How to Increase Your Mac's Battery Duration

Whether you are on an Apple Silicon Mac or an older Intel machine, the same principles apply: reduce what the machine is doing, and it will last longer. The difference is that Apple Silicon Macs are efficient enough that even small optimizations can add an extra hour or two. Intel Macs benefit even more.

Use Low Power Mode

Low Power Mode is the single most effective setting for extending battery life on macOS. It reduces energy consumption by lowering the screen brightness slightly, making the system more aggressive about dimming the display when idle, and reducing overall CPU performance. On Apple Silicon Macs it can extend battery life by a meaningful amount.

You can find it in System Settings → Energy (on macOS Sequoia and later) or System Settings → Battery on earlier versions. Toggle it on when you are away from a charger and you will notice the difference immediately.

If you use BetterBatteryMonitor, you can toggle Low Power Mode directly from the menu bar without digging through System Settings. One click and it is on.

Find which apps are draining your battery

This is where most people get the biggest gains. A single runaway app can cut your battery life in half, and you would never know unless you looked.

Activity Monitor can show you Energy Impact, but it is buried in a tab most people never open, and it does not tell you the actual watts being consumed. BetterBatteryMonitor shows you live power draw per app in watts, right in your menu bar. You can see exactly which app is eating your battery and quit it in one click.

The usual suspects:

• Chrome — each tab runs its own process. Twenty tabs can easily pull 5-10 watts on its own.
• Slack, Teams, Discord — Electron apps are heavy. If you are not actively using them, quit them.
• Video calls — Zoom, Meet, and FaceTime all push the CPU and camera hard. Battery drops fast on calls. Not much you can do except keep the camera off when you do not need it.
• iCloud syncing — if Photos or Drive is syncing a large batch of files, it can spike power draw for an extended period. Pause syncing when on battery if you can.

Turn down your display brightness

The display is the single largest power consumer on a MacBook. On a 14-inch MacBook Pro, the display can account for 30-40% of total power draw at full brightness. Dropping from 100% to 75% can cut total power consumption by 10-15%.

You do not need to squint. Most indoor environments are fine at 50-70% brightness. If you are in a dark room, go lower. Your eyes will adjust quickly.

Turn on auto-brightness in System Settings if you have not already. It adjusts based on ambient light and does a decent job of keeping brightness at the lowest comfortable level.

Manage Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are always-on radios that pull power even when you are not actively using them. If you are working on something that does not need the internet — writing, coding offline, reading a local document — turn on Airplane Mode or toggle Wi-Fi off. You will see a noticeable difference on Intel Macs especially.

Bluetooth is less of a drain unless you have multiple devices connected. If you are using AirPods, a mouse, and a keyboard all at once, that adds up. Disconnecting devices you are not actively using helps.

Close what you are not using

Every open app and browser tab consumes memory and CPU cycles, even when it is in the background. macOS is good at suspending inactive apps on Apple Silicon, but it is not magic. Apps that maintain network connections, run timers, or poll for updates will keep drawing power.

Be honest about what you need open right now. Close the 30 browser tabs you have not looked at in an hour. Quit Slack if you are in deep work mode. Close Figma if you are not designing. The fewer things running, the longer your battery lasts.

Keep your Mac cool

Heat is a battery's worst enemy, both in the moment and over the long term. When your Mac gets hot, the fans spin up, the CPU throttles, and the battery works harder. All of that means more power consumed.

Avoid using your MacBook on soft surfaces like beds or couches where the vents get blocked. A hard desk or a simple lap desk works better. If you are doing heavy work and the fans are loud, that is your Mac working harder than it needs to, and your battery is paying for it.

Check your battery health

If your MacBook is more than a couple of years old, your battery may have degraded. A battery at 80% of its original maximum capacity will only last about 80% as long as it did when it was new, no matter what settings you change.

You can check your battery health in System Settings → Battery → Battery Health. Or you can see it at a glance in BetterBatteryMonitor, which shows you the current maximum capacity percentage, cycle count, and condition all in one place.

If your battery health is below 80%, replacing the battery will give you more improvement than any software tweak on this list. Apple covers battery replacements under AppleCare if the capacity drops below 80% during your coverage period.

Bonus: Monitor your battery in real time

All the tips above are useful, but they require you to remember to do them consistently. The most effective thing you can do is actually see what is happening with your battery in real time.

That is what BetterBatteryMonitor is for. It sits in your menu bar and shows you:

• Live power draw in watts — see exactly how much power your Mac is consuming right now.
• Per-app power usage — which apps are drawing the most, so you can quit the hogs.
• Energy history charts — look back at your battery usage over time to spot patterns.
• Battery health details — cycle count, maximum capacity, and condition at a glance.
• One-click app quitting — see a drain, quit it, no switching windows.

You can download it for free. The free tier gives you live power draw, menu bar stats, Low Power Mode toggle, and basic battery info. Paid plans add history, charts, and per-app power data.

TL;DR

1. Turn on Low Power Mode.
2. Use BetterBatteryMonitor to find which apps are draining your battery.
3. Keep brightness under 75%.
4. Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when you do not need them.
5. Close apps and tabs you are not using.
6. Keep your Mac cool.
7. Check your battery health — if it is below 80%, a replacement will do more than any tip on this list.