Pixel's Adaptive Charging feature may have dropped the alarm requirement

The Pixel uses a few tricks to help maintain the health of your phone’s battery. One of those tricks is the Adaptive Charging feature which requires you to set an alarm before it can be used. However, that requirement may now be gone based on a report.

If you’ve never used Adaptive Charging, it’s a smart feature aimed at prolonging the longevity of your battery. It works by steadily charging the phone overnight and holding the charge at 80%, waiting until around the time you wake up to fully charge the device. The feature has been around since 2020.

One issue with the feature was the requirements to activate it. As Google states on its support page, to use Adaptive Charging, the phone must be plugged in “between 9 PM and 4 AM with an active alarm set for 3–10 AM.” This isn’t very accommodating for people with sleep schedules outside of these times or for people who don’t set alarms on their phones.

Well, it looks like Google may be addressing that problem. According to Abner Li from 9to5Google, Adaptive Charging appears to be working without the need for an alarm. Li states that he doesn’t have any alarms set on his Pixel handset, but the notification popped up saying his phone will be full by 7:00 AM.

Along with this change, you may also notice that Google has changed the description of Adaptive Charging in Settings. When you head over to Adaptive preferences, instead of saying “Uses alarm to completely charge by wake-up,” it now says “Activated based on your usage cycle.” This suggests that the feature may now be guessing what your sleep cycle is to determine when to use Adaptive Charging or not.

However, this is speculation at this point as Google has yet to update its support page to explain exactly how Adaptive Charging works now. We won’t know for sure until Google puts the word out.