How To Manage Mac Battery Health?

Every MacBook comes with its pre-installed battery, but the problem with batteries is that they never last forever. Sooner rather than later, they will start to degrade and if you have had your MacBook for at least a few years, you will begin to notice that your battery does not last as long as it used to. When it comes to MacBooks, the estimates of the battery’s life are as a result of screen brightness, web browsing, active applications, etc. It is for this reason that you could be at 100% at one moment and the next thing you know, you need to find your cable organizer to start charging your Mac. As such, we have decided to quickly put together a handy guide on the many different issues you may experience with your Mac battery. Not to mention how you can quickly improve its performance and how you can better manage it by addressing the apps and programs that may be unnecessarily draining energy.

 Mac Battery

Why Is My Battery Life So Short?

 

When it comes to battery usage, there are usually two primary culprits. This is your Mac’s hardware and software. As your battery continues to get older, the less capacity it has, meaning it cannot contain as much charge as it did when you first bought it. The excessive use of Mac apps and your macOS are also major contributors to lower battery health, as the more programs and activities you have running, the more the battery has to work and the quicker it drains its charge. This happens a lot when we forget to close any previous programs once done. In this respect, you can usually check to see which apps are still active on your Mac by heading to the Activity Monitor. This program will essentially give you some insight into what applications are consuming the most power, CPU, network, disk space etc. It will also tell you which of these programs are taking a huge chunk of life from your Mac’s battery.

 

Assessing Your Battery Settings

 

Much like iPhones, most Apple computers come with an energy saving feature in their settings, which essentially allow you to conserve battery usage whenever it is not needed. You can head to System Preferences > Energy Saver to tweak the battery settings to your own personal preferences.

 

 

Your computer is plugged in but is not charging

 

In some cases, some users often experience a problem charging their Macs and while this may seem like a big problem, there are usually a few reason why this is happening. In most cases, your charger may be faulty. In this case, trying to connect a new charging cable is advised as the next best solution. Also, don’t forget to try connecting the charger to a different port, it’s possible your charging port has an issue and it has nothing to do with your Mac or it’s charger in the first place!

 

You should also make sure that there isn’t any sort of blockage like dust; between your Mac’s charging port and your charging cable, tat may be preventing a proper power connection. You should also head to your System Preferences and check to see if there is a new software update that you haven’t yet installed. Perhaps the issue could be solved by simply updating your macOS. Additionally, performing a restart on your Mac, wouldn’t hurt, but make sure you unplug any external devices eg. a usb-c hub, to avoid any file or data corruption. If none of these suggestions fixes your issue then you should take your device to the nearest Apple Store or technician for a diagnosis.

 

In some cases, users have complained that their device’s battery doesn’t seem to be reaching 100%. If this happens, then the main reason is probably due to ageing. However, in some cases you can resolve the issue by performing an SMC reset. You can perform this by holding down the Shift + Control + Option + Power keys for 7 seconds, then releasing them and restarting your computer.

 

Checking Battery Performance

 

You can also get a system report from your Mac by heading to “About This Mac” and clicking “System Report”. From there head to the power section and you should be able to view all the details regarding your computer’s battery performance. Within that menu, you should also be able to see what the status of your battery’s health is. If your battery is fine, the the status should say ‘Normal’. If it says “Service Recommended”, then you should take a trip down you your nearest Apple store and have them replace it.

 

How To Improve Battery Life

 

What you should be doing is to keep monitoring your battery health. This means always charging it fully, unplugging it, and then keeping an eye on how long the charge lasts before you have to plug it back in again. To help you with this, you should keep an eye on the top of your screen, as there is a menu bar that should show the amount of battery life percentage you have left, in real-time.

 

Another way is to monitor your battery performance using third-party apps like Coconut Battery, CleanMyMac X, iStat Menus, Endurance and many more. There are several available from the Mac App Store or you can search for some and download one directly from the developer’s website.

 

Conclusion

 

In summary, by taking the health of your MacBook’s battery seriously you can avoid a lot of battery issues later on. After all, it would defeat the purpose of owning a laptop if you had to stay connected to a power socket, right?!


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