Your MacBook Air has a piece of hardware called a system management controller (SMC), but don’t panic: you don’t need to understand how it works to use your laptop. Instead, simply know that this component helps manage your laptop’s power usage, which is a good thing. However, at times it may get some unusual ideas about how you tend to use your laptop and start managing the power distribution in a way that doesn’t really work for you, resulting in something like slow charging speeds. If this happens, you can reset the SMC to get things back to a more balanced state.
Apple explains how to do this in a support document, but there are some things to be mindful of: this is something you may need to do if you have a MacBook Air powered by Intel hardware, and also there’s a very good chance you don’t need to do this at all. You should first try the other troubleshooting steps, as the odds are overwhelmingly high that one of them will solve your problem. If all else has failed, however, including restarting the machine, resetting the SMC may be the saving grace that restores your battery charging speeds. First, head over to this Apple support document to see whether your MacBook has the T2 chip, then follow the appropriate steps for your laptop.
If your MacBook Air has the T2 chip:
- Press and hold the following key combo for 7 seconds: Control (Left) + Option (Left) + Shift (Right)
- After 7 seconds, and while still pressing the three keys, press and hold the power button. The laptop will turn off.
- After an additional 7 seconds spent pressing all four buttons, release them.
- Give the laptop a few seconds, then turn it on.
If your MacBook Air doesn’t have the T2 chip:
- Turn off the laptop.
- Press and hold Shift (Left) + Control (Left) + Option (Left).
- Press the power button without releasing the other three keys.
- After 10 seconds, release all four keys.
- Turn the laptop back on.
If you’re using an M1 or M2 MacBook Air rather than an Intel model, the entire process is far easier: you can fix any power management quirks simply by shutting down and restarting the laptop.
