I bought a 2020 used macbook air M1 with Tahoe. When it's plugged in and am not using it, it pings and flashes "100%" on the screen (with a picture of battery on screen). I want this pinging to stop. I've turned off all notifications settings I can find. Based on AI advice, I checked all my battery settings to match the recommendations, but I still can't get the pinging to stop when it's plugged in.
It sounds like you may have discovered why the previous owner wanted to get rid of this laptop.
Sounds like a hardware issue of some sort. My first guess would be a possible damaged USB-C port (best case for you as it is inexpensive). Other possibilities are a bad USB-C charging cable or Power Adapter, or a bad Battery (never had one do this though), or a bad (more likely damaged) Logic Board. There is no way to know for sure without having a tech physically examine the laptop closely.
It is very easy for a tech to examine the USB-C ports once they have been removed from the laptop (no other way to be sure since some damage may not be easily visible otherwise). And a tech would want to closely examine the Logic Board for possible liquid damage or a loose connection with the Battery. There is also a very likely possibility a previous owner replaced the original Apple OEM battery themselves with a third party battery (most third party Lithium Batteries are of extremely poor quality....sometimes even when purchased from a well respected vendor).
You can try the troubleshooting steps in the following Apple article to see if any of it helps:
If your USB-C power adapter isn't charging your Mac laptop - Apple Support
My hunch is damaged USB-C ports at the very least followed by the Logic Board being damaged, but the power adapter & charging cable are both possibilities as well with the latter two being the only things you can control & test yourself.
You can try running the Apple Diagnostics, but they don't really do much these days and the results can be misleading.
More than once I have found this behavior caused by a faulty charging cable (as HWTech suggested).
I appreciate your insight. I'm trying some of your suggestions (different cables and chargers and ports to see if I can solve it on my own. I also did a factory reset to clear all settings and also turned off optimization.). So far, no luck.
It's easy for me to return and replace the computer, but before I do that, is it your understanding that: this is "not normal" for this computer model? I love this computer otherwise, and it runs tahoe which is great.
kidquotes wrote:
is it your understanding that: this is "not normal" for this computer model?
Definitely not normal.
Macbook Air 2020 M (Tahoe) keeping pinging when plugged in.
