I recently noticed a UX inconsistency while using the battery charge limit feature on my MacBook with a MagSafe charger.
With the optimized charging feature, users can set a custom maximum charging limit (for example, 95%) to improve battery health. However, the MagSafe LED indicator continues to show the charging state (amber) even after the device reaches this user-defined limit.
Previously, the LED would turn green when charging reached 100%, clearly indicating a “fully charged” state. But now, when charging stops at a user-defined limit, there is no clear visual feedback that charging has effectively completed based on the user’s preference.
This creates confusion, as the LED suggests that charging is still ongoing even though the system has stopped charging at the configured limit.
A possible approach to improve this could be to treat the user-defined limit as an effective “fully charged” state during charging. For example:
if is_charging: if battery_percentage < user_defined_limit: LED = AMBER else: LED = GREEN
This would align the physical LED indicator with the system’s charging behavior and improve clarity for users without requiring hardware changes.
Has anyone else observed this behavior, or is there any existing workaround?
Perfect, thank you. I can't comment on our release plans or schedules, but this is something I do expect us to address.
...and this should be fixed in the most recent beta seed, macOS 26.5 beta 3 (25F5058e). More specifically:
-
The light should now turn green when the device reaches the charging limit.
-
The light should now turn back to amber if/when power drain causes charging to resume.
__
Kevin Elliott
DTS Engineer, CoreOS/Hardware
