How to keep your battery healthy with Chromebook Adaptive Charging

What if I told you there’s a hidden feature baked right into Chrome OS that can help prevent battery degradation and extend the overall life of your Chromebook? With all the fuss going around the web about Pixel’s pass-through charging and the ability to set it to stop charging at 80%, I thought it a good time to shine the light on a little-known ChromeOS ability that is already present on your Chromebook right now: it’s called Adaptive Charging, and it’s a simple tool to prolong your battery’s life while still keeping you topped up when you’re on the go.

Think of Adaptive Charging as your Chromebook’s built-in battery guardian. Instead of constantly juicing up your battery to 100%, Adaptive Charging learns your usage patterns and only charges to full capacity when you truly need it. The rest of the time, it intelligently limits the charge to around 80%, keeping your battery happy and healthy.

Why is this a big deal? Well, consistently keeping a lithium-ion battery at 100% charge can actually accelerate its degradation over time. By preventing your Chromebook from constantly topping off, Adaptive Charging helps to prolong the battery’s lifespan, meaning you’ll get more mileage out of your device in the long run.

With AUE’s now extending to 10 years on many Chromebooks, this is a MUST if you plan on having your device around until it runs out of updates. Daily use and constant charging take their toll, and if you aren’t careful, you could get to the final few years of your Chromebook’s life with a battery that isn’t capable of powering you through the day any longer.

Thankfully, Adaptive Charging is here to save you from that future, and getting it going is as easy as can be. It may take a few days to really get your usage patterns down, so give it a break for the first 72 hours or so. After that, you should be in a spot to reap the rewards of normalized 80% charging. Here’s how to enable it:

1. Click the clock in the bottom right corner of your screen to open the quick settings menu.
2. Click the gear icon to access your Chromebook’s settings.
3. In the search bar, type “Adaptive Charging” and hit enter.
4. Toggle the switch to turn Adaptive Charging on.

That’s it! I told you it was simple! Your Chromebook will now intelligently manage its charging habits and extend the overall life of your battery. While this won’t give you too much of a leg up in the near term, you’ll be glad you turned this on in a year or two from now. And even if you swap out Chromebooks before then, your resell value will be higher with a device that still has solid battery health, and now you’ll know to turn it on from day one on your new device as well.