Discharging a Laptop Battery: How and Why

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Did you buy a new laptop and are now wondering if you should discharge the battery before you charge it? While fully draining and recharging a nickel (NiCD or NiMH) laptop battery can result in better battery performance and longer battery life, doing the same on many modern laptops (like Chromebooks, Windows, and MacBooks) with lithium-ion batteries will actually damage the battery. This wikiHow article shows you two ways to discharge your nickel-based battery on a laptop.

Section 1 of 4:

Is it ok to drain the battery in my laptop?

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    The older batteries would start to remember where you would start to charge them and consider that reading as a 0% charge. In essence, if you would charge the battery whenever it reached 65%, that would become the new 0%, thus shortening the lifespan. However, discharging and charging it would help eliminate that memory effect.
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    This includes Chromebooks, most PCs, and MacBooks. Many of these batteries might have fail-safes in place to prevent you from draining the battery below a certain percentage since a low power state can cause harm to their lifespan. [2]
    • If possible, try keeping your battery charge between 90% and 10% at all times.
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    Your battery usually has a sticker on it that will let you know if it is a Ni-Cd/NiMH or Lithium-Ion battery. If you can't see your battery's information there, try looking up your laptop's model online for results on the kind of battery you have.
    • Only if you have a Ni-Cd or NiMH battery, continue to the next methods to discharge your battery.
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Section 2 of 4:

Using a High-Power Plan (Windows Only)

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    You'll find the battery icon in your taskbar on the right side of your screen and clicking Power Options will prompt a new window to open.
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    It's in the panel on the left side of the window. Since you're creating a new power plan, you can just pick the original from the list whenever you want to turn off this power plan.
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    Name it something you'll easily recognize so you'll be able to disable and enable it whenever you want.
    • Click Next to continue.
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    Since you want to drain your battery, this option will never allow your laptop to go sleep or turn off the display to conserve power.
    • Click Create to continue.
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Section 3 of 4:

Turning Your Screen Brightness Up

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    You can click the Start menu logo or press the Win + I keys to open Settings. If you're using a MacBook, open System Preferences.
    • A bright screen will drain your battery.
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    It's usually the first item in the menu next to an icon of a laptop.
    • For a Mac, click Displays instead. [2]
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    If you drag the slider all the way to the right, you should also see it display "100" on the dial, indicating that your brightness is all the way up.
    • There are also keyboard shortcuts you can use, which vary between manufacturers. Some laptops have the brightness up and down shortcuts on the row of F keys while others require you to press Fn and the Up arrow.
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Section 4 of 4:

Turning On Bluetooth and Wireless Settings

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    To do this, click the speech bubble in the far right corner of your taskbar.
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    On Windows 10, enable Nearby Sharing.
    • These settings will require your laptop to continuously search for connections available and will drain your battery.
    • If you're using an older Mac, go to System Preferences > Bluetooth . [3]
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  • Question
    Why won't my laptop charge?
    Community Answer
    The battery is probably dead or damaged. You will need to replace it. Find your model's serial number and search for a new battery online, or contact the computer's manufacturer.
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      References

      1. ↑ Discharging a lithium battery will decrease its lifetime and most prevent the battery from discharging to 0% (some laptops have a failsafe measure that will turn off the laptop if the battery dips below 20% or 10%).
      2. ↑ https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-your-displays-brightness-mchlp2704/mac
      3. ↑ https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/connect-a-bluetooth-device-blth1004/mac

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