Mar 08, 2012  AWARDED MACWORLD 'MAC GEM' - The Best Battery Health App With Battery Health, you can easily see all the important information about your MacBook's battery, such as current charge level, battery capacity, power usage, number of times it has been charged and much more. Jul 13, 2020  View battery usage history on your MacBook. Apple had already added a Battery Health feature to the Mac with the release of MacOS 10.15.5 in April of this year, and with MacOS Big Sur, Apple.

The MacBook Air is one of Apple's most popular products, and indeed its most popular Mac. The most recent iteration brings with it an updated keyboard and new processors while retaining features like dual Thunderbolt 3 ports, a Retina display, and SSD storage.

It also has a theoretical battery life of 11-12 hours, though yours is always going to vary depending on use. Apple's estimates are always based on light web usage with the screen brightness turned down, so if you like a bright screen, brightly-lit keyboard, and are downloading gigs and gigs of data, be prepared for notably less than the advertised battery life.

Still, if you think you're experiencing an abnormal battery drain on your new MacBook Air, try these tips to fix any issues that you might run into.

Allow setup to finish

If you're setting up a new Mac, or restoring your current one, your computer will be going through its initial setup process for a little while after you've gotten everything configured. This includes things like Spotlight indexing, which can drain your battery significantly faster than normal.

During this process, it's wise to plug your MacBook into power. Once complete, you can unplug your MacBook Air and use it as normal, and the battery should perform perfectly.

Step away

Aside from any excess battery drain during setup, you're likely to expend a lot of power in your initial days with your new machine because you'll be using it more. After all, it's brand new, and you want to use your shiny new toy.

But that burst of additional use has its tradeoffs. The initial days and weeks of owning a new MacBook will likely see higher than normal use. Your display will be on longer, your Wi-Fi use will be higher, and you might even be taxing your processor more than normal.

Mac Battery Health App

If you think your battery is only, for instance, lasting half as long, might you be using your computer twice as much as you normally would?

The key here is the walk away. Make a note of how much battery you have left when you stop using your computer, then just put it to sleep and step back. If you see only small changes in battery level when you return, your battery is probably good to go, and you've just been taxing it with a bit of overuse.

If, however, your MacBook Air's battery drained significantly while not in use and asleep, you'll need to do something else.

Run down the battery

Perhaps the simplest (if theoretically most time-consuming) thing you can do in an attempt to correct battery problems is first run down the battery. Use your MacBook Air until it shuts down because the battery level is so low. After this happens, plug your MacBook Air into power.

Then, just walk away. Wait for your MacBook Air to fully charge before taking it off of power again. After you do take it off power and start using it again, see if you're still seeing the same battery drain as you were before. If so, it's time to try some of these other tips.

Restart your Mac

Mac What App Using Battery Usage System

Restarting is a simple way to try and kill any battery issues you might be having. Often when you're having battery problems, it can be something like a rogue process, a bad app, or something else of that nature, and restarting is a way to essentially nuke everything that's currently running on your Mac.

Here's how to restart your MacBook Air:

1. Click on the Apple menu button in the upper left corner of your screen.

2. Click Restart....

   Source: iMore

3. Click the Restart button on the pop-up menu to confirm.

Once your MacBook Air has been rebooted, try the previous methods to see if the battery drain issues have been solved.

Run all of the updates

While both macOS and most apps these days are often optimized better for modern Macs, especially laptops, problems do crop up. It could be a bug in the latest version of macOS or the new update to a favorite app. In any case, you want to make sure that both your operating system and third-party software are all updated to smooth over any bugs.

Good developers are often quick with a fix if a problem is spotted in their app, so you're going to want to make sure that software is updated to its latest version.

1. Launch the App Store from the Dock or Finder.

2. Click Updates in the side panel menu.

   Source: iMore

3. Click Update next to each app you'd like to update, or click Update All.

   Source: iMore

4. Enter your Apple ID password if prompted.

For non-Mac App Store apps, you can typically go to the Menubar and find Check for Updates in the app menu or help menu section.

You'll also want to keep macOS up-to-date, which you can do by following this guide.

Check power usage of apps

For the past several versions now, Apple has offered the ability to 'battery shame' power-hungry application. Clicking the battery icon in the Menu bar will show you what applications are using a significant amount of energy.

There are a couple of great things about this. First, it doesn't show you which applications are using the most energy, just those that are using significant energy. That way, apps that may happen to be technically using the most energy at a given time aren't unnecessarily shamed. Second, clicking on an offending app will open Activity Monitor, which lets you see every resource that the app is using.

There's often good reason for an app to be consuming a significant amount of energy. But a lot of the time, it comes down to factors such as poor optimization for the hardware. This can happen when you, for instance, when developers build their apps in tools like Electron, which are cross-platform, but not well-optimized. That's why you want to…

Run native apps

Where you can, you should run native applications, rather than cross-platform or web apps. Running Safari, which is Apple's own browser that they code specifically for macOS, is better for your battery than Chrome. Chrome may be incredibly popular, but that comes at the cost of being less able to optimize for a specific platform. Chrome is also RAM-hungry, which, yes, uses more power.

Other apps, like Slack, which is built on the cross-platform Electron framework, are just wrappers around web apps. Adobe's apps like Lightroom and Photoshop are all-native, but they're also cross-platform and tend to use more energy than Mac-first or Mac-only apps like Pixelmator and Acorn.

Stretch your battery life

If you're battery's working fine, but you're stuck without power for the next several hours, are are some things you can do to eek out as much power as you can until you can connect to a charger.

• Turn down the screen brightness.
• Turn off Wi-Fi if you don't need to be online.
• Use headphones instead of the speakers if you have to listen to audio or music.
• In the Energy Saver section of System preferences, turn on Automatic Graphics Switching, Put hard disks to sleep when possible, and Wake for Wi-Fi network access options.

Also, be sure to quit apps that you're not using so that they don't take up excess power.

Contact Apple

Sometimes there's just going to be an issue that you can't fix on your own. You'll need to contact Apple or, if possible, book a Genius Bar appointment in order to see an expert in person. If you want, you can also call 1-800-MY-APPLE to start the process for a mail-in repair.

Your power-saving tips

Do you have your own strategies for taking care of battery issues or squeezing as much power as possible out of your MacBook Air's battery? Let us know in the comments.

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If your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad is losing battery life faster than normal, it could be the result of an app or service using more power than it ought to be. Thanks to 'battery shaming,' you no longer have to wonder about which app or service it might be, or try to quit them all just to stop the drain. Now you can see exactly what's using your battery life and how.

How to check battery usage on iPhone and iPad

Battery is at the top level in Settings, and Battery Usage includes providing a breakdown of how much power each app or service is using while on screen (foreground) and while in the background.

1. Launch Settings from your Home screen.
2. Tap on Battery.

3. Wait a moment for Battery Usage to populate.

4. Tap on the Show Detailed Usage button to get a breakdown of foreground and background power usage.

5. Tap on Last 7 Days to get a broader look at power consumption over time.

How to check battery usage in iOS 12

Checking battery usage in iOS 12 works the same way that it has for years now, but there are some changes of which you should be aware, such as the new battery readout.

1. Open Settings on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap Battery. You might need to wait for battery usage to populate.

3. Tap Show Activity to see how much time an app has been working. You'll get a breakdown of 'on screen' vs. 'background' activity.

4. Tap Battery Usage to go back to a breakdown of usage by percentage.

5. Tap Last 10 Days to get a broader look at your device's power consumption over time.

How to check your iPhone's battery health

Since iOS 11.3, you've been able to check in on the health of your iPhone's battery. While batteries with more than 80% of their capacity left are still considered to be functioning well, those under 80% may be eligible for a replacement from Apple. Here's how to check on the health of your device's batter.

1. Open Settings on your iPhone.
2. Tap Battery.

3. Tap Battery Health (Beta).

You'll now be able to see the maximum capacity of your battery relative to when your iPhone was new, as well as an indicator of the level of performance your iPhone's battery currently supports. Lower maximum capacities could lead to performance throttling through the iOS performance management feature.

How to understand battery usage

The screen lighting up, radios transmitting, and chips processing are the biggest single causes of power drain on your iPhone or iPad. That's why Apple shows you 'on screen'—the screen lit up—and 'background'—the radios and processors working when the screen isn't lit up.

Now, just because an app is using a lot of power on screen or in the background doesn't in and of itself mean there's a problem. For example, if you're reading Twitter or watching movies on an airplane, Tweetbot or Videos might show really high 'on screen' usage. Likewise, if you're downloading a ton of podcasts or streaming a lot of Beats 1, Overcast, or Music, it might show really high 'background' usage.

It's when the numbers don't match what you're actually doing that there's likely a problem. If you've barely opened an app and it's still showing a very high level of battery use, that's where your attention should go.

Looking at my screen, Tweetbot is really high but I use it a lot, and the background isn't out of proportion to screen time. So, for every minute I'm using it, it's taking less than a minute to complete actions and otherwise finish things up. Instagram is doing even better, using only a tiny fraction of the amount of time in the background as it does on screen.

Facebook, though, is the worst. It's using almost twice as much time in background as it is on screen, which is ridiculous. (That's not surprising—Facebook has historically been so callous about power consumption it borders on user hostility.)

How to understand the power usage readout in iOS 12

iOS 12 will come with breakdowns of your overall battery usage in the form of two charts. Just like the app-specific breakdowns, these charts can display information for the past 24 hours of the last 10 days.

The first is Battery Usage, which is pretty straightforward, though the chart actually changes based on the period of time for which you're getting information. When viewing your usage over the last 24 hours, you'll see how your device's battery behaved, the period of time over which it drained to a certain level, as well as when it started charging (denoted by a green lightning bolt icon at the bottom of the chart). When looking at the last 10 days, though, you'll get a day-by-day look at the percentage of the battery that you used. So if you, for instance, ran your phone's battery all the way down, charged it, then used it some more on a particular day, you'd see usage over 100%.

The other chart is all about activity. This chart shows you how much time your device was in use, broken down either by hour or by day. The activity chart uses a darker blue color to indicate activity that took place while your screen was on, and a light blue to indicate activity that took place while your screen was off. So if you only browse Twitter a little, but you listen to audio a lot while your iPhone is in your pocket, then you'll have a more activity taking place when the display is off.

How to reduce background activity on iPhone and iPad

You can only reduce an app's 'on screen' battery usage by reducing the amount of time you use the app. In other words, don't open it and it won't be 'on screen'. You can, however, reduce the amount of background activity an app is permitted.

Because iOS coalesces network and location requests, it's tempting to think turning off one or a few apps won't make much difference. Fewer apps—or no apps—asking, however, means far less to coalesce and ultimately fewer and shorter background requests.

1. Launch Settings from your Home screen.
2. Tap on General.
3. Tap on Background App Refresh.
4. Switch Off any app whose background access you want to minimize.
   

Note that turning off background app refresh makes apps slightly less convenient. For example, if you turn off background app refresh on a messaging app, you'll still get notifications about new messages, but the app itself will only download new messages when you open it, and that might take a few seconds.

You can also prevent apps from using your location in the background.

1. Launch Settings from your Home screen.
2. Tap on Privacy.

3. Tap on Location Services.

4. Tap on the app you want to change.

5. Tap on Never to prevent any location access or While Using the App to allow access only when the app is open.

Note that turning off persistent location means apps can't alert you when you're near a friend or there's a special offer nearby. It also means that can't track you wherever you are, all the time. You'll need to figure out whether convenience or privacy (and potentially power savings) is more important to you.

My recommendation is to turn off everything you think you don't need and then add back when and if it turns out you do need them.

How to force quit apps on iPhone and iPad

Some apps, again especially Facebook, have been accused of cheating on background access, however, so you might also need to try other mitigations. That can include 'force quitting' an app you think has gone rogue and begun consuming way to much power.

Force quitting isn't something you should do often, because re-launching it again from scratch will consume more power and take more time as it updates in the foreground, but it is something you should know how to do for when you need it.

I'll confess to force-quitting Facebook and Skype semi-regularly. That's because, historically, they've been offensively bad at power management. I used to force-quit Maps and Google Maps after turn-by-turn navigation but they've both gotten much better at powering down over the last year or two.

How to reset your iPhone or iPad

If you can't figure out exactly which app or service is draining your battery but you feel like something isn't working the way it should be, you can escalate to full-on reset. Again, it's not something you should do often, and it's a total troubleshooting cliche, but once in a while it really can clean out bad bits and knock things back into shape.

1. Press and hold down the On/Off button on the right side (iPhone 6 or later) or top (all other iPhones, iPods, and iPads).
2. Press and hold down the Home button on the front of your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad while still holding down the On/Off button.
3. Keep holding both buttons as the screen turns off keep holding both buttons until the turns back on again and displays the Apple logo.
   

Silver, gold, and rose devices will show a white screen with black Apple logo. Space gray devices will show a black screen with white Apple logo.

The nuclear option

If an app is really destroying your battery life and nothing you do seems to stop it, here are your last, best hopes for resolution:

1. Uninstall the app and use the website, if there is one. For example, delete Facebook.app and use Facebook.com in Safari.
2. Uninstall the app and only re-install it when you need to. For example, delete Skype and only re-download it when you know you need to make or take a Skype call.

Hopefully, bad apps will clean up their acts, and every update is a chance for them to do better. So if you do delete, make sure to check back every once and a while, and see if things have improved!

How to troubleshoot battery life on iPhone and iPad

If you think you have something unusual going on that might be adversely affecting your battery life, here's more help!

Update July 2018: Updated some information and screenshots, added information about iOS 12's new battery features.

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