13 Tips To Make Your MacBook Battery Last Longer

If you need your MacBook's battery to last as long as possible through a tough day, here are 13 ways you can save energy to get there.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are some tips to help your MacBook battery last longer. 
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When somebody says make your MacBook battery last longer that could mean how many years it lasts before you need to replace it. But that is not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about when you're going through your day and you have no way to plug your MacBook in. How do you make it last longer while you're traveling, using it at school, or some situation where you just can't plug it in. 
The first thing you need to do is lower the amount of power your MacBook is using. One of the main thing that uses power is the light from your screen. You can go to Control Center up here and you can go to Display and adjust the brightness. Now it may look perfectly fine here or here but down lower will mean it is using less battery. Maybe not that much battery minute to minute but over the course of an entire day that could stretch your battery life out considerably. 
Now if your MacBook has a Backlight keyboard, not all of them do, then you can also reduce the amount of light coming out of your keyboard or completely turn that off. In macOS Ventura go to System Settings and then you go to Keyboard. There should be a setting for Keyboard Brightness. If you turn it all the way down it turns off the keyboard   Backlight and it will save power. So if you don't need this turn it Off. You also have the option here to turn Off the Keyboard Backlight after some inactivity so you can set that to say, Turn Off After 10 seconds. So it will be lit while you're typing but as soon as you're not typing, maybe doing something else like viewing content, then it will turn Off and that could really add up to a lot of savings over the day. 
Another things that use power are the wireless radio connections. So, you've got two primary ones. You've got Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Now if you are using both of those fine, just keep using them. But if, say, you're in a situation where you are not connected to Wi-Fi or maybe you're going to work for a little while and you don't really need to use the internet in any capacity at all, you could just turn Off Wi-Fi temporarily. Same thing with Bluetooth. If you don't happen to be using Bluetooth right now just turn it Off, maybe to save a little bit of battery power. 
Now how much battery power you are using at any given time depends on what your Mac is doing. Chances are you've got apps running. Those apps are doing something and whatever they are doing is using up power because it is using the processor, it's using the graphics, it's using the storage, all the parts of your Mac. So, you want to limit what you've got running. Most of the time when apps aren't being used, they are just hidden in the background or you're not actually interacting with them they are using hardly any power at all. But sometimes apps do use power in the background, particularly browsers. With browsers you can have many Tabs open and some of those webpages are updating themselves all the time, even if you're not viewing them. Look at which apps you've got running. Are there any that you just don't need now and you know you won't need for awhile. If you're using a browser take a look at all the tabs you've got open. Think about what they are doing. Some of those might be very quiet and stable and not really using much power. Others may be doing all sorts of inter-active things in the background, might be displaying videos, and updating. If you're not using a Tab close it. Don't worry about getting back to it. It's easy to get back to a webpage. Bookmark it if you want. But try to minimize how much you're using for each app to increase the life of your battery. 
Also extensions really drain the battery too. Every extension you have installed is doing something additional with each webpage. Sometimes a combination of a webpage and an extension you have installed can mean a lot more battery usage. So, go into the Settings, whether it is Safari or Chrome and look at your extensions. See which ones you've got going and consider maybe disabling some of those or getting rid of them if you're not using them. So many times I've heard of people getting subpar battery life and then it comes down to some browser extension they have installed. 
Speaking of apps note that Native apps tend to be better for energy use. What do I mean by Native Apps? Well I mean the built-in apps like Reminders, Calendar, and Safari and also Apple's apps like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. The equivalence to those, like Microsoft Word or Goggle Chrome tend to use more power. It is not always the case and very often it comes down to what you're actually doing with those apps. For instance, a simple document in Word may use less power than a really complex document in Pages. Same thing with a simple page in Chrome versus a complex page in Safari. But on the whole if you're trying to get as much time from your battery as possible stick with Safari, Pages, and other Apple apps if you can. 
Now if you want to find out how much power apps are using you can using Activity Monitor. Launch Activity Monitor and click on energy at the top. Then go to Energy Impact and sort it so the highest numbers are at the top. Now any given moment that you're looking at the Energy Impact isn't going to tell you the full story. It is just going to tell you exactly what is going on right now. But if you find your battery is draining quickly then maybe keep this open and every once in awhile take a look at it and see which ones you always seem to notice are at the top. Maybe there are some apps that you're not even using right now that are at the top. Take a look at these numbers here. Obviously even though these are at the top they are using almost zero energy at the moment. You can also look at the 12 hour column here and see which apps have used the most power over the last twelve hours. If the app at the top is using a ton of power but it is the app you're using all the time then, of course, that's natural that it is going to be using the most energy. But look for apps that maybe you're not using very much yet they still rank high here. Then maybe think about not having those apps running at those times when you need to maximize your battery life. 
Now this one may seem obvious to a lot of people but not everybody. If you have an iPhone and you plug it into your Mac it will charge your iPhone. Even if you don't intend on charging your iPhone, you just need to connect it for some other reason, it is still going to charge your iPhone. So try to not have other devices plugged into the ports of your MacBook. They are going to draw some amount of power either to charge the battery inside them or to use those devices. Even if you are not actually using them at that moment they still might be drawing power. So the idea is to have nothing plugged into your MacBook unless you absolutely need it. 
Let's look at some more setting that could help. If you go into System Settings and then you go to Lock Screen, you're going to see a control here for Turn Display Off on Battery when inactive, and a time. So the idea is that you haven't done anything with your MacBook for say two minutes. It will turn the display off and greatly reduce the amount of power it is using. So set this as low as you can stand. If you have it set to something like 10 minutes, well it is easy for your to focus your attention to something else that you're doing, not your MacBook, and the screen continues to use energy, even if you're not using your Mac. But if you have it set to something low it's as simple as maybe touching the trackpad or pressing the spacebar to wake the screen up, say, if you're just reading something. 
Now some of the options here are going to be different depending upon which MacBook model you've got. For this M2 MacBook Air I've got a setting here for Low Power Mode and I can set it to Only On Battery. So it is going to reduce the use of power when I'm on the battery which is perfect. 
Now I've also got a setting if I scroll down here and click Options for Optimize Video Streaming While on Battery. So if I turn that On, especially if I'm doing a lot of video streaming, then it will use less power. 
Then if you look at Battery Health you can tap this right here and you get information about your battery. One of the things you've got is Optimize Battery Charging. So this is the automatic system where your MacBook Battery won't charge all the way until just before you need it. So if everyday you unplug your MacBook at 7:00 a.m. to get going then it is going to know to not charge fully until just before 7:00 a.m. and then charge to 100%. But if you know you have this unusual situation coming and you want to have as much power in the battery as possible switch this Off in advance. Then you can set it to turn Off until tomorrow. So, for instance, if you know you need to get up at 5:00 a.m. to catch a plane and you want your battery to be at max for the plane trip, well turn this Off until tomorrow then it will charge your battery up to 100% and when you grab your MacBook at 5:00 a.m. you'll know it is fully charged and ready for a long day. 
Here's one last tip especially for those that have older MacBooks. Another big drain on power is having the fans run. Now on newer M1 and M2 MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs this really isn't much of a problem. Rarely does the fan come on and the MacBook Airs don't even have one. But for older Macs they come on a lot more frequently and as soon as that happens you know you're not only using a lot of power for the CPU, that is what's causing the heat, but now you're using even more power because the fans are spinning. So try to keep your MacBook cool. Let air flow around it. Choose a cooler location to be using it if possible. Maybe minimize using any apps that are really going to heat it up. 
So I hope you find this useful. I certainly use all these techniques when I know I have a long day ahead of me and I won't get to plug my MacBook in until it is done. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 3 Responses to “13 Tips To Make Your MacBook Battery Last Longer”

jun

8 months ago

Thanks Gary for the great tips! Waiting for the tips for the overall battery life (I mean, maximizing no. of years) too!

Gary Rosenzweig

Jun: Not too much to say on that topic. I did this video a while ago: https://macmost.com/frequently-asked-questions-about-macbook-batteries.html Since then macOS management is even better so it is still true that you should just use it plugged in when you are near power, use it on battery when that is more convenient, don't buy into all of the myths and nonsense you'll hear from old blog posts or people repeating decades-old info.

Greg

Great information. Your knowledge is amazing. I would have only thought of 4 of those things about making the battery last longer.

13 Tips To Make Your MacBook Battery Last Longer

Comments: 3 Responses to “13 Tips To Make Your MacBook Battery Last Longer”

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