MacBook Air 13" Retina (2020) stucking on the Apple logo

Hello Aggi603

What you’re seeing very strongly points to a hardware-level power management issue, not to macOS itself.

The battery icon showing an “X” means the Mac cannot properly detect or communicate with the battery. Apple explicitly classifies this as a battery or hardware fault, not a software problem. When the battery isn’t correctly recognized, Intel-based MacBooks commonly show exactly the symptoms you’re describing: severe performance throttling, failure to boot, hanging at the Apple logo, and Recovery or installer boots that don’t work.

The fact that Safe Mode doesn’t work, Internet Recovery hangs, and even a bootable USB results in a black screen makes a corrupted macOS installation very unlikely. These startup methods largely bypass the installed system.

Based on documented cases and real-world experience, the most likely causes are a defective or incompatible replacement battery (even new third-party batteries can fail to communicate properly with the SMC), a battery connector or flex-cable issue, or power-related logic board damage caused by the old, degraded battery. The poor performance you saw even before the replacement already points in that direction.

👉 Newly replaced battery - shows “X” - IFIXIT

What you can still test yourself is disconnecting the battery completely and trying to boot the Mac using only the power adapter. If it starts normally, the replacement battery is clearly the cause. If possible, you can also briefly reconnect the original battery to compare behavior.

If the Mac continues to hang regardless of which battery is connected, this is no longer something that resets or reinstalls can fix. Apple’s own documentation states that a battery marked with an “X” requires service, because the SMC cannot function correctly without valid battery data.

Hello Jan,

At this point, there are realistically only two remaining options:

• A logic board diagnosis and repair, which is usually not cost-effective for this model.
• Replacing the device or selling/passing it on as defective.

You’ve already done all the meaningful troubleshooting that can be done at user level. Without professional diagnostic equipment and board-level repair, there’s unfortunately nothing further that can be resolved.

Best regards

Wahrscheinlich hast du beim Austausch der Batterie andere Bauteile beschädigt. Wir können das hier unmöglich beurteilen.

Wende dich an einen Reparaturbetrieb und suche dir dort fachkundigen Rat. Apple selbst repariert missglückte Reparaturversuche nicht (mehr).

Thank you for posting in the Apple Support Community. 

We have a community for English here: discussions.apple.com. Since you’ve posted in English, we’d be happy to see you join us there.