macOS menu bar tool to limit maximum charging percentage
Li-ion and polymer batteries (like the one in your MacBook) last the longest when operating between 30 and 80 percent. Keeping your battery at 100% at all times can shorten the lifespan of your notebook significantly. More information can be found here: https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_charge_when_to_charge_table
The tool writes the desired value to your MacBooks SMC (System Management Controller), which handles the rest. For everyone that is curious, the modified SMC key is called "BCLM" (Presumably "Battery Charge Level Max")
- 2020 MacBook Pro 13" with 4 TB3 ports
- 2019 MacBook Pro 16"
- 2017 Macbook Pro 13" without TouchBar
- 2017 MacBook Air 13"
- 2013 MacBook Pro 13"
https://github.com/davidwernhart/AlDente/releases
Simply extract the latest .zip release and drag the App to your Applications Folder.
If you get the annoying "AlDente cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified" or "AlDente.app" can’t be opened because Apple can’t check it for malicious software. messages on Catalina, simply navigate to your Applications folder using Finder, right click on AlDente and select Open. Then you can proceed to start the tool normally.
On the first start, the application is going to ask you to allow installing a helper tool. This is necessary, since writing SMC Keys requires root privileges. Once finished, enter your desired max. charging percentage by clicking on the 🍝 icon on your menu bar.
For some reason, macOS will always try to squeeze in a few more percent than specified by the SMC. For example, if you set yours to 80% it will stop charging at around 83%, so be patient. Strangely, this is not the case using Windows with bootcamp, therefore I have chosen not to correct this inaccuracy in code for now.
Usually, the operating system will take a minute or two registering the changes, so be patient. You can check if it's working by setting the max. percentage to e.g.: 70%. After a while, clicking on your battery icon will report "Battery is not charging" if you have more than ≈73% left, even tough your charger is connected. Notice that in this state, your MacBook is still powered by the charger, but the battery is not charging anymore.
- https://github.com/beltex/SMCKit
- https://github.com/sindresorhus/LaunchAtLogin
- https://github.com/andreyvit/create-dmg
I do not take any responsibility for any sort of damage in result of using this tool! Alltough this had no negative side effects for me, AlDente still taps in some very low level system functions that are not ment to be tampered with. Use it at your own risk!
Copyright(c) 2020 David Wernhart Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
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