BETTER BATTERY LIFE
Increase your MacBook’s battery life
IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes
YOU WILL LEARN Where to find your battery’s condition status and how to make it last longer
YOU’LL NEED You’ll need a MacBook, MacBook Air or MacBook Pro
Battery life is the Achilles heel of any laptop and, while Apple has made huge strides with batteries, there’s always room for improvement. That’s why it introduced an iPhone-style Battery Health feature in macOS 10.15.5, although you’ll only see it if your laptop has Thunderbolt 3 ports: older Macs don’t have the necessary hardware.
Battery Health monitors your battery temperature and its charging patterns, and it optimises charging in order to make your battery last as long as possible.
We don’t mean last as long as possible between charges; we mean last as long as possible before you have to buy a new battery. Batteries become less efficient as they age, and Battery Health aims to reduce the speed at which that efficiency degrades.
Power anxiety
Doing that is a delicate balancing act, because prolonging battery life could mean slightly less battery life between charges. If that’s a concern, you can disable the feature in System Preferences > Energy Saver > Battery Health.
Of course, battery life isn’t just a concern to people with relatively new Macs. We’ve all experienced power anxiety when we’ve got stuff to do and we’re far from a plug point. The good news is that a few simple tweaks can make a big difference to any mobile Mac. Carrie Marshall
Battery life is the Achilles heel of any laptop