Prepare Chromebooks for long-term storage
- Charge your Chromebooks so that the battery is at least 80% full. This ensures that even when the battery discharges while unplugged over the summer, it won’t fully run out of power.
- To slow the discharge rate during storage, do not physically remove the battery from the Chromebook for storage. Instead, take the following steps:
- Connect the device to a charger and turn it on.
- Hold Refresh and Power at the same time.
- While holding these keys, remove the power cable from device and then release the keys. The device should shut down and remain off.
- Confirm the battery disconnect worked by pressing the power button.
The device should not power on, despite having a battery charge. The Chromebook won’t power on by touching the power button or opening the lid, until you plug the device back to a power source.
This is the ideal way to store devices. It reduces battery discharge to a minimum, prevents constant charge and discharge from reducing the battery life, and keeps the Chromebook in a stable, powered-off state.
Note: If you can’t put your model of Chromebook into the battery disconnect state described above, charge the battery to at least 80%. Then, turn off the Chromebook, unplug it from a power source, and store it in a cool, dry place.
Do Not Store Chromebooks with Dead Batteries
Fully discharging a lithium ion battery is one of the worst things you can do for battery care. When your Chromebook is not able to run on its battery because it has run out of “juice”, the battery is still not completely discharged. It just can not provide enough power to run the Chromebook. Now, if you take this Chromebook and put it on a shelf for 2-3 months, it will fully discharge prior to using it again. This could cause irreparable damage to the battery.
Instead, charge your Chromebooks before storing them. Most experts say to store lithium ion batteries with about 40% remaining in them. The recommendation is just to fully or close to fully charge your Chromebooks before storing them.
Completely Shut Down Chromebooks
When you typically use a Chromebook you probably don’t shut it down between uses. Either you log off and close the lid, or you lock the Chromebook by closing the lid, or let the Chromebook sit. In all of these cases (with default settings) the screen will turn off eventually. It doesn’t shut down though. Instead it goes into standby. Standby only uses a little about of power, but it does still use it.
To completely shutdown the Chromebook, you can do this by holding down the power button on the Chromebook until the screen goes blank. This should take less than 5-7 seconds. When you release the power button the screen should remain blank. Occasionally logging off or shutting down your Chromebook is also important for keeping your Chrome OS update to date.