Battery Health Management vs Al Dente

[JohnDoe12]

So... I'm wondering which one would be better to use: the new macOS feature or Al Dente. I have no doubt that Apple's feature would work well, however, I'm pretty sure that it's dumbed down somewhat because obviously Apple wouldn't want users to be stuck at 50 or 80% of the battery all the time.

I think it's pretty much known now that the battery management feature works by draining to ~90% and then back to 100% on average once a day (this has happened to me 6 times in the past week, and my Mac was on AC power the whole time). However, this increase the charge cycles.

Would it be better in any way to use Al Dente? Does anyone have any knowledge from Battery University or something? From what I can tell, Al Dente is better because a) it doesn't use up ANY charge cycles since the Mac is running on AC the whole time, and b) you can set it at 50% or whatever which is better for storage than 100% most of the time.

Any thoughts?

 

[Taz Mangus]

I think that keeping an eye on Full Charge Capacity (mAh) in System Information might be the best way to determine which works better. In other words, how well is the battery aging?

 

[JohnDoe12]

I think that keeping an eye on Full Charge Capacity (mAh) in System Information might be the best way to determine which works better. In other words, how well is the battery aging?

Yeah, problem is though that'd take a few months to determine without error, and I'd need to try both separately. Was just wondering if anyone had any knowledge about this.

On the one hand, I'd expect Apple's research to be thorough. On the other hand, it's very likely they choose convenience for the customer and that's why they do their own thing which isn't as efficient.

Although at the end of the day I don't really think it makes a difference either way. The only thing I can imagine not liking is that a higher cycle count causes resale value to drop.

 

[Honza1]

Well, I tried battery management and it did not seem to do anything, even though my MBP is connected all day long on power. After few days watching it I simply disabled battery management and went Al Dente. I am keeping battery at 75% and can change that if needed. These AI systems which are trying to guess what you are doing can be thrown off by small differences in behavior. Manual option does what I want it to do.

 

[mcaswell]

I've been thinking about the same thing. Turned on the built-in battery management at first, but it just doesn't seem like it's doing anything (maybe that's by design?). Or maybe I just didn't leave it active long enough. But regardless, the OP mentioned that all it does is let the battery drain to 90% and then charge it back to 100%. Perhaps after learning your behavior (and/or once the battery has aged), it will do something different.

I'd much prefer to use the "official" battery management, but it sure seems like AlDente is a superior solution, at least for my usage (no really "learnable" routines to when I need to use the battery... I'm plugged in 95% of the time, just randomly using it on battery every now and then). I can simply set it to 70%, and leave it there until I know I'm going to need the battery.

 

[FrakeTrain]

I've just updated to Cat from Mojave on 6/3. This feature being one of the main reasons. My rig is always plugged in and battery is showing only 215 cycles, but 87% of design capacity. This battery is rated at 1000 cycles, so not a good sign.

A few hours after I installed 10.15.5, I saw the menu battery charge indicator dropping to about 93%, then when I looked again it was back to 100%, and since then I have not seen it do it again. I am now watching the Battery (Last 12 Hours) graph in the Activity Monitor/Energy app to see if I miss something. I realize it's only been a few days and it may be learning something, but I expected it to behave as AlDente and again disappointed that apple has dumbed down the feature with just one checkbox.

Does anyone have any idea how it is actually supposed to work? Please provide documentation. I can not find any. I am gathering all my glitches from the upgrade and since I am still on AppleCare, I'm going to milk it along with submitting Feedback Assistant tickets. If it truly is supposed to only go down to low 90s then back up, WTF? That is not doing what needs to be done for these types of batteries, not to mention greatly increasing cycles. Anyone?

Now for AlDente, David Wernhart even states: "AlDente still taps in some very low level system functions that are not meant to be tampered with." I have a major problem with a 3rd party app modifying the SMC BCLM key. That is firmware that has been known to brick units. And does anyone know if a SMC reset will revert the firmware code back to default and delete AlDente's code? It is very tempting to use this as it does exactly what I want it to do. Does anyone know how it works? Is it supplying a trickle charge to keep the percentage stable? or is it just turning on and off the power to jump between a low and high a few percentage points apart? (He is working on an update 1.2, but says to wait till he can work out the code signing bugs.)

Any factual info?

 

[Honza1]

I tested SMC reset after I installed AlDente and set the max charge to 80%. Max charge was reset to 100%. Also, after upgrade to 10.15.5 the max charge was reset to 100% again, meaning installer reset SMC or at least this value. So yes, it is tested that it can be independently reset.
Now, what and how is different. Al Dente sets SMC key and system will stop charging when it reaches that value (actually around 3% more, this is discussed by author). It holds this charge. Over night the charge drops a bit (that is normal and expected, for me typically those ~3%). Morning system charges back to whatever it considers max (for me at 75% it is 78%) and stays, exactly as normally, except at different level. If the currents are different, I do not think we have way to know and to large degree I do not care. At some point we should stop overthinking this. The purpose here is to reduce needless full charge.
I suspect that occasional full charge may be a good idea.

 

[FrakeTrain]

Thanks Honza1. And a few more questions for someone who has my same rig with T1 chipset.

So you think the app is comparing amps 'out' and battery percentage and finding an amps 'in' to keep it there?
You are not seeing the charging indicator go on and off while it's holding your set %?
How long have you been using AlDente? I'm guessing you unchecked Apple's BHM feature?
May I ask what your SMC firmware version is? Mine is the most updated according to unknown sources for our rig: 2.45f4.

And may I ask what your battery cycle count is?
And your current % of design capacity?
And your design capacity (my design capacity is 6669 mAh)? 🙏

 

[Taz Mangus]

I tested SMC reset after I installed AlDente and set the max charge to 80%. Max charge was reset to 100%. Also, after upgrade to 10.15.5 the max charge was reset to 100% again, meaning installer reset SMC or at least this value. So yes, it is tested that it can be independently reset.
Now, what and how is different. Al Dente sets SMC key and system will stop charging when it reaches that value (actually around 3% more, this is discussed by author). It holds this charge. Over night the charge drops a bit (that is normal and expected, for me typically those ~3%). Morning system charges back to whatever it considers max (for me at 75% it is 78%) and stays, exactly as normally, except at different level. If the currents are different, I do not think we have way to know and to large degree I do not care. At some point we should stop overthinking this. The purpose here is to reduce needless full charge.
I suspect that occasional full charge may be a good idea.

Version 1.2 of Al Dente changes max battery charge to have the option to use MacOS battery scale. This means that now I can set the max battery charge to 80% and it will stop charging at 80%. With the previous version if I set the max battery charge to 80% it would stop at 83%. Nice change. The weird thing with version 1.2 the icon shown in the menubar is all black.

 

[Honza1]

So you think the app is comparing amps 'out' and battery percentage and finding an amps 'in' to keep it there?
You are not seeing the charging indicator go on and off while it's holding your set %?
How long have you been using AlDente? I'm guessing you unchecked Apple's BHM feature?
May I ask what your SMC firmware version is? Mine is the most updated according to unknown sources for our rig: 2.45f4.

And may I ask what your battery cycle count is?
And your current % of design capacity?
And your design capacity (my design capacity is 6669 mAh)? 🙏

Lots of questions which will be not that helpful.

So you think the app is comparing amps 'out' and battery percentage and finding an amps 'in' to keep it there? - no, it simply tells SMC what max charge to hold. This is how Apple implemented its BHM feature and why you need newer macs to do so. You must have firmware support for this.
You are not seeing the charging indicator go on and off while it's holding your set %? - No.
How long have you been using AlDente? I'm guessing you unchecked Apple's BHM feature? - few weeks, and sure, uncheck BHM.
May I ask what your SMC firmware version is? Mine is the most updated according to unknown sources for our rig: 2.45f4. - mine is same.

I had my system SSD and keyboard fail last fall, Apple replaced main board and top case with battery under Apple warranty. So this is pretty much new device. So these numbers are on system and battery which is ONLY about 6 month old. Pretty useless for you.
And may I ask what your battery cycle count is? - 63 cycles
And your current % of design capacity? - 98.8 %, varies between 97 - 99.7 %. These numbers are pretty much wild guess and wild variations are expected. I had once even 94% and 103.5%.
And your design capacity (my design capacity is 6669 mAh)? - same. 6669mAh.

 

[FrakeTrain]

Lots of questions which will be not that helpful.

The more knowledge you have of something, however seemingly insignificant to one, may prove to be consequential in future problem solving for another. I'm an off-gridder that has too much knowledge of FLA batteries and charge controllers and knowing a little about how a 3rd party app is affecting the built-in charge controller of a $3,000 device is most likely good knowledge to have. The way most charge controllers work is that they look at SOC (State of Charge) voltage. At 80% SOC there is a corresponding voltage that is specific to each battery. That way it knows how to control the amount of amps going to the battery, and taper the amps until it gets to 100% SOC voltage, then supply a constant "trickle" charge to maintain full charge and not damage the battery (or stop the charging at 100%). From your response, it looks like AlDente is using the built-in SOC set charge voltage to maintain the battery at that SOC. That is a good thing. Had you told me AlDent was just turning on and off the charging to maintain the voltage at chosen SOC, I would not install the app. Even though that's kinda how PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) works, but that a whole different discussion.

Thank you for providing the SMC version of our T1 units running 10.15.5. I use a program called SilentKnight from an excellent 3rd party that shows most the firmware versions that are up to date for a range of specific hardware, except SMC. And now since Apple is continually updating firmware through their software updates, I always want to know if that firmware is actually applied.

I had my system SSD and keyboard fail last fall

I apologize to temporarily hijack this thread, but I've only had one SSD (third party) go out on me in 2012. Yours must have hurt only two years into your purchase. May I ask how it went out on you? Was there a warning or just instant failure? Were you performing massive writes? My SSD is around 11 TB for both read and write, which is not even 1% of proposed life for that 500 GB drive. My old 2008 MBP that's topped running El Cap is still running perfectly on that 3rd party SSD, but as you know our 2017 SSD's are not user swappable. So when you said your's died two years in... not good.

Version 1.2 of Al Dente changes max battery charge to have the option to use MacOS battery scale.

Did you experience the code signing bug that David Wernhart mentions in his GitHub page about v1.2 (“AlDente.app” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Trash.)?

 

[Taz Mangus]

Did you experience the code signing bug that David Wernhart mentions in his GitHub page about v1.2 (“AlDente.app” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Trash.)?

Yes I did. I just control-clicked on the application and selected Open.

 

[FrakeTrain]

Yes I did. I just control-clicked on the application and selected Open.

Oh that 'bug'. I assumed that was normal for all 3rd party apps not going through the App Store. Thanks for the update. I'm going to give the Apple BHM feature a little while longer. There was only one person I found who said they experienced crashing after sleep from this app on a T2 chipset. From your signature it looks like you do not have any units with T chipsets? (Apparently that SMC firmware is written to the T chips (when present) and that is my concern). But it looks like Honza1 is not experiencing any issues on his T1.

 

[Honza1]

I apologize to temporarily hijack this thread, but I've only had one SSD (third party) go out on me in 2012. Yours must have hurt only two years into your purchase. May I ask how it went out on you? Was there a warning or just instant failure? Were you performing massive writes? My SSD is around 11 TB for both read and write, which is not even 1% of proposed life for that 500 GB drive. My old 2008 MBP that's topped running El Cap is still running perfectly on that 3rd party SSD, but as you know our 2017 SSD's are not user swappable. So when you said your's died two years in... not good.

Well, first system started to misbehave, slowed down, spinning beachball, you know... I run Disk utility and it found some issues with data structure. It tried to repair and failed. I made sure I have bootable external SSD Carbon Copy Cloner clone with all my data and that it works. You know, these new NVMe USB-C disk are purely amazing...
I made second clone on another disk just for fun. I found Apple instructions how to reformat SSD on my T1 MBP. I booted on external drive and tried to format SSD. And at 40% my computer froze and rebooted. I played with it few times even using command line tools, my IT tried and failed much quicker. Genius at local Apple store listened, tried the whole process again (apologized for having to redo something both of us knew will fail) and when it rebooted for him too, wrote order, apologized for the time it took and sent my MBP off to repair. I told them to replace keyboard while at it, some keys were misbehaving. 4 days later I got more or less new computer, free thanks to Apple care.
It does not matter how expensive the thing is, some fraction will always fail. Or be hit, fall out of bag, have coffee spilled on it... These are tools, expensive, but tools. Much more complicated than hammer and I broke few hammers also. Things will break or fail. Plan for it, expect it, be ready. Do not get attached to it. And spend only as much as you are willing to loose when it fails or get Apple Care and sell before AC expires.
Or do not buy computer. Or, really, anything.

 

[tommiy]

Al Dente has had a update to fix the 'launch on login' issue.

 

[FrakeTrain]

Al Dente has had a update to fix the 'launch on login' issue.

Thanks for the update. On GitHub David notes v1.2 is still pre-release, any issues except for the code signing? I noticed on your other posts, you mention you are on a 2017 MBP, 10.15.4. Is that a 15"? So T1 like myself and Honza1. I am staying on the BHM feature for a little while longer and it appears to have bugs and will report. But AlDente does what I want this feature to do. And I'm thankful that you and others have reported that resetting the SMC seems to rewrite the firmware to default. What 10.15.4 SMC version are you on? I am on 10.15.5 and it shows SMC 2.45f4. Does anyone know how the SMC reset actually works? Does the OS store the SMC firmware version in the system files somewhere on the local system disk and when you reset the SMC does it rewrite it from the stored default version on your disk?

(Small hijack) Are you staying on 10.15.4 for the external monitor sleep issue? Or do you have any other reasons? Did you have any other major issues in changing from Mojave to Cat? I updated on 6/3 and am consolidating a list to discuss with AppleCare and submit Feedback Assistant tickets. Any issue you have that I can try to duplicate since we have the same model MBP? (sorry, I am not currently using any external monitors). The most frustrating glitch I have is that the AirPlay 2 audio from my MBP to my 2nd gen Airport Express is not syncing with video. It worked perfectly in Mojave...

 

[tommiy]

I'm on 10.15.1 as a result of a Windowserver bug that Apple introduced in 10.14.6 SU. This seems to have been the start of the Windowserver and external monitor issues. The Catalina upgrade took out my logic board after Apple stated the issue was fixed in Catalina. That particular issue was fixed but introduced 3 other issues for myself with external monitors that are documented else where right down to the OS and drivers selecting the incorrect bandwidth associated with an external monitor. So, after wasting many hours of my time debugging I decided that for the sake of minor upgrades that seemingly continue to make matters worse that I would stop upgrading. I have work arounds for my issues. I am glad I did that when I see 30k views on posts where later minor upgrades have resulted in previous docks and monitors no longer functioning and the kernel panic situation.

I moved to Al Dente because working from home means my laptop is permanently plugged in so I can now control it without the risk associated with installing an Apple update. I know my MAC will run with my current hardware and I am not going to waste time and money trying to get it to work again after doing a minor upgrade. My current SMC version is 2.44f2 and my thunderbolt firmware is 41.3.

Like many others my hardware worked perfectly in Mojave up to 10.14.6 SU where the graphics driver went haywire with nightshift.....still waiting a potential candidate to upgrade to after a year from that release. I'm getting the picture that this Mac will be retired on 10.15.1.

Sorry I do not know exactly how SMC functions.

 

[FrakeTrain]

Thanks for the detailed reply. I'm seemingly not having any issues with my Integrated or Discrete GPUs or kernel panics except for one Bridge Kernel Panic that happened on 6/3, the day I upgraded from 10.14.6, and hasn't happened since, but I don't do heavy graphics work either. At least you have a new SSD on the board and hopefully Apple was good to you and replaced your battery.

FYI, my Tbolt firmware is v41.4.

On topic, I just looked at David's GitHub page and today he changed AlDente v1.2 from Pre-release to Latest release.

 

[pommephone]

Reviving this thread because AlDente has stopped working on my 2020 MBP 13" Catalina 10.15.7 (19H15). It will not limit the charge. I've tried uninstalling, resetting SMC, rebooting, etc., all to no avail. Any suggestions will be appreciated!

 

[pommephone]

OK, read somewhere that one needs to restart after setting the app. Did so and it's working again. Cheers!

 

[Natzoo]

Reviving this thread because AlDente has stopped working on my 2020 MBP 13" Catalina 10.15.7 (19H15). It will not limit the charge. I've tried uninstalling, resetting SMC, rebooting, etc., all to no avail. Any suggestions will be appreciated!

Would you recommend AlDente over BatteryHealthManagement? I just updated from Mojave and have the BHM off but my mac is plugged in for the greater part of the day, should I download or enable BHM or AlDente.

 

[pommephone]

Would you recommend AlDente over BatteryHealthManagement? I just updated from Mojave and have the BHM off but my mac is plugged in for the greater part of the day, should I download or enable BHM or AlDente.

In my experience (and that of others who've posted on this subject) AlDente does a far better job than BHM when it works. I've removed AlDente because I was having problems with it that were becoming a P.I.T.A.: It would work well for a while, then stop working and caused charging issues that required me to reset the SMC (MBP would stop charging at 68% even with AlDente uninstalled). For now, I have re-enabled BHM and just monitor my charging manually.

 

[Natzoo]

In my experience (and that of others who've posted on this subject) AlDente does a far better job than BHM when it works. I've removed AlDente because I was having problems with it that were becoming a P.I.T.A.: It would work well for a while, then stop working and caused charging issues that required me to reset the SMC (MBP would stop charging at 68% even with AlDente uninstalled). For now, I have re-enabled BHM and just monitor my charging manually.

Ohh ok, I’ll turn on BHM once I get my mac back from the apple store. Would like to keep battery health as high as possible on this new battery.

 

[Franssales]

I downloaded and opened Al Dente. Works fine in keeping the charge in 50% exactly, but there is no icon to change its settings. Any ideas?

MacBook Pro 2019 and Catalina.

 

[tommiy]

The setting is in the icon on the menu bar.