Does Limiting an iPhone’s Battery Charging to 80% Increase Lifespan?
Thanks to Juli Clover of MacRumors for her year-long experiment to test whether preventing an iPhone 15 Pro Max from charging above 80% would increase battery longevity. With the iPhone 15 line, Apple added a feature that allows users to prevent their iPhones from charging over a certain percentage. Clover locked the maximum charge at 80% for the past year and has now reported her findings:
My iPhone 15 Pro Max battery level is currently at 94 percent with 299 cycles. For a lot of 2024, my battery level stayed above 97 percent, but it started dropping more rapidly over the last couple of months.
How much difference did it make? Several of her colleagues at MacRumors with the same iPhone model who charged normally reported slightly lower capacity numbers (87% for 329 cycles and 90% for 271 cycles), suggesting that limiting the maximum charge provided a slight benefit.
(Generally speaking, the more cycles a battery has experienced, the lower its maximum capacity. For reference, Apple defines a charge cycle as using an amount that represents 100% of your battery’s capacity, regardless of how it’s used over time.)
Curious, I checked Settings > Battery > Battery Health on my iPhone 15 Pro, too, and Glenn Fleishman, Nick Heer, and John Gruber have also reported the following capacities on iPhone 15 Pros with normal charging:
- John Gruber: 89% with 344 cycles
- Glenn Fleishman: 91% with 411 cycles
- Adam Engst: 92% with 346 cycles
- Nick Heer: 95% with 273 cycles
This anecdotal data suggests that the impact of limiting the maximum charge to 80% may be minor over a one-year period. It’s possible that the benefit would be seen only after two or three years, when the iPhone might otherwise need a battery replacement. Apple presumably has better data that suggests that limiting maximum charge might be worth considering for those prioritizing battery longevity over convenience.
The problem with drawing conclusions about battery longevity is that it’s a multi-variable scenario. A few that come to mind include:
- Batteries are analog chemical systems, so no two batteries will be identical.
- Heat is a major contributor to battery degradation, so leaving an iPhone in a hot car while at the beach can speed up this process.
- The charging method may play a role, partly because wireless charging generates more heat. For instance, Juli Clover’s charging was roughly 70/30 split between wired USB-C charging and wireless MagSafe charging, whereas the majority of my iPhone 15 Pro’s charging was via MagSafe (see “Going All in on MagSafe for the iPhone in the Office, Bedroom, and Car,” 6 May 2024). If you’re concerned about battery longevity, favor wired charging when possible.
- Charging habits affect battery longevity. The existence of the maximum charging and Optimized Battery Charging options highlights the extent to which lithium-ion batteries don’t like being charged to 100% and held there. They also don’t like being completely discharged, so try to avoid that.
If you believe intentionally forgoing the top 20% of an iPhone’s charge could be awkward, you aren’t wrong. Juli Clover wrote:
I left my iPhone at that 80 percent limit and at no point turned the setting off or tweaked it. There were some days when I ran out of battery because I was without a charger for most of the day, and there were other times that I had to bring a battery along to make sure I didn’t run out of power. It wasn’t always convenient to keep it at 80 percent, but there were days when it didn’t have too much of an impact.
My takeaway is that it’s seldom worth trying to outthink what Apple has done in iOS to optimize battery charging. For users who prefer convenience without sacrificing much battery longevity, Optimized Battery Charging automatically holds the charge at 80% and finishes only when necessary, making it a good alternative to locking the maximum charge at 80%. Turn it on in Settings > Battery > Charging.
I set up the 80% limit when I got my 15 Pro in March; now with iOS 18 you can set it higher, so I have it set to 90%. [edit a week later - the battery app then suggested setting it to 85 instead, so I did that]. I did this deliberately - I always keep my phone for 30 months, and if limiting now gives me even a few percent more capacity 24 months from now, when I’ll buy my next phone, then I’ll be happier.
I’ve never run out of battery even with the 80% limit in the 6 months since I got the phone - not even close.
Yes, it’s an experiment. I’ll compare my battery health degradation to my previous phones over the same amount of time to see if it’s really different.
95% on 323 cycles from September 2023 to September 2024.
I never set a limit but turned on Optimized Charging. Initially, my charging was mainly overnight on a MagSafe stand. The phone would charge fairly rapidly to 80% and then, at about 4 or 5 a.m., charge more slowly to 100%. In recent months, if I didn’t charge during the day, the charge would be below 30% in the evening, so I would put it on a MagSafe charger for 30 minutes to an hour to get through until bedtime.
I always buy AppleCare+ from my mobile devices and laptops, considering it a reasonable tradeoff given what Apple covers, so I can replace the battery when it drops below 80% at no charge within two years (or longer if I use the new ongoing AppleCare+ option).
I don’t know what I’m doing in the last few months, but even with 91% capacity and charging to 100% overnight, I routinely get down < 20% or < 10% in the evening. I do listen to podcasts and play crossword puzzles. Obviously, the solution is to use my iPhone less—if I’m running it down to empty, that means I spent too much time with it that day!
I read the original article and found it very confusing. Which results are the benchmark? Which are the test? This is like a graph with no labels.
And, what are they comparing 80% charging to? Optimized charging or the old “charge to 100%” option?
And, I don’t think any of the reported results are that impressive. Because, my 3 year old iPhone 12 mini has 92.1% capacity with only 97 charge cycles. Beat that!
FWIW, my 13 mini (approaching 3 years old) shows a maximum capacity of 80%. This is charging it every night (using the Optimized Charging feature), rarely charging it during the day, and running the battery down to about 30-50% most days.
Since I can’t directly read the cycle count from an iPhone 13 (why, Apple, why?) I used this shortcut to pull the data from the phone’s analytics logs. It reports:
This yields a maximum capacity of 77% (1908 / 2488)
The official maximum capacity for an iPhone 13 mini’s battery (according to iFixit) is 2406 mAh. Which would yield a capacity of 79% (1908 / 2406).
The power management chip built-in to most rechargeable Lithium batteries can report its capacity, in units of mAh (milliamp-hours). The percentage capacity reported should be this capacity divided by the manufacturer’s spec for the capacity of a new battery.
I meant, if the point of the article is that 80% charging doesn’t increase lifespan, I’m asking compared to what? Are they comparing 80% to optimized? Because Optimized also limits the maximum charge, most of the time.
Charging to full stresses the battery more and causes more capacity loss over time than charging short of full. This setting lets you manage this automatically rather than watching your phone hit a certain percentage and removing it from the charger.
I see. I assume this means compared to not enabling any charge limit - letting the iOS algorithm do its own thing, either with or without the “Optimized charging” feature being enabled.
Optimized doesn’t actually limit the maximum - it still charges to 100%. What it does differently is that it uses usage history to determine when you’re likely to remove it from the charger (e.g. when waking up in the morning) and uses that time to calibrate its charging schedule:
At least that’s what happens on my 13 mini. It may have changed for newer models.
But I personally think these different charging schemes don’t affect all that much. I think batteries take much more damage from deep-draining and overheating. If you can put it on a charger when it gets down to 20% or so, and keep it from getting hot (no car dashboards, don’t use it in bright sunlight, which overdrives the display), that will go a lot further than funky charging algorithms.
That is, the funky algorithms may have benefit, but if you’re running the battery to zero every day playing games, that’s going to kill your battery a lot more than charging it to 100% afterward.
iPhone 12 here. 546 cycles, 88% of original capacity. Woo-hoo!
I have a Shortcut that announces when battery charges to 80%, and I try to remember to disconnect. But I’m hardly religious about it, and often let it get up into the 90s.
I’ve had my iPhone 15 Pro Max set to an 80% charge limit since getting it last year. It shows a cycle count of 169 and maximum capacity of 99%. But I’d charge it to 100% if I was away from power for a while.
I do most of my charging via MagSafe overnight and during the day, although in the car I attach it to the charging port while using CarPlay.
I can’t say I find this an issue - I don’t have a problem getting through a day.
92% capacity seems good, but 97 charge cycles can’t be right. That would mean you had only used the equivalent of 100% of battery life 97 times over 1100 days. I’m not sure if that would be possible even for an iPhone that was turned on but never used.
It’s actually typical for me. For example, when I sold my iPhone 8 after around 3 years, the battery was at 97.9% with only 117 cycle counts.
For a Li-ion battery, a cycle count isn’t “charge, then a discharge”. One cycle would be to discharge fully to 0%, then charge fully to 100%. If you discharge to 50% and then charge to 100%, that’s a half cycle.
What I do is unplug the iPhone in the morning when I go to work, then plug it back in when I get home. So the only time it is discharging is during the day, 5 days a week – or when I’m out and about. (And even less now, since I’m working from home half the time.)
When I get home, the iPhone is typically still at an 80% charge. So I’m effectively using around 20% 3 days a week. By my math, that works out to 93 charge cycles. So it is pretty much in line with expectations.
(I don’t watch videos or play games on my iPhone, so I"m not doing stuff that is a real drain on the battery. I’m not on the phone all the time – I use real computers for Safari, mail, messages, and everything else. I’m not constantly tweeting, snapchatting, instagramming, tiktoking, or whatever else the kids do these days. With previous iPhones I was always able to go 2 days before needing a recharge.)
I was thinking of my MacBook Pro. Optimized charging limits it to less than 80% (i.e. puts charging “on hold”) because it recognizes that it is rarely used on battery.
Just to add another data point. iPhone 15 pro, first use Sep. 2023 with a July build date. 80% charge limit set from day 1. A handful of charges to 100% but very few. Currently 100% capacity with 201 cycles.
And another: 80% limit on an iPhone 15 Pro, with very occasional charging beyond that. Max capacity reports as 97% with 254 cycles since last September’s first day on sale.
I usually only stick it on charge overnight, on a MagSafe charging puck. But sometimes charger earlier, if I’ve been playing music or doing something else involving heavier use.
Another variable that (IMHO) seemed to be missing from the article is to what extent the phone is discharged before a recharge action - does a frequent ‘top off’ say from 65-75% vs. recharging when the phone is less than 20% make a difference? I use the 80%-optimum on my 15-Pro, so the article satisfied my curiosity about the potential benefit. thanks.
That’s actually a point that I haven’t seen any even semi-rigorous studies investigate: how do all of these different charging and discharging habits actually affect battery life? It’s easy to make a general recommendation of charge only to 80% and don’t discharge below 20%, but the reality is that everybody’s usage is different in so many ways that it’s really hard to say how much any single part of it is going to affect any particular person’s battery lifespan.
It would be a mammoth undertaking, but I would really love to see a study that tries to take into account a wide variety of variables on charging and usage to come up with something that’s more meaningful than the current one-size-fits-all-but-not-well advice.
In addition to limiting my charging on my 11+ month-old 15 Pro Max to 80%, I also use a Shortcut to automatically put the battery in Low Power Mode whenever the charge drops below 80%. I use MagSafe for charging overnight.
Maximum Capacity: 99%
Cycle Count: 197
Wow! I agree, your numbers sound right. But that’s a highly unusual usage pattern—I’ve never heard of anyone doing that with an iPhone.
As another data point, I just had optimized charging turned on for my 1-year-old 15 Pro Max and it shows 183 cycles and 96% capacity. That seems right to me as I rarely go below 50% a day.
I see no advantage to limiting charging to 80% and when I go on hikes I want to make sure it’s at 100% just for safety reasons (it usually is at 100% because I drive to the trailhead while my phone is plugged into wired CarPlay).
How do you get that Shortcut to run automatically? I experimented with one to alert me when my phone goes below 50%, but I can find no way to trigger it automatically. It seems I have to explicitly run the Shortcut in order for it to detect the current battery level. Ideally I’d want something running all the time and alerting me the moment the battery goes below the level I set.
I couldn’t find a trigger like that in the Shortcuts library, but maybe I wasn’t looking in the right place?
Shortcuts app. Tap “Automation” at the bottom. Tap “+” top-right and choose “Battery level” (or, if it’s on an older version of iOS, choose “Personal Automation” rather than “Home Automation” first.). Then follow the prompts that you want to create the conditions (e.g. “Falls below” and use the slider above to change the default 50% to something higher or lower.) Also make sure that you choose “Run immediately” from this screen or it will prompt you rather than run automatically.
And then add the action “set low power mode”.
I also suggest creating another personal automation that turns off low power mode when battery level rises at least about 5% above where you set the threshold for low power mode, so you don’t have to think about it.
(My two thresholds are 25% for low power mode and 80% to turn low power mode off.)
Doh! That’s the step I was missing. I created a shortcut first and then was scouring the library for a way to trigger it. Never even noticed that “Automations” tab. Lots of cool stuff there. Thanks a million!
It was more common back in the days of PDAs, when batteries didn’t last as long.
I worked that way with my old Palm m515. I had three charging cradles - one on my nightstand, one on my desk at home, and one on my desk at work. The device was always sitting on one of them, except when I was actually traveling. So the battery rarely drained much.
I suppose I could go back to that model, but if I don’t spend a lot of time gaming on battery (I try to remember to be connected to USB power during long gaming sessions), a single overnight charge is good enough to get me through the day, so there hasn’t been much of a need to do so.
This reminds me of some of the “battery health” optimization suggestions for Tesla owners very much along the same lines. Both are lithium based and I’m uncertain other differences between Tesla and iPhone batteries otherwise. The exception is Teslas with LFP batteries (not lithium) that you can charge to 100% and not have the same concerns. They also recommend keeping Tesla plugged in and capped at 80% charge most of the time but ok to go 100% if needed (road trip coming up) on occasion.
Unusual!? We’re out there, buddy!
Since 2007 I have always connected my iPhone to power before I go to bed and then shut it off (because if you shut it off and then connect it to the charger it will restart). Yes, I have an actual, like, alarm clock (not much used these days) and, yes, I still have a landline which I am now regretfully retiring because the cost has now flown well above the aggravation of changing innumerable accounts I haven’t looked at in years.
I don’t obsessively check such things but I’m pretty sure my iPhone 11 was still showing 80% when I traded it in this year. Not only do I start the day off fresh and cheery with 100% but I usually finish the day with a big margin. I don’t listen to music much on the phone, that’s what a fine stereo is for; nor do I watch movies or videos on it, that’s what that big screen in the living room is for. The only time iPhone use really goes up is when I’m traveling and making much more extensive use of the phone and it is awesome for that.
Dave
Hi Ace,
I’m a poor British pensioner with three iPhone 6s and an iPhone 12 Pro and ALL of their operating systems mess about with charging DELIBERATELY! Apple are NOT customer sensitive and I’ve given up talking to a “Genius” only to be told to “Update the iOS & re-start the unit”!!
ATB
Joe
Thank you very much, that was very helpful to me. Managed to set up 2 automations for my iPhone.
Do you by any chance know how to set up something similar for turning on low power mode when an Apple Watch battery level falls below a certain level? I have tried to set that up but get stuck after selecting Apple Watch → + (New Shortcut) → Add Action → Set Low Power Mode and then If (Input) (Condition).
I am not at all enamored of this limited charging procedure for iPhone. I have turned it all off, Optimization and everything else. I was tired of it maxing out the charge at 97%. When I charge anything, including the iPhone, I want it to charge to 100%, period. I have an iPhone 11 Pro Max, which is 6 years old, and my battery capacity according to Settings is 84%. That percentage has not moved at all since early last year, and I am totally satisfied with that percentage, considering the age of this phone.
You have a group, don’t you?
As I recall, limiting the amount of charging (to 80%, for example) is available for only (certain?) iPhones 15 and 16.
The maximum can be limited to less than 100% on iPhones 15 and 16.
Source
Yes, but you’re describing a different feature. The 80% limit (only available on iPhone 15 and later models) and optimized charging are different mutually-exclusive options.
I was responding to one person who wrote that “Optimized also limits the maximum charge”, which I don’t believe to be the case (at least on iPhones - one person wrote here that it does limit charging on Macs).
As far as I know there are no similar personal automation triggers for the Apple Watch, and no actions to turn on low power mode for the watch from a shortcut (though you can turn off always on mode and turn on theater mode, both of which could save power.) One way to trigger using an automation is to create a benign focus mode, because a change in focus is one way to trigger an automation.
I just checked my settings and I DO have “Optimized Battery Charging” available and it says it will limit charging to 80% “until you need to use it”. I have turned this OFF and will NOT use it for the reason I already stated.
As I understand, iOS monitors charging habits and with this setting turned on it will delay charging from 80% of capacity to 100% until close to the time that you normally disconnect from the charger. Again, as I understand, this delayed (80→100%) charging occurs at a lower wattage (and, consequently, slower rate) to prevent overheating. Thus this setting does NOT stop charging at 80% nor does it interfere with charging all the way to 100% of capacity; it simply simply slows down the 80→100% top-off.
“Optimized Battery Charging is available on all platforms as of iOS 13, watchOS 7, and macOS Big Sur. Based on your daily charging routine, it may automatically defer charging to 100% until shortly before you need to use the battery.”
Source
(See also @Shamino’s more detailed explanation.)
This Optimization is different from the option available for iPhones 15 and 16, which prevents charging beyond the specified level, e.g., 80%.
All I can tell you is that with that setting turned on, my iPhone would not charge past 97%.
Using the Battery setting, you can graph the battery’s charge for the last 24 hours. I’ve attached the graph for my iPhone 16. I placed the phone on a MagSafe charger when I went to sleep. It took about 1 hour for the charge to reach 80%, and charging ceased for about 2 hours. It took another hour for the charge to reach 100%, but trickle charging continued until I removed the phone from the charger when I awoke.
This is the biggest study that I’ve seen:
The factor that contributes to battery wear is full charge discharge cycles. It’s a fact of the chemistry of the battery. You’ll notice that most devices arrive out of the box charged to about 50%, which is the most chemically stable level for the battery.
Keeping the charge as close as possible to 50% (max 80% and min 20%) will likely make your battery last longer, but by how much is debatable.
If I were a manufacturer I would kill the percentage display, limit the charge to 80% but display it as full and display a 20% charge as empty. But if I did that, I suppose I would reduce profits from battery replacement and device upgrades!
I presume Apple has collected more than enough telemetry from our devices to publish a comprehensive paper on the subject. It would be a delightful project for a competent statistician.
If only it would be that simple. Modern Lithium rechargeable batteries are affected by several factors, including:
Age. Even if it has been sitting disconnected since manufacture, it will lose capacity over time. After 2-3 years, the loss will be significant.
Charge cycles. As you wrote, this is a big deal. Modern batteries claim to support more cycles than ones designed a decade ago, but all will lose capacity as they experience more drain/charge cycles.
Temperature. If it gets too hot, lifespan will be reduced. Not just obvious things like leaving a phone on a car’s dashboard in summer, but also the heat of a CPU running at capacity (e.g. a long gaming session) or a display driven to high brightness (e.g. outdoors on a sunny day) will likely have an impact.
Fast charging can also create heat. But generally not enough to cause overheating unless the device is trying to fast-charge a battery that is close to full.
Deep discharge. If a Lithium battery drains all the way to nothing, it will be impossible to recharge it. Protection circuitry will prevent it from draining that low - the circuitry will power-off your phone when the batter gets low enough for this to be a concern, but if it drains to shutdown and you don’t charge it soon afterward, the natural self-discharge rate may reduce it down to the point that the protection circuitry will prevent all charging - to avoid the risk of fire from trying to charge a battery that can’t be charged.
But even if the level doesn’t drop below the “no charge” threshold, running low on a regular basis can shorten overall capacity.
Charging to 100% all the time. Many claim that merely allowing it to charge to 100%, even at slow rates that don’t cause overheating, is bad. I’m not convinced about this one. If it has an impact, I think it’s going to be less than the items I mentioned above.
Storage when fully-charged or drained. The recommendation is that a battery should be at around 80% when disconnected for long-term storage in order to maximize shelf life. Too low may result in self-discharge below the “no-charge” point if it remains in storage for too long. Others here have written about a chemical reason why storage at 100% is bad, but I don’t really understand that part.
Great post, but I’ll note that Apple recommends long-term storage at about half-charge - as close to 50% as you can.
I won’t try to argue here, but note that Apple is talking about storing a device. The 80% figure I heard is meant for when a battery is disconnected from any device. For example, when a manufacturer ships batteries to a factory for assembly or if you have an (older) device with removable batteries, and you remove it from the device for storage.
I assume that there is a difference between the two situations.
I’ve now owned the 15 Pro for a full year. 97% maximum capacity, 244 charge cycles. The first five months I did strictly USB-C Power Delivery charging (with two times using a MagSafe battery pack), but in the last seven months I have done exclusively 12 watt USB-A to USB-C charing, as most of my charging is done overnight (and occasionally in the car).
After one year my 13 Pro was still at 100% maximum capacity, but I have no idea what the charge cycles were. (Probably very similar.) At this point I may bump the charge limit to 90% or 95% because limiting to 80% and 85% has not helped with capacity loss after one year. I may wait another six months to decide on that, though.
[edit] Four months later, in addition to changing the charge limit to 95%, I’ve also gone back to almost-always power delivery USB-C fast charging. The only time that I don’t is when I charge in the car, which I rarely do, or when I use a charging battery pack, again, which I rarely do. Using slow-charging with USB-A, to me, did not prevent the battery from losing capacity, and setting the charge limit to 80% (and the 85%) also did not help prevent capacity loss.
You must’ve never traveled or ever use an eSIM :-)
I’m not sure why you say that? I’ve used an eSIM exclusively since 2022 and this year I’ve traveled four weeks overseas, plus a week visiting family, with two more weeks of travel planned this year. Sometimes I’ve had two eSIMs installed but since my Verizon plan now includes an international data plan I haven’t needed to add a data plan while outside the US this year.
My problem with all this is how hard it is to measure actual benefit. I’ve been charging to 90% pretty much since I got this 15 and now it’s showing 276 cycles and 90% capacity. 90% does not sound outrageously good after two years, nor does it differ substantially from what other people report who have been using other charging levels, including full charging to 100%.
I’m starting to wonder if this is once again one of these issues where you can obsess all day long and everybody has their own 100%-guaranteed-to-work secret sauce but in the end it hardly really matters, either because other uncontrolled factors play just as important a role or because all these various battery coddling strategies just don’t really do a whole lot for the average iPhone battery.
I’m reminded of portable Macs where for years people have peddled all kinds of strategies and there is an entire zoo of apps designed to monitor and improve battery health, but in reality, the best is to just let macOS do its thing and enjoy your Mac rather than obsessing over the nitty gritty of its battery.
I can be obsessive about battery longevity. I have a number of tricks and guidelines and rituals and incantations and such, and have kept some batteries alive for unreasonable periods of time. For ordinary use cases, though, the incremental gains – especially now that vendors have added more intelligent charging strategies to default firmware – is to just use the darn thing.
The only exception that is at all common is if you want to have a device in long-term storage, particularly if it predates intelligent charge limits. I have a couple of Chargies that I use to keep my ancient, decommissioned phones alive for experiments. Otherwise, I think complex charging rituals are just an unnecessary source of stress.
I got a 15 Pro on release day in 2023, and used the 80% charging limit from the time I got it until a few months ago, when I bumped it up to 85%. I’m at 609 cycles, with 94% maximum capacity (where it’s been for several months). My charging is a mix of MagSafe (mostly overnight) and slow USB-C charging at desk.
I’m tempted to keep the phone for another year, but my T-mobile plan is structured around 2-year replacements, so keeping the phone after it’s effectively “paid off” later this month won’t actually reduce my bill. The plan below mine would lose some money-saving benefits as well - that is, it would reduce my bill by about $30-35/mo, but it would also lose at least $18/mo in benefits, plus a number of hard-to-price intangibles - so downgrading isn’t that attractive.
So, it looks like I may get a new phone this year, and somebody else will get my “very-gently-used” blue titanium 15 Pro.
Apparently, the benefits of limiting charging to 80% on the iPhone 16 aren’t any more pronounced than on the 15:
If you’re looking for more anecdotes, there are over 600 comments posted to this article
A further update: after 18 months of limiting charging, the 15 Pro is at 91% max capacity after 384 charging cycles. The 13 Pro, which did not support charge limit, after 18 months was at 95% maximum capacity.
So, to answer the question, I think that the 80% charge limit does not increase life span.
I’ve now switched the 15 Pro charging to 100% charge limit (which includes optimized charging - it holds the charge at 80% during overnight charging and starts full-charge so that it will be fully charged when your normally wake up.)
I have problems with concluding anything. The only thing I really believe can make a difference is to have the phone on the charger as much as possible.
Adding Apple’s take on the subject with this screenshot.
I think it is difficult for anyone except Apple to collect enough data from the field and to contextualize it with how Apple software and hardware interact with each other to optimize charging and battery life. Beyond general battery bahavior, there also is a question of how batteries may behave in different device models and under different use cases. At a minimum, the battery data Apple collects surely dwarfs any data collection by third parties.
Consequently, it is one area of technology that I’ve decided to stop caring about. Sure, if I know I won’t have access to a charger for awhile, I will charge to 100% and enable some settings to lower consumption. Aside from that lone scenario, I now just accept Apple’s recommendations for “optimized charging” for routine use. Apple software clearly is actively managing charging processes, so at least in this area, “fighting the software” is not likely to help.
Just a comment here: this very week I received the “service recommended” notice for battery replacement on my 5-year old MacBook Air. In stark contrast, I have a 10-year old MacBook Pro whose original battery is still going strong!!