Battery Usage Preferences

In this video, we’re going to look at our battery management options on the Mac, including a few new features introduced with macOS Big Sur. Let’s take a look at battery management options on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

Now to manage your battery, what we need to do is we need to go to our System Preferences. So I go up underneath the Apple menu, and then we go over to System Preferences. From here, what we need to do is we need to go to Battery. Now, this pretty much goes without saying that if you have an iMac, you will not see this option. This is primarily for MacBooks, MacBook Airs, and MacBook Pros. So now I click on it to manage my battery.

Up in the upper left-hand corner, we can see our battery. This is the state of charge. So mine is fully charged. This was introduced with macOS Big Sur. So now I can easily see what my charge level is on my Mac. Below that, we have four different categories. I have Usage History, Battery, Power Adapter, and Schedule.

With Usage History, I can see my battery level here for the last 24 hours. So you can see that mine has been pretty much fully charged. I can also see, for the last ten days, my energy usage. So we can see how much energy has been used from my battery. So we can see that Friday here. I didn’t use any of my battery. If you want to get a glimpse of your battery usage, you can easily do that just by going to your Usage History.

Our next two options are for Battery and Power Adapter. We can have our Mac behave differently when it’s on battery, as opposed to the power adapter. We may want to keep the display on a little bit longer when it’s on power, but turn off earlier when it’s on battery to conserve battery. We may want to turn off Power Nap when it’s on battery; Power Nap will check your email and other things while your Mac is sleeping. Well, when it’s on battery, we want to conserve that battery, but when we’re on the power adapter, we may want to turn Power Nap on. So we have a lot of the same options here available to us in these two categories.

Let’s take a look at Battery here. We can see that I can set how long I want my display to be on. When I go back over to Power Adapter, I can see that I can set my display slightly longer. This is why it’s to the right a little bit. So we have various options here that we can set when our Mac is on battery, as opposed to when it’s plugged in.

Let’s take a look at one new option they added with macOS Big Sur – Battery Management. We’re going to go back over to my Battery settings. When this is turned on, your Mac will increase your battery’s longevity by changing how it is charged. What it does is watches how you charge your Mac on a daily basis. Once it learns your daily habits, what it’ll do is it’ll only charge it to 80% on a regular basis. So as an example, Monday through Friday, you use your Mac. You do not need a full charge. When you have Optimized Battery Charging turned on, your Mac will see that, and it’ll charge it only to 80% on a daily basis. But now, on the weekends, you find that that 80% charge isn’t enough, your Mac will soon learn this, and then on the weekends, it’ll charge it to a higher capacity. It may charge it to 90% or even a hundred percent. But then, when Monday through Friday comes along, it’ll bring it back down to that 80%. Again, this is to increase the battery life. This is a lithium-ion thing.

This is what lithium-ion batteries like. They do not like to have a full charge. It is well known that is Chevy Volt only charges their batteries to 60%. If you have a Tesla, it is recommended that you charge it to 80 or 90% daily. You do not charge it to a hundred percent unless you’re gone on a long trip. Through machine learning and Optimize Battery Charging, your Mac will learn how you charge your Mac and then charge it appropriately.

We also have Battery Health. This is where we can see what our battery condition is. We can see that mine as normal, and then also where we can manage our battery longevity. Well, what does this do? What, what it’ll do is it’ll reduce peak capacity. It’ll slow down your computer when it’s at peak capacity to extend the battery life span, to make your battery last longer. So it’s going to slow down your Mac a little bit when it’s at peak capacity, but you’re going to you get a longer battery life out of it. If you need to have that peak capacity, what you’ll want to do is turn this off. But then, when you turn this off, your battery may not last as long. This was introduced with macOS Big Sur.

Our last option here is Schedule. With Schedule, what I’m able to do is set if I want my Mac to start up or wake up at a predetermined time every day and go to sleep or shut off.

The last thing I want to show you is how you can show your battery status in the menu bar. You can either do this under the Battery category or the Power Adapter category. I’m going to go to Battery here, and then up at the top, you’re going to see Show Battery Status in the Menu Bar. Again, if you go to Power Adapter, you’re going to see the same thing. When I select this, what it does is it puts the status of my battery in my menu bar. So now I can easily see the status of my battery. What kind of a charge it has on it. I can see that mine is plugged in, and it is fully charged. If I wasn’t plugged in, I’d be able to see how much time I have remaining on my battery. This was added back in macOS Big Sur. We used to see how much time was on our battery a few macOS’s ago, then Mac removed, or Apple removed it, and now with macOS Big Sur, they added it back in. You can’t see it on my screen here or my display because my Mac is plugged in.

I also have Using Significant Energy. These are the apps or the features that are using significant energy. So I have ScreenFlow here. This is using significant energy; that’s because I’m recording with it. My display is a little bit bright. It’s using significant energy. If I wasn’t using ScreenFlow, what I would do is I would quit out of it to save battery life, and then I would also reduce my screen brightness to, again, save my battery life. So we can easily see what is using significant energy as well.

I also have Battery Preferences, where it opens up my battery preference pane from System Preferences.

So that’s how we can monitor our battery usage and increase our battery life on the Mac. This is all done in System Preferences under Battery. We do have a few different categories. We can see our Usage History. We can set different options for when our Mac is on battery or power adapter. And then we also have a schedule. And then if you want to add your battery status in the menu bar, you just go to Battery or Power Adapter, click on Show Battery Status in the Menu Bar, and you have easy access to seeing what the state of your battery is and which apps are using significant energy.

Those are the battery options we have on the Mac, including the new options we have introduced with macOS Big Sur.