Google added Adaptive Charging to Pixel 4 and newer devices with the December 2020 Feature Drop. This is a helpful feature that aims to extend the lifespan of your phone's battery by charging your phone slowly overnight, only topping up just before your alarm is about to go off. Until now, you could only tell if Adaptive Charging was active through a small lock screen message which isn't so obvious and easy to miss. Worse, turning off the feature just for a night required roundtrip dives into the Settings menu. This is changing now, as Pixel phones have started displaying a notification when Adaptive Charging is active.

Many Pixel users on Reddit say they are seeing an Adaptive Charging notification on their phone when the feature is active (via 9to5Google). Even better, the prompt includes an option to turn off Adaptive Charging for the night in case you need your phone fully charged way before your regular alarm is about to go off. Google already shows a similar option for Bedtime mode.

Adaptive Charging works when you plug in a Pixel 4 or newer phone between 9 PM and 4 AM, provided an active alarm is set for anywhere between 3 and 10 AM. The phone will charge slowly through the night, achieving 100% shortly before the alarm is about to ring. Experts advise consumers not to keep lithium-ion batteries such as those on smartphones plugged in at full charge for long periods to preserve their shelf life.

Compared to iPhones and other Android phones, Google's implementation has a weird quirk: an active alarm is required to trigger the feature, making Adaptive Charging not so adaptive. On iPhones, Optimized Battery Charging decides when to top off the battery based on your sleeping pattern and usage.

The Adaptive Charging notification does not seem to be linked to the recently rolled out March 2023 Feature Drop. Google may be rolling it out with a Private Compute Services update, which can take a while to show up on your phone.

Thanks: Hamzah!