Comparison
iStat Menus vs MacBookBatteryMonitor
iStat Menus is the established all-in-one menu-bar system monitor for macOS. It covers a lot, including battery. Here is how it compares with a tool that only covers battery, but goes much deeper on it.
What iStat Menus does
iStat Menus, by Bjango, is a general system monitor that lives in your menu bar. Its battery module reads health, cycle count, capacity, temperature, and time remaining, and it shows total system power. But battery is one module among roughly eight. The same app does per-core CPU usage and frequency, GPU and memory stats, a deep hardware sensor array, manual and automatic fan control, network bandwidth and ping, weather forecasts, and world clocks. It is the most polished, most customisable menu-bar app on macOS, and version 7.3 runs on macOS 11 and up, Intel and Apple Silicon, for $11.99 one-time (the weather data is a separate paid subscription). On battery specifically, it shows package-level power and per-app CPU as a percentage, but not per-app watts. And it has no charge control, no Sailing Mode, no Low Power Mode automation, and no way to throttle or kill an app. It is a wide tool that touches battery lightly.
What MacBookBatteryMonitor does
MacBookBatteryMonitor is the opposite trade-off: narrow and deep. It is only a battery app, but within that it shows real per-app power draw in watts, not a CPU percentage, plus a system total and a component breakdown (CPU, GPU, RAM, display, USB). It surfaces hidden drain from Docker, cloudflared, and launchd. It has the charge controls iStat Menus lacks: a 50% to 100% charge limit over SMC, a Sailing Mode that discharges while plugged in, and a Low Power Mode that switches itself on below a threshold. And where iStat Menus can show you a heavy app, MacBookBatteryMonitor can throttle its CPU, offload it to efficiency cores, or kill it and its subprocesses in one click. It does not show CPU, GPU, sensors, fans, network, or weather. It is Apple-Silicon-only on macOS 14.6 and up.
Feature comparison
MacBookBatteryMonitorTry MacBookBatteryMonitor on your own Mac
It runs a free 7-day trial with no card and no subscription.
Which one should you pick?
iStat Menus is the better choice if you want one menu-bar app for the whole system: CPU, GPU, temperatures, fans, network, and a glance at battery. It is genuinely best-in-class at that. MacBookBatteryMonitor is the better choice if your actual problem is the battery: real per-app wattage, charge limiting, Sailing Mode, and the ability to act on runaway apps. Some users will reasonably run both, because they answer different questions.
Frequently asked questions
Does iStat Menus show per-app power draw in watts?
No. It shows total package power and per-app CPU usage as a percentage, but not per-app wattage. If you want to know how many watts a specific app is drawing, that is what MacBookBatteryMonitor shows.
Can iStat Menus limit charging?
No. iStat Menus has no charge limiting, no Sailing Mode, and no automated Low Power Mode. It only offers a manual Low Power Mode toggle, which Apple also exposes for free in Control Center.
Why pick a battery-only app over an all-in-one monitor?
If you want whole-system monitoring, you should not. iStat Menus is excellent at that. MacBookBatteryMonitor is for the case where the generic tools stop being enough and you need real per-app watts plus charge control and per-app actions.