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10 Simple Ways to Improve Your MacBook’s Battery Life

We’ll tell you what to do to get more hours out of your trusty MacBook.

Apple’s current crop of MacBooks based on the company’s own M1 and M2 processors have better battery life than the previous Intel-based machines, but there are still some easy ways to extend your MacBook’s running time. If you’d like to improve the battery life, we’re here to say you don’t have to trail a bulky charger just to get through the day (although ancient laptop batteries may legitimately need to be replaced).

For most people, you can take a few minutes to adjust some settings to extend your laptop’s battery. Below, we’ll show you how to check its health, as well as cover tips like reducing keyboard and display brightness. We also make the case for using the Safari browser over Chrome.

Check your MacBook’s battery percentage

Keeping an eye on the remaining battery life won’t make it last any longer, but it can help you plot out how much work you can get done before you need to recharge. Click on the battery icon in the menu bar to see how the percentage of battery remaining. And if you’re running on AC power, it will give you an estimate for how long you need to continue charging the battery to bring it back 100% charged.

Here you can also see which apps, if any, are causing significant battery drain.

MacOS menu bar show remaining battery life

ou can see a lot of information just by clicking on the battery icon in the menu bar.

Matt Elliott/CNET

Check your MacBook’s battery health

Whether you buy a refurbished MacBook or you’ve been trying to squeeze every last ounce of life out of your aging MacBook, it’s a good idea to check your battery’s overall health. MacOS includes a tool that will tell you its potential capacity, and if you need to have it replaced.

macbook-battery-health

Check your MacBook’s Battery Health so you know when it’s time to get it replaced.

Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET

To view your battery’s health report, click the battery icon in the menu bar, then select Battery Preferences. Next, make sure the Battery tab on the left side of the window is selected then click Battery Health. A window will pop up showing you the current condition as well as the max capacity. If you have questions or want to know more about what the status means, click the Learn More button to open an Apple support page that’s specific to your MacBook’s processor (Intel or Apple Silicon).

For those who want more insight into their MacBook’s battery history, you can view the number of charge cycles the battery has gone through. Click on the Apple icon in the upper-left corner, and then while holding in the Option key on your keyboard, click System Information. The System Information app will open, where you then need to find and select the Power section, and then look for Health Information. There you’ll see your battery’s health, capacity level and cycle count. For reference, check out Apple’s chart of the expected battery cycles. Most newer MacBook batteries have an expected life of 1,000 charge cycles, after which Apple suggests getting your battery replaced.

Optimize battery charging

If your MacBook is going to spend most of its time plugged in, you’ll definitely want to change this setting. MacOS can learn your charging habits to reduce battery aging. Click on the battery icon on the menu bar at the top of your display and select Battery Preferences from the drop-down menu as mentioned earlier. At the bottom of the list of options, select Optimized battery charging. This will slow down your charging once the battery hits 80%.

Save battery by dimming your display, optimize video streaming

Powering the display is the biggest drain on battery resources. So, first things first: Lower the brightness of your display to a level that’s comfortable for your eyes. The brighter your display, the shorter your battery life. You can also set the display to dim slightly on battery power and to shut off after a period of inactivity by going back to Battery Preferences.

There’s an option to slightly dim the screen when you’re on battery power, and to reduce battery drain when streaming video on battery power. I also suggest customizing how long your display will remain on to as short of an amount of time as you can. That way when your attention is elsewhere, your MacBook’s screen turns off completely, saving precious battery life.

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Apple’s M1 MacBooks have crazy battery life, but you can always tweak it.

Dan Ackerman/CNET

Kill keyboard backlights when not needed

A backlit keyboard is great for typing in the dark, but it can also drain your battery. You can set the keyboard backlights to turn off after a period of inactivity so that they’re on when you need them and off when you step away. Go to System Preferences > Keyboard. On the Keyboard tab, check the box for Turn keyboard backlight off after [X secs/min] of inactivity. Your options range from 5 seconds to 5 minutes.

I also suggest checking the box next to Adjust keyboard brightness in low light to ensure your custom brightness controls are preserved, regardless of how dim or bright the area you’re working in is.

MacBook keyboard backlight settings

Every little bit helps, right?

Matt Elliott/CNET

Turn off Bluetooth if you’re not using it

There is a good chance you won’t be carrying around a Bluetooth mouse or speaker when you leave your desk. With nothing to connect to, there is no point in having Bluetooth enabled. I recommend disabling the radio to conserve battery. Just click the Control Center icon in the menu bar, then click Bluetooth and click the switch to slide it to the Off position.

The only potential downside with disabling Bluetooth is that Apple’s Continuity feature, which allows you to quickly and easily share information between your iPhone or iPad and Mac, won’t work.

Consider switching from Chrome

If Chrome your main web browser, you might consider making the switch to Apple’s Safari browser. Chrome is a known resource hog, taking up precious memory, and by extension eating into a laptop’s battery life.

Apple’s battery life estimates for its MacBooks are calculated with Safari as the default web browser. If you’ve never used Safari as means to get around the web, you’ll be surprised at how capable it is. I personally use it as my main browser and rarely run into any issues, which wasn’t the case just a few short years ago.

MacOS Activity Monitor

Chrome can use more than its fair share of battery resources.

Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

Keep current with software updates

Staying current with MacOS updates will help you get the best possible battery life. To check to see if an update is available for your MacBook, go to System Preferences > Software Update. While you’re there, check the box to Automatically keep my Mac up to date, and clicking the Advanced button will let you check for updates automatically, download them automatically or install them automatically.

Quit applications you’re no longer using

It’s best to close programs when you are done using them. This can be done by pressing the Command and Q keys at the same time, or click the program name in the menu bar and selecting the Quit option. To see how much energy each of your open applications is using, open the Activity Monitor and click the Energy tab or click the Battery icon in the menu bar.

Disconnect accessories after you’re done with them

As with Bluetooth, if you aren’t actively using a USB-connected device (such as a flash drive), you should unplug it to prevent battery drain. If the power cord isn’t connected, charging your smartphone or tablet via the MacBook’s USB port will also drain your battery.

If you’re looking for ways to get better performance out of your Mac, we have your back. We also have a long list of MacOS features that are easy to forget, but you need to know about. Before you forget, make sure to start backing up your Mac.

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Tariffs Explained: Latest on Trump’s Shifting Import Tax Plan, and What It Means

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Apple, I’m (Sky) Blue About Your iPhone 17 Air Color

Commentary: The rumored new hue of the iPhone 17 Air is more sky blah than sky blue.

I can’t help but feel blue about the latest rumor that Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 17 Air will take flight in a subtle, light-hued color called sky blue.

Sky blue isn’t a new color for Apple. It’s the featured shade of the current M4 MacBook Air, a shimmer of cerulean so subtle as to almost be missed. It’s silver left too close to an aquarium; silver that secretly likes to think it’s blue but doesn’t want everyone else to notice.

Do Apple employees get to go outside and see a real blue sky? It’s actually vivid, you can check for yourself. Perhaps the muted sky blue color reflects a Bay Area late winter/early spring frequent layer of clouds like we typically see here in Seattle.

«Who cares?» you might find yourself saying. «Everyone gets a case anyway.» I hear you and everyone else who’s told me that. But design-focused Apple is as obsessive about colors as they are about making their devices thinner. And I wonder if their heads are in the clouds about which hues adorn their pro products.

Making the case for a caseless color iPhone

I’m more invested in this conversation than most — I’m one of those freaks who doesn’t wrap my phone in a case. I find cases bulky and superfluous, and I like to be able to see Apple’s design work. Also, true story, I’ve broken my iPhone screen only twice: First when it was in a «bumper» that Apple sent free in response to the iPhone 4 you’re-holding-it-wrong Antennagate fiasco, and second when trying to take long exposure starry night photos using what I didn’t realize was a broken tripod mount. My one-week-old iPhone 13 Pro slipped sideways and landed screen-first on a pointy rock. A case wouldn’t have saved it.

My current model is an iPhone 16 Pro in black titanium — which I know seems like avoiding color entirely — but previously I’ve gone for colors like blue titanium and deep purple. I wanted to like deep purple the most but it came across as, in the words of Patrick Holland in his iPhone 14 Pro review, «a drab shade of gray or like Grimace purple,» depending on the light.

Pros can be bold, too

Maybe the issue is too many soft blues. Since the iPhone Pro age began with the iPhone 11 Pro, we’ve seen variations like blue titanium (iPhone 15 Pro), sierra blue (iPhone 13 Pro) and pacific blue (iPhone 12 Pro).

Pacific blue is the boldest of the bunch, if by bold you mean dark enough to discern from silver, but it’s also close enough to that year’s graphite color that seeing blue depends on the surrounding lighting. By comparison, the blue (just «blue») color of the iPhone 12 was unmistakably bright blue.

In fact, the non-Pro lines have embraced vibrant colors. It’s as if Apple is equating «pro» with «sophisticated,» as in «A real pro would never brandish something this garish.» I see this in the camera world all the time: If it’s not all-black, it’s not a «serious» camera.

And yet I know lots of pros who are not sophisticated — proudly so. People choose colors to express themselves, so forcing that idea of professionalism through color feels needlessly restrictive. A bright pink iPhone 16 might make you smile every time you pick it up but then frown because it doesn’t have a telephoto camera.

Color is also important because it can sway a purchase decision. «I would buy a sky blue iPhone yesterday,» my colleague Gael Cooper texted after the first rumor popped online. When each new generation of iPhones arrive, less technically different than the one before, a color you fall in love with can push you into trading in your perfectly-capable model for a new one.

And lest you think Apple should just stick with black and white for its professional phones: Do you mean black, jet black, space black, midnight black, black titanium, graphite or space gray? At least the lighter end of the spectrum has stuck to just white, white titanium and silver over the years.

Apple never got ahead by being beige

I’m sure Apple has reams of studies and customer feedback that support which colors make it to production each year. Like I said, Apple’s designers are obsessive (in a good way). And I must remind myself that a sky blue iPhone 17 Air is a rumored color on a rumored product so all the usual caveats apply.

But we’re talking about Apple here. The scrappy startup that spent more than any other company on business cards at the time because each one included the old six-color Apple logo. The company that not only shaped the first iMac like a tipped-over gumdrop, that not only made the case partially see-through but then made that cover brilliant Bondi blue.

Embrace the iPhone colors, Apple.

If that makes you nervous, don’t worry: Most people will put a case on it anyway.

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Astronomers Say There’s an Increased Possibility of Life on This Distant Planet

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are working to confirm potential evidence of life on a distant exoplanet dubbed K2-18b.

Astronomers are nearing a statistically significant finding that could confirm the potential signs of life detected on the distant exoplanet K2-18b are no accident.

The team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, used data from the James Webb Space Telescope (which has only been in use since the end of 2021) to detect chemical traces of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), which they say can only be produced by life such as phytoplankton in the sea. 

According to the university, «the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.»

The findings were published this week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and point to the possibility of an ocean on this planet’s surface, which scientists have been hoping to discover for years. In the abstract for the paper, the team says, «The possibility of hycean worlds, with planet-wide oceans and H2-rich atmospheres, significantly expands and accelerates the search for habitable environments elsewhere.»

Not everyone agrees, however, that what the team found proves there’s life on the exoplanet.

Science writer and OpenMind Magazine founder Corey S. Powell posted about the findings on Bluesky, writing, «The potential discovery of alien life is so enticing that it drags even reputable outlets into running naive or outright misleading stories.» He added, «Here we go again with planet K2-18b.Um….there’s strong evidence of non-biological sources of the molecule DMS.»

K2-18b is 124 light-years away and much larger than Earth (more than eight times our mass), but smaller than Neptune. The search for signs of even basic life on a planet like this increases the chances that there are more planets like Earth that may be inhabitable, with temperatures and atmospheres that could sustain human-like lifeforms. The team behind the paper hopes that more study with the James Webb Space Telescope will help confirm their initial findings.

More research to do on finding life on K2-18b

The exoplanet K2-18b is not the only place where scientists are exploring the possibility of life, and this research is still an early step in the process, said Christopher Glein, a geochemist, planetary researcher and lead scientist at San Antonio’s Southwest Research Institute. Excitement over the significance of the research, he said, should be tempered.

«We need to be careful here,» Glein said. «It appears that there is something in the data that can’t be explained, and DMS/DMDS can provide an explanation. But this detection is stretching the limits of JWST’s capabilities.»

Glein added, «Further work is needed to test whether these molecules are actually present. We also need complementary research assessing the abiotic background on K2-18b and similar planets. That is, the chemistry that can occur in the absence of life in this potentially exotic environment. We might be seeing evidence of some cool chemistry rather than life.»

The TRAPPIST-1 planets, he said, are being researched as potentially habitable, as is LHS 1140b, which he said «is another astrobiologically significant exoplanet, which might be a massive ocean world.»

As for K2-18b, Glein said many more tests need to be performed before there’s consensus on life existing on it.

«Finding evidence of life is like prosecuting a case in the courtroom,» Glein said. «Multiple independent lines of evidence are needed to convince the jury, in this case the worldwide scientific community.» He added, «If this finding holds up, then that’s Step 1.»

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