Macintosh

Make your battery better

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

The new battery health feature will only appear in System Preferences if you have a relatively recent Mac; older ones lack the necessary hardware.