Google’s Adaptive Charging has some time parameters

One of the interesting new things that Pixel owners are getting from the feature drop announced this month is something called Adaptive Charging. It basically slows down charging your phone while you’re sleeping to preserve your battery health which is a good thing for those who like to plug in their phones overnight. But it looks like there might be a small caveat as it will only work for a certain period when your alarm is scheduled to go off.

Usually, when you sleep and charge your device, you won’t mind if it charges slowly as you’re not using it anyway. So this new feature for Pixel phones will steadily charge it so as to prolong your battery life as it will maintain the original capacity over time. The Adaptive Charging mode can be enabled and disabled through Settings > Battery > Adaptive Battery > Adaptive Charging. You’ll see if it’s active through a note at the bottom of the Ambient / Always-on Display.

But according to 9 to 5 Google, there are specific conditions when this will work. The first of course is that you charge it at night after 9PM. The second is that you need to set an alarm and according to a Google support document, that alarm has to be set between 5AM-10AM. If these two conditions aren’t met, then your phone will be charging normally overnight. Both have to be set and not just one of them.

This is probably okay as most people will have their normal schedules around these times. But there are those who might need to get up earlier than 5AM or don’t want to set an alarm during specific days. There are also those whose work is dependent on other time zones so these conditions might not work for them. But if you really want to use the Adaptive Charging then you have no choice right now.

This feature is available on the Pixel 4 / XL, Pixel 4a, Pixel 4a (5G), and Pixel 5. If you haven’t updated yet to the latest firmware version, now is the time to do so to enjoy their December Feature Drop.