Comparison
Battery Health 2 vs MacBookBatteryMonitor
Battery Health 2 was the default stats app for years. Its developer has since shipped a successor and it has not been meaningfully updated since early 2022. Here is how it compares with MacBookBatteryMonitor.
What Battery Health 2 does
Battery Health 2, by FIPLAB, is a free Mac App Store utility that shows charge level, current and original capacity, health percentage, cycle count, age, temperature, total system wattage, and time remaining in the menu bar. A $9.99 in-app purchase unlocks a 24-hour charge-level history graph and low-battery notifications. It is competent at reading battery vitals and it ships through the App Store, which means sandboxed installs and automatic updates. The catch is that it has been frozen since version 1.94 in January 2022, more than four years ago, and FIPLAB has since released a successor, Battery Health 3. It shows total system watts but no per-app attribution, and it has no charge control, no Sailing Mode, and no process management. It runs on macOS 10.7 and up, including Intel Macs. For a no-frills health readout it works, but it is effectively a legacy product.
What MacBookBatteryMonitor does
MacBookBatteryMonitor is actively developed and Apple-Silicon-native. It shows the same core vitals Battery Health 2 does, plus per-app power draw in real-time watts, a component breakdown (CPU, GPU, RAM, display, USB), hidden drain from Docker, cloudflared, and launchd, and the design-cycle limit as a target. It adds the controls Battery Health 2 has never had: a 50% to 100% charge limit over SMC, a Sailing Mode that discharges while plugged in, automated Low Power Mode, and per-app actions including a CPU throttle, an E-core offload toggle, and a one-click kill for runaway processes. The trade-off is that it does not ship through the App Store, requires macOS 14.6 and up on Apple Silicon, and is a paid one-time purchase rather than a free download.
Feature comparison
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Which one should you pick?
Battery Health 2 is a free, trusted stats readout that runs on older and Intel Macs, and if that is all you need it is fine. It is also a stale product its own developer has moved past. MacBookBatteryMonitor is the modern equivalent for people who want more than a health percentage: real per-app watts, charge control, and the ability to throttle or kill what is draining the battery, on actively maintained, Apple-Silicon-native code.
Frequently asked questions
Is Battery Health 2 still maintained?
Not actively. Its last meaningful update was version 1.94 in January 2022. FIPLAB has since released a successor called Battery Health 3. Battery Health 2 is still downloadable for prior purchasers but is effectively a legacy product.
Does Battery Health 2 show which apps are draining the battery?
No. It shows total system wattage only, with no per-app breakdown. Even the successor, Battery Health 3, shows an opaque "energy impact" score rather than real watts. Per-app wattage is one of the main things MacBookBatteryMonitor is built for.
Why is MacBookBatteryMonitor not on the Mac App Store?
Because charge control requires talking to the SMC through a privileged helper, and per-app throttling uses kernel-level process policies. Both are things the App Store sandbox does not allow. Direct distribution is the only way to ship those features.