Rapid battery health decline in MacBook Air despite proper charging habits

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Rapid battery health decline in MacBook Air despite proper charging habits

bought my MacBook Air M2 in April, and until recently, the battery health was completely fine. In October, it dropped to 98%, and within just a few days, it went down again to 96%. I always charge carefully, keeping it between 25% and 95%, and the laptop stays cool all the time. There’s no overheating or heavy usage. I’m concerned about why the battery health is falling so quickly despite proper care.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: I purchased my MacBook Air M2 in April, and the battery health was at 100%. By October, it dropped to 98%, which seemed normal, but within the next 4 days it fell further to 96%. I’ve always maintained good charging habits — I don’t let the battery d

MacBook Air, macOS 15.6

Posted on Nov 3, 2025 10:17 AM

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Nov 3, 2025 10:52 AM in response to manjunath7007

I am not sure which model of the MacBook Air you purchased in April or where it was purchased, but Apple discontinued most models of the M2 where it would not even be available to purchase in April. I only say this to try and determine when that specific Mac was manufactured.

It is possible that it was manufactured 2 years or more ago as the Air has since seen the M3 and M4 processor. The 96% Battery Health may be perfectly inline with what would be expected. While batteries do degrade over time, it is also related to your Charge Cycles. That is how many times the battery has depleted its capacity over time, for example using 50% each day over 2 days would result in 1 charge cycle, no matter how many times you actually charged the phone.

Another thing to note is that the Battery Health drop is not linear meaning some months will not drop at all and other months will drop more. The device must charge to 100% in order to update accurate battery readings and it will do that automatically at times as long as you do not manually remove it from the charger and prevent it charging to 100%. If you never let it perform its own optimization by charging to 100%, then you may certainly see a larger than expected drop once it does charge to 100% and allowed to update those reading that you see.

Your Mac is not going to overcharge by leaving it plugged in and I would recommend to use Optimized Charging and always have it plugged in when you have power available. That is going to reduce your charge cycles that are responsible for the drop in Battery Health.

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