Get more power or extra battery life from your Mac with these simple tips
It’s one of the most widely understood truths that Macs have an incredible battery life, and if you’ve just picked up one of the latest MacBook Airs you’ll be able to enjoy up to 12 hours of continuous life. However, depending on how a machine is used, its battery life is going to be very different for each user. While many will simply use the standard power settings that were default when they bought their Mac, there are plenty of options for adapting, whether you want improved performance or wish to extend the battery life of your older machine a little, you can set up your machine accordingly. Of course, you can also tweak the energy settings of desktop Macs for the times that you want to save a little money on electricity. The options may be less detailed than with a MacBook but there are still a few things to try.
Get more from your battery
Find out how much juice your battery has left, and improve it
Knowledge base
Desktop differences These settings all apply for Apple’s portable MacBook series, but many of the same settings exist on desktop machines too. There is only one tab in the Energy Saver panel, for example, and if you’re using a non-Apple display you won’t be able to adjust brightness on the keyboard. Still, setting sleep times, along with scheduling events, all works perfectly.
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
If you’re not using them, switching off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi is a great way to save some battery life. Both of these constantly look for new connections, so switching them off can save you plenty of power
Show percentage
Click on the battery icon in the menu bar and you can choose to show a live percentage indicator to the bar so you know precisely how much power you have left to use
Activity Monitor
If your battery is draining more quickly than it should, open up Activity Monitor. Here, you can see which apps are using the biggest percentage of your CPU and kill them before they run your battery into the ground
Brightness
Even with Automatically adjust brightness switched on, manually adjusting it is a good idea. Turn the brightness down to the lowest comfortable level and you’ll notice that your battery life increases
Step-by-step Manage your Mac’s power
1: Find the Energy Saver
First, open System Preferences. The panel we’ll be using here is the Energy Saver, located in the second row and looking rather like an energysaving light bulb.
2: Charging or unplugged?
If you’re working on a MacBook, you’ll see two options at the top: one for when your MacBook is using the Battery, and the other for when it’s on charge through the Power Adapter.
3: Sleepy time
Now, use the top slider to adjust the time that it will take for your MacBook to go to sleep. Prolonging the time will bring up a warning of the extra energy used.
4: Lights out
You can also use the slider below to adjust the time taken for the display to go to sleep. This is great for saving battery without your whole computer sleeping.
5: Sleep settings
There are extra options below the sliders for both the Battery and Power Adapter settings for saving a little extra power at the expense of performance. Worth having a look at.
6: Scheduling
You can also schedule your Mac to wake up or switch on at a certain time, or to sleep or shut down. Perfect if you are always forgetting to shut your Mac down.
7: Why does it wake?
Sometimes your Mac will wake when you’re not even nearby. This is because a wireless device may have pinged it or requested network access with this box checked.
8: Lock it in
When you’re happy with the settings here, click the lock down in the bottom-left of the window to ensure no other users of your machine can play with them.
9: Auto adjust brightness
Click the Show All button, then choose the Display section. Ensure Automatically adjust brightness is checked to save a little power in darker situations.
