How To Use the New macOS Catalina Battery Health Management Setting

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's talk about the new Battery Health Management feature in macOS. 

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So there's a new update to macOS Catalina this week. It's version 10.15.5. If you didn't get it automatically you can go to System Preferences, Software Update and check for it there. Obviously since this is an update to Catalina if you're not running Catalina you're not going to get this update. Now mostly there are a lot of bug fixes and performance enhancements.

But one new feature is a battery health management tool that's built in to macOS. This is obviously for those Macs that have batteries. So in other words MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs. The feature is only for MacBooks that have Thunderbolt 3 built in. So that would be MacBook Pros from 2016 and on and MacBook Airs from 2018 and on. So if you don't see it you probably have a MacBook that is older than those.

So here's basically how it works. You MacBook is going to keep track of two primary factors. Number one is the way you use your battery. So how often you charge, when you charge, how much you use the battery, and how much you use it when it's plugged in. In addition it's also going to keep track of battery temperature. So everyone is going to be a little different here. Some people use lots of tasks that generate a lot of heat. Your MacBook gets hot. Other people rarely use it for things like that.

Then keeping track of those two features it's going to figure out what the optimum maximum charge should be for your battery. So previously when you charged your MacBook to 100% it used all of the battery capacity you could. This is great for maximum battery time throughout the day. But the longevity of the battery, how many years the battery will last you, can be improved by not charging it quite all the way. So it will calculate a new amount that will represent 100%. So instead of charging the battery to Maximum capacity it might charge it slightly less than that.

Now you won't notice any difference in the numbers. Whatever it calculates the optimum charge to be it will show that as 100% charged even though the battery itself may not be showing the maximum amount of energy is can it will show it as 100% when you're at that mark. The difference will be in how long the battery lasts throughout the day. So previously you may have gotten say 8 hours of battery life out of your MacBook Pro but now with this feature maybe you get 7 hours and 45 minutes. It's really going to be hard to measure this on your own because of course everyday you're using it for different things. Watching a little bit more video or playing a little bit more of a game is probably going to have more of an effect on how long the battery lasts in the day than this battery health management feature.

So it's going to be really hard to compare. You have the ability to turn this Off. If you go into System Preferences and then Energy Saver there's a button for Battery Health. Click that and the only control in there is turn Off Battery Health Management. So which setting should you use. Well, it depends what is more important to you. If the lifespan of your battery is more important, if you want to get more months out of the life of that battery and use it for as long as possible before you need to replace it or buy a new MacBook then you want to have this turned On. However if having the maximum amount of battery time through the day before you need to plug it in is more important to you then you want to have this turned Off.

For a lot of us it makes sense to have it turned Off. A lot of people don't ever keep a MacBook long enough for the battery to go bad. They want the latest model. Maybe they buy a new one every two years. Or maybe they just don't mind getting a battery replacement after three or five years. If you're keeping your MacBook for a long time it's probably not going to make too much difference whether you use this. You're eventually going to need a new battery.

On the other hand if you never run your battery down to zero, if you're only ever using the top 20 or 50% of the battery anyway then you might as well have this turned on and increase the lifespan of the battery by a little bit. Another use case is if you're always keeping your MacBook plugged in. If your are then having this turned On makes sense. It will see that you're rarely using the battery and not charge the battery all the way to maximum. It will show 100% but it's going to leave a little room there at the top to prolong the life of the battery. Of course if you're using your MacBook plugged in all the time it really doesn't make any difference either way. But at least then if you keep the MacBook for a long time and 5, 6, 7 years down the road you decide to maybe start using the battery a little bit, the battery will be in a little bit better condition.

But there's also nothing to stop you from toggling this On and Off depending upon your use. For instance I can see having it turned On most of the time. I rarely run my battery down to zero. But when I travel I want maximum capacity. So I'll turn this feature Off. Then I know when I get on an airplane I have the maximum amount of battery life.

One thing to keep in mind is if you turn this On and you're using some other type of techniques for trying to make your battery last longer you should probably abandon them. This type of techniques really don't work anyway. A lot of people believe in only charging the MacBook up to a certain point or to always running it down to a certain point before plugging it in again, or to only using it when plugged in, or only using it when not plugged in, or to chanting and rattling chicken bones over it at every full moon. 

Whatever you do if you're going to use Apple's Battery Health Management tool you should probably let it do its job. Simply use the MacBook plugged in when you're near power, us it on battery when you're not near power and want to use your MacBook and just use it normally. Remember it's a tool. You use the tool, don't let the tool use you. If you want to read a little bit more Apple has this page here although it really doesn't go into too many details. Remember this feature is new so it has only been tested by a small number of users up to this point. Probably over the coming months and years we'll see if users generally like this feature or tend to just want to turn it Off.