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App to limit charging of battery?

T

TinaBelcher

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 23, 2017
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Hey!!

I'm awaiting a monitor (LG 40wp95c-w) for my Macbook, and I'm looking for an app that makes me control the charging, so I won't ruin the battery. For example, I'd like my Mac to only start charging once it hit 20% and stop once it hit 80% regardless of whether the cable is still plugged in.

Can you recommend me a good app for that in 2022?

So far, I've found this article https://gadgetstouse.com/blog/2022/01/07/limit-macbook-charge-to-80/

It mentions 'AlDente', 'BatteryStatusShow', 'Charger Limiter'

I'd appreciate it if someone could share some great apps and knowledge.
 
TinaBelcher said:
Hey!!

I'm awaiting a monitor (LG 40wp95c-w) for my Macbook, and I'm looking for an app that makes me control the charging, so I won't ruin the battery. For example, I'd like my Mac to only start charging once it hit 20% and stop once it hit 80% regardless of whether the cable is still plugged in.

Can you recommend me a good app for that in 2022?

So far, I've found this article https://gadgetstouse.com/blog/2022/01/07/limit-macbook-charge-to-80/

It mentions 'AlDente', 'BatteryStatusShow', 'Charger Limiter'

I'd appreciate it if someone could share some great apps and knowledge.
Click to expand...
AlDente does come up a lot. My HW unfortunately doesn't support it or I would've gotten it.

Supported models, according to their site:

MBP 2016-2021 and MBA 2018-2020.
 
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The OPs linked article mentions Apple's own Battery Management Support baked in as the fourth option. It however started from 10.15 and was further refined in 11. So anything prior (or not HW supported) options are limited to open source code to alter SMC settings.
 
Sheepish-Lord said:
Why not use the built it one from Apple?
Click to expand...
With the built-in one from apple, the only option given is "Optimized battery charging".
And with that option, "your Mac learns from your daily charging routine so it can wait to finish charging past 80% until you need to use it on battery."

The advantage of this is that it's super easy for everyone, and they don't need to think about it at all.

The disadvantage of this is that there's no way for my Mac to read my mind, so it can figure out when I'm going to actually need a full charge. And they've given me no way to tell the algorithm about my plans for tomorrow.

In practice, I'm almost always using my laptop Mac as a desktop machine, where I keep it plugged in to the wall - but there are rare occasions when I take it somewhere else, and need the battery. So what the "Optimized battery charging" has been doing has been to allow the battery to drain down to 80%, then pause the charging, and then overnight it consistently charges it back up to 100%, in case I might need it in the morning. I think the charging happens as soon as I shut down the Mac, so it's at a 100% charge for almost the full night.

So I'm going through a 20% charging & discharging every day, and after every five days that counts as a full cycle. And the battery's spending about 1/3rd of its time at 100%.

Per my understanding, leaving it at 80% during all of the time when I'm using it on my desktop would be much more optimal, but there's no way to do that with the Apple software as it is.

This article on the different options https://gadgetstouse.com/blog/2022/01/07/limit-macbook-charge-to-80/ (mentioned above by TinaBelcher) also laments that Apple has given us no way to manually limit the charging to 80%, so apparently I'm not alone in my understanding.
 
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Rimmsi said:
Charge limiter - free, stabilty and simple
Click to expand...
Charge limiter (and also BatteryStatusShow) control the battery by setting parameters within the SMC. The new M1 Macbooks don't have an SMC; that functionality has been incorporated into the M1 chip. So neither of these two apps work with any of the new M1 MacBooks, at least in their current versions. Fortunately, the AlDente app supports both the new M1 MacBooks as well as the older intel MacBooks.
 
Update: Apparently NONE of the software options available, including AlDente Pro, can stop the Mac from fully recharging the battery the moment the laptop is shut down. Which makes sense, because at that point the hardware would have to take over, and Apple apparently didn't set up any software ability to over-ride what the hardware will do when shut down.

In order to avoid a new M1 MacBook fully recharging itself when it gets shut off, you can either sleep the Mac at night rather than shutting it down, or else you can shut it down and manually disconnect the power plug - and then plug it back in again when you're ready to turn it on in the morning.

This much will work just as well regardless of what software is controlling the battery when the Mac is on. So the particular problem I mentioned in my prior comment isn't solved any better by any of the other apps, and Apple's built-in "Optimized battery charging" will work better than I thought, provided you do one of the above things to avoid the laptop fully charging overnight. Unfortunately most people don't know that.

Still, there are features in the AlDente free app, and especially the Pro version, that I still believe are worth having for anyone like me who's wanting to better optimize their use of the battery by taking manual control over when the charging & discharging will happen. After using the pro version for a couple of days, I'm confident that I'll be better able to keep my battery healthy for longer than I could have with Apple's AI system trying to guess at what might be best for me. It gives me both control of and visibility into what's going on with the battery, and I'm happy to have these tools.

daniel-n-b said:
With the built-in one from apple, the only option given is "Optimized battery charging".

... So what the "Optimized battery charging" has been doing has been to allow the battery to drain down to 80%, then pause the charging, and then overnight it consistently charges it back up to 100%, in case I might need it in the morning. I think the charging happens as soon as I shut down the Mac, so it's at a 100% charge for almost the full night.

So I'm going through a 20% charging & discharging every day, and after every five days that counts as a full cycle. And the battery's spending about 1/3rd of its time at 100%.

Per my understanding, leaving it at 80% during all of the time when I'm using it on my desktop would be much more optimal, but there's no way to do that with the Apple software as it is.
Click to expand...
 
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