A few days ago, Google released the Pixel drop from December with a long post about new Gemini features and more. What wasn’t mentioned is that Pixels now have an option to limit battery charge, capping it at 80% to extend life. And there is also an extra function.
The Google Pixel 8 series and the Pixel 9 series now supports bypass charging – it powers the phone from an external source (usually a wall adapter, but a good enough power bank should work too) instead of the internal battery. To enable this, you need to toggle the 80% charging limit. The battery will then neither charge nor discharge once it reaches 80%.
If you have the latest Pixel software installed, you’ll find the option in Settings > Battery. Enable ‘Use charging optimization’ and choose ‘Limit to 80%’ (the other option is the well-known ‘Adaptive charging’). This will enable both the charge limit and the bypass.
Enable the battery charge limit and bypass
To check if it works, you can use an app to view the battery status. The battery should be shown as ‘not charged’ and the power source as ‘AC’ (such as wall power instead of a battery).
Please note that the phone will occasionally charge the battery up to 100% and then drop it down to 80%. All bypass functions do this so that the circuits can calibrate themselves and provide accurate battery level readings.
Now that Google has rolled out this feature, there’s no official word on the charger requirements for the bypass to work. The support page is quite brief and does not list any requirements.
Other brands have implemented a similar feature. For example, Samsung calls it “Pause USB Power” and that is true requirements: a USB Power Delivery charger with PPS and a power of at least 25 W.