It’s fairly common for laptops to run out of battery quickly. After all, a laptop’s battery may degrade in quality and durability over time. It may have lasted for a whole day when you first purchased the laptop, but eventually, the battery life will become non-existent. In some cases, a 100% battery may not even last an hour. While it’s inevitable, you can at least slow down the degradation of the battery. And hopefully, that can make the MacBook battery last longer.
With that in mind, read on as this article goes over four ways on how to make MacBook battery last longer. But before we get into that topic, let’s first go over how to check your battery health and how determine whether it’s still in fine condition.
How to Check MacBook Battery Health
It can be difficult to determine whether your MacBook’s battery is running too quickly compared to before or it’s just your imagination. Fortunately, there’s a way to objectively identify your battery health. Here’s how you can do it:
- Click the Apple logo at the top-left corner of your screen.
- Select System Preferences from the resulting dropdown menu.
- Choose Battery from the options.
- A popup window will appear. There, go to the Battery section from the left sidebar of the interface.
- Click the Battery Health… button at the bottom-right corner of the window.
There are two possible indicators in this window. The first and ideal indicator is that the window says Normal, in which case you don’t have to learn how to make MacBook battery last longer, though it’d still be helpful. The second and bad indicator is when the interface says Service Recommended, in which case you must take action to optimize your MacBook’s performance and prolong the battery’s lifespan. Below are four ways you can approach this problem.
Method #1: Tweak The Battery Settings
While you were on the Battery window, you may have noticed that there are a couple of things on that window apart from the Battery Health… button. Those are the settings that allow you to optimize your MacBook’s battery consumption. To make it last longer, naturally, you must minimize its usage. You can do so by enabling all the options on that screen, including:
- Slightly dim the display while on battery power
- Enable Power Nap while on battery power
- Automatic graphics switching
- Optimized battery charging
- Low power mode
Furthermore, in the Turn display off after section, you must set it at the lowest setting, which is every 1 minute. That should reduce the battery consumption slightly, though the effects may not be immediately noticeable.
Method #2: Update Your macOS Version
It’s common knowledge that when the operating system is outdated, the computer or laptop performs poorly. After all, the bugs that were supposed to be fixed by patches remain since you’re not updating the system. Features that optimize the performance are also not present due to the lack of updates. That’s why it’s important that you regularly update the macOS version of your laptop so it keeps up-to-date with bug fixes and optimization. Here’s how you can update your macOS:
- Click the Apple logo at the top-left corner of your screen.
- Select System Preferences from the dropdown menu.
- Instead of Battery, choose Software Update this time.
- On the popup window, click the button that says either Upgrade Now or Update Now.
Note: Keep in mind that these two options aren’t the same. Upgrade Now literally upgrades the entire operating system, while Update Now simply dishes out small patches. Regardless, they should help with your goal.
Not only should this optimize the battery consumption of your laptop, but it should also help with other issues, such as slow performance, frequent errors, and the like. In short, there’s really no reason to not update your MacBook laptop.
Method #3: Arrange Your Desktop Icons
Not many people know that the desktop plays an important role in a computer. Whenever you put an item, like a file or folder, on the desktop, the system automatically creates an icon for it. Unlike other icons, desktop icons consume a little bit of RAM since the system treats them as individual programs. So, if you have 30 desktop icons, that’s equivalent to the system running 30 background programs at once. That’s why laptops often slow down when you have too many desktop icons.
Naturally, the way to fix this is to get rid of those icons. However, you don’t necessarily have to delete them. You simply need to compress them into one icon. For that, you’ll need the help of Stacks, a folder that caters specifically to desktop icons.
Here’s how you can arrange your desktop icons with stacks.
- On your desktop, click the View tab from the top menu bar.
- Select Group Stacks By on the dropdown menu.
- Choose a category to sort the desktop icons. It can be by file type, name, size, etc.
With this, the system should automatically compile your desktop icons according to the category you chose in step #3.
Method #4: Run Mac Cleaner
How to make the MacBook battery last longer? As you may have already realized, the key to prolonging the battery life of your MacBook is to minimize the consumption of the operating system’s resources. These include the RAM, CPU, and GPU. Unfortunately, it often takes quite a while to optimize their consumption, as you have to arrange your desktop files, analyze raw data to spot heavy consumers, and many more. If you don’t have time to do all these, you can still prolong your MacBook battery with Mac Cleaner.
Mac Cleaner is software designed to delete files from a computer. Though it’s mostly a cleaning app, it also has a feature that can optimize the RAM and CPU usage of a computer. If you want to use the software, here’s what you need to do:
Step #1: Open Mac Cleaner on Your Laptop
The first step is naturally to get the software on your computer. For that, you must go to the Mac Cleaner official website and click the Download Now button. Upon doing so, the browser will download a DMG file, which you must then open to run the installer. From that point onwards, you must simply follow the onscreen instructions. The software should automatically open once the installation is complete.
Step #2: Select From Six Different Modules
On the left side of the interface, there will be six options, including (1) Clean Up Junk, (2) Delete Large Files, (3) Delete Duplicate Files, (4) Erase Private Data, (5) Speed Up Your Mac, and (6) Manage Apps & Extensions. Your goal is to prolong the lifespan of your MacBook battery, so you’ll need to choose Speed Up Your Mac. The module will allow you to optimize the RAM, CPU, and GPU usage of your computer, which in turn should lessen the burden that’s put on the battery. That should help with your goal. To select the module, simply click on it from the left sidebar of the interface.
Step #3: Click Start Now
Once you select the module, the software will change in accordance with its features. In the case of the Speed Up Your Mac module, the interface will display information about the module. To proceed, simply click the Start Now button.
Step #4: Pick an Action
The next screen will consist of two sides. The left side should consist of four items. These correspond to the actions you can take to optimize your laptop’s performance. Here’s a look at what each action does and how it can help with your goal:
- Disable Login Items allows you to force quit programs that automatically open upon your laptop’s boot up.
- Deactivate Heavy Consumers gets rid of programs that consume too much CPU and GPU.
- Remove Launch Agents takes out the apps and processes that open alongside other programs.
- Free Up RAM closes programs that consume RAM excessively, hence the name.
You must choose between these four. Just choose whichever since you can always go back and perform the other actions if you want. Upon selecting an action, a new list will appear on the right side of the interface. The list consists of apps and processes that you can deactivate. Simply select the ones you want to get rid of to optimize your laptop’s performance. You can also click the checkbox for Select All if you wish to deactivate all apps to eliminate any extra burden on your battery.
Step #5: Deactivate the App/Process
To finalize the process, you simply have to click the Deactivate button at the top-right corner of the interface.
Considering the previous methods, you’d think it’d be difficult to optimize your MacBook’s performance. Though it normally is, with the use of tools like Mac Cleaner, that task becomes incredibly easy.
Closing Thoughts
Though it’s completely possible to prolong the lifespan of your MacBook battery, that’s pretty much all you can do—prolong it. You cannot prevent it completely, so at some point, you may have to give up on your current battery and get a replacement, hopefully, one that performs better. Furthermore, you must keep in mind that when a battery is no longer functional, it can damage the entire laptop as well. That’s why it’s important to know when to replace the battery.
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