this topic has been completely deleted.

Auf ARM-Macs themselves can understand this if one calls up the area for “battery health” under battery in the system settings. If you click here, an overlay appears with information on the current battery status (if it needs to be replaced, this can be read here) and the current maximum capacity. There is no longer a tick to turn off the management function for the battery health as with Intel Macs.

Load pattern monitoring Apple first had the feature on the Mac with macOS Catalina 10. 15. 5 introduced. It is actually very useful: According to Apple, the system monitors the charging pattern and the basic condition of the battery and sometimes does not fully charge it in order to prevent premature chemical aging. This happens, for example, when a mobile Mac is mainly powered by electricity – then in the future it will no longer be fully charged if desired, but only until 80 percent. The function works automatically.

The Mac is making the next big change in processor architecture. Instead of Intel processors, Apple has been using in-house ARM-based SoCs (System on a Chip) since the end 2020, starting with the M1. The change had been evident for a long time.

As mentioned above, this battery status management can be deactivated on Intel Macs. That can make perfect sense: Based on the recorded measurements, “the battery status management can reduce the maximum charge of a battery in this mode,” says Apple. This is done “as needed to ensure that your battery is charged to a level that is optimized for your use”. So you may not get full performance. “If it is most important to you that your Mac notebook lasts as long as possible before charging, you can deactivate the function,” said Apple succinctly. This is no longer possible on M1 Macs. (bsc)