Make your battery better

Increase your MacBook’s battery life and on its health

- Carrie Marshall

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes

YOU WILL LEARN Where to find your battery’s condition status and how to make it last longer

YOU’LL NEED You’ll need a MacBook, MacBook Air or MacBook Pro

Battery life is the Achilles heel of any laptop

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.

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