MacBook Air won’t charge after drained battery

June 10, 2023 8:14 AM

My MacBook Air ran out of battery power and isn’t recharging. I purchased new Apple brand cable and block. I left it charging a few hours yesterday and overnight. I cleaned out the ports, tried different outlets, tried switching ports, turning the cord upside down, reversing which end was where. The only tip I found online was to hold down the power button for a bit, but that hasn’t worked. What else can I try?
posted by mermaidcafe to Computers & Internet (17 answers total)

Apple has a helpful page on this issue: If your battery won't charge. The most common useful solution is to reset the SMC. Reset the System Management Controller (SMC), which controls how your Mac manages power. If you have a Mac with Apple silicon, just restart your computer. For other Mac computers, see the Apple Support article Reset the SMC of your Mac.
posted by blob at 8:23 AM on June 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: My laptop won’t turn on.
posted by mermaidcafe at 8:35 AM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Blob's advice is worth a try. The SMC controls how the laptop turns on. If the SMC has lost its mind because of a power loss, the laptop won't turn "on" as you commonly see it but the SMC does have power. It just needs to be kickstarted to get things back in order.
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:47 AM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

I bought a new battery for mine when this happened.
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 9:09 AM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Seconding or thirding the SMC recommendation, even if it might not look or sound like the laptop is powered.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:22 AM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is probably TMI, but modern batteries do NOT want to be discharged to zero. Some batteries are known to basically refuse to take a charge once it's been depleted to the final percentages. What you see as zero is actually simply a cut-off set by the battery maker, i.e. "to protect the battery, we're setting zero here". And some battery makers are known to set their minimum really low in order to claim a higher capacity, with corresponding reduction in battery overall lifespan.

If resetting the SMC did not help, you may need to get a new battery.
posted by kschang at 9:25 AM on June 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

How long did you hold down the power button for? I would try that for at least ten seconds, just to be sure.
posted by Alensin at 10:38 AM on June 10, 2023

This is a longshot, but try charging for a while with a USB-C cable plugged into the dumbest (slowest) wall wart you can find. (I assume you have a M1.)
posted by credulous at 10:50 AM on June 10, 2023

Mod note: Hey folks, the OP reached out to the mods with a bit of frustration about the emphasis on the resetting the SMC. Evidently the MacBook won’t power up even for that, so they are hoping for other suggestions, thanks!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 12:26 PM on June 10, 2023

Not sure which model Air you have, but are you sure the cable you bought (and brick) can send sufficient power for the model?

I have an M1 Air and some of the cables I use throw up an error message from Apple saying the unit is not charging as they're not powerful enough. Obviously, if you don't have any power, you won't see the message.
posted by dobbs at 12:39 PM on June 10, 2023

OP reached out to the mods with a bit of frustration about the emphasis on the resetting the SMC. Evidently the MacBook won’t power up even for that, so they are hoping for other suggestions, thanks!

The SMC can be reset when the Mac won't power up. It is one of the diagnostic steps for a mac that won't turn on.

If the SMC isn't reset, the only other option is to replace the battery. There are no other steps.
posted by hwyengr at 12:39 PM on June 10, 2023 [11 favorites]

I don’t mean to push, given your frustration with the SMC suggestions, but if your MacBook Air model is from prior to the introduction of Apple silicon, the machine does not need to power on to do an SMC reset. The SMC reset happens by holding down a combination of specific keys, and then holding the power button for a while. The reason everyone is suggesting it is that an SMC reset is the only thing you can do yourself to troubleshoot the issue (that you haven’t already done). Source: worked in Apple support for a number of years.
posted by bluloo at 12:40 PM on June 10, 2023 [11 favorites]

Before replacing the battery I would set up a genius bar appointment.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 2:37 PM on June 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Also, I did the SME reset and it didn’t work.
posted by mermaidcafe at 8:12 PM on June 10, 2023

If the Geniuses tell you that you're going to need to spend megabucks to get this fixed, check with Rossmann Repair Group before believing them.
posted by flabdablet at 10:16 PM on June 10, 2023

I did revive an original Google Chromebook that had sat on a shelf for years and years by just leaving it plugged in for a long time, it's worth a shot. I have also removed and transferred little circuit boards between batteries, some are smart, some are not, sometimes the computer controls the battery checking, sometimes the battery does it's own thing.

Sorry the SMC thing did work. That's how computers work now, the power comes on but all of the chips take a small bit of time for the power to settle down to a stable state, there's a chip that monitors the power and when it's stable it turns the CPU on to actually start the damn thing. Magic key presses can do stuff before the computer is 'on'. Sadly it didn't work for you. Probably battery replacement, they don't like going dead or extreme cold.
posted by zengargoyle at 6:07 AM on June 11, 2023

What's the specific model of your MacBook Air? It should be etched on the bottom, along with a block of text. Like, "Model A1234" or something. The tips about resetting the SMC are generally a good place to start for Intel-based Macs, but AFAIK they don't apply to Apple Silicon (M1, M2) models at all.
posted by xedrik at 8:42 AM on June 11, 2023