3 ms·

My experience with my Macbook is that around 20% battery, it just dies. No sleep, no hibernate, it just goes completely dark and when I plug it back in it has t

My experience with my Macbook is that around 20% battery, it just dies. No sleep, no hibernate, it just goes completely dark and when I plug it back in it has to boot from scratch.

mikeash 11y ago
Sounds like you have a bad battery or something like that, which is causing the battery meter to be inaccurate and is thus interfering with the rest of the process. To safely sleep/hibernate your machine the system has to have a pretty good idea of just how much energy is left in the battery, since it has to initiate the process before the battery goes completely flat. On a properly working machine, you should get all the way down to 0%, and then it will forcibly sleep if you don't do it yourself. Have you tried an SMC reset? That's the low-level whatnot that controls the battery, and sometimes it can get confused.
- code_sterling 11y ago
  Yea, I've never had issues like that, and I've used Mac's exclusively for since they came out with the unibody.
- rcthompson 11y ago
  I tried an SMC reset today, and it changed nothing. It still just dies right around 20%. (At least, I think I reset the SMC. There wasn't any obvious feedback confirming that I had done so.)
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Yeah, the SMC reset procedure is pretty opaque. Sounds like you're probably at the point of needing a repair. Hope you're in warranty, although given how these things go I imagine you're probably not.
    - rcthompson 11y ago
      Nah, I've had it a few years, so it's out of warranty. I'll probably have to replace the battery eventually. I don't mind if the battery's capacity is decreasing, I just want it to auto-sleep before the battery dies. Maybe there's a way to set the auto-sleep threshold to 25% or something?
M4v3R 11y ago
It's definitely a hardware issue. I owned two Macbooks and both went to sleep/hibernate when battery reached 0%.
manojlds 11y ago
My MBP doesn't die even at 3%, it just goes to the "hibernate" state.
mnem 11y ago
That's definitely a battery problem. I had the same issue after a few years, got the battery replaced and now it works as you'd expect. Of course, the batteries aren't cheap, so it depends on how annoying you find it :) I lived with it for about a year.

My experience with my Macbook is that around 20% battery, it just dies. No sleep, no hibernate, it just goes completely dark and when I plug it back in it has to boot from scratch.

mikeash 11y ago

Sounds like you have a bad battery or something like that, which is causing the battery meter to be inaccurate and is thus interfering with the rest of the process. To safely sleep/hibernate your machine the system has to have a pretty good idea of just how much energy is left in the battery, since it has to initiate the process before the battery goes completely flat. On a properly working machine, you should get all the way down to 0%, and then it will forcibly sleep if you don't do it yourself. Have you tried an SMC reset? That's the low-level whatnot that controls the battery, and sometimes it can get confused.

code_sterling 11y ago
Yea, I've never had issues like that, and I've used Mac's exclusively for since they came out with the unibody.
rcthompson 11y ago
I tried an SMC reset today, and it changed nothing. It still just dies right around 20%. (At least, I think I reset the SMC. There wasn't any obvious feedback confirming that I had done so.)
- mikeash 11y ago
  Yeah, the SMC reset procedure is pretty opaque. Sounds like you're probably at the point of needing a repair. Hope you're in warranty, although given how these things go I imagine you're probably not.
  - rcthompson 11y ago
    Nah, I've had it a few years, so it's out of warranty. I'll probably have to replace the battery eventually. I don't mind if the battery's capacity is decreasing, I just want it to auto-sleep before the battery dies. Maybe there's a way to set the auto-sleep threshold to 25% or something?

M4v3R 11y ago

It's definitely a hardware issue. I owned two Macbooks and both went to sleep/hibernate when battery reached 0%.

manojlds 11y ago

My MBP doesn't die even at 3%, it just goes to the "hibernate" state.

mnem 11y ago

That's definitely a battery problem. I had the same issue after a few years, got the battery replaced and now it works as you'd expect. Of course, the batteries aren't cheap, so it depends on how annoying you find it :) I lived with it for about a year.