Charging can be enabled or disabled on-demand. When charging is enabled, the red CHG status LED lights up, and the charging current can be measured.

Charging enabled, red CHG LED lights up, battery current is positive, non-zero value

Having the ability to disable charging is useful when you want to charge the battery less than full capacity to extend its lifespan. For example, you can check if the battery is already more than 80 % charged, and your firmware can disable charging if so.

The max charging current can also be set from firmware, from 50 mA to 2000 mA. The charger IC will make sure that the charging current never goes too much above this value during the constant-current phase of the charging cycle.

Max charging current set to 514 mA, charging current ~0.52 A

Max charging current set to 1287 mA, charging current ~1.28 A

Max charging current set to the maximum supported (2000 mA), charging current is ~2 A

This is useful since the recommended safe charging current is usually related to the battery capacity - usually at 1C. This means that for a 500 mAh battery, it is recommended to not exceed 500 mA of charging current; for a 1000 mAh, 1000 mA of charging current max is recommended, so on and so forth.