15 Tips To Extend The Battery Life On Mac.
Compared to many other laptops, Macs have longer battery life thanks to the optimized operating systems they run on. If you’ve been using a Mac for a long time, you may have noticed that you can work on it for hours without worrying about running out of battery.
To conserve battery life, you can change some settings on your Mac. This will give you an extra few minutes or even hours of extended battery life for your device.
1. Adjust screen brightness
Your Mac’s screen is one of the parts of your machine that consumes the most battery power. Therefore, make sure that the screen brightness is optimized properly.
Go to System Preferences and click Displays. Drag the slider slightly to the left and see if everything is displayed on the screen. Keep doing this until you find a balance.
You can also let your Mac automatically adjust it by turning on the Automatically adjust brightness option.
2. Exit running applications
If you’re doing multiple tasks, you probably have multiple applications running at the same time. Often, you may not be able to use all running applications. Removing these unused apps can help save battery power.
–
Close applications you are not using and the battery charge on your Mac will increase.
3. Turn off keyboard backlight
You might not want to use the keyboard backlight during daytime. Or you can enable an option that automatically turns off the keyboard backlight after a certain amount of time.
Go to System Preferences and select Keyboard. Turn the keyboard backlight off after a TIME of inactivity. TIME can be specified manually.
4. Turn off location services
Unless you’re working on certain apps that require access to your location, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever want to use location services on your Mac. Turning them off helps conserve battery power.
Open System Preferences and select Security & Privacy. Click the “Privacy” tab and uncheck “Enable location services”. Note that this will disable Find My Mac.
5. disable WiFi and bluetooth when not in use
If your Mac is connected to the Internet with a cable, you can turn off Wi-Fi. You can also turn off Bluetooth until you need it. This saves battery life significantly.
Click the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar and select Disable Wi-Fi.
Click the Bluetooth icon and select Turn Off Bluetooth.
6. Unplug unused devices
As long as the device stays connected to your Mac, it uses energy from your computer, draining the battery. If you are not using these devices, it is recommended that you disconnect them from your Mac.
This way, your Mac will not be providing power to your devices and you will save battery power.
7. Using Energy Efficient Web Browsers
It is known that some of the well-known browsers are resource-intensive and consume battery power rather quickly. So choose the browser that saves your Mac’s battery.
Safari does a pretty good job of this and uses less resources and battery for your web sessions.
8. Turn off Time Machine
Time Machine automatically backs up your Mac to a connected hard drive. This backup procedure often consumes a lot of battery power. If you do not want to back up your machine, you can disable this feature.
To do this, click the Time Machine icon in the menu bar and select Open Time Machine Preferences. Uncheck the “Back up automatically” option on the next screen.
9. Use incognito mode in browsers
Regular tabs in your browsers load your cache as well as many other types of files when you launch a website. The incognito tab does not do this, so it uses less energy.
Try to use incognito mode for browsing sessions whenever possible to conserve battery power on your Mac.
10. Disable Spotlight Search
By default, Spotlight searches for files in all locations on your computer. However, if there are folders that you don’t want to be included in search results, you can exclude them and this will reduce the drain on Spotlight’s battery.
Launch System Preferences and click Spotlight. Click the Privacy tab and add folders to exclude from searches.
11. Turn off notifications
Each notification sent to you will drain your battery, and you can turn off these notifications if you don’t need them.
Click the notification icon in the upper right corner of the screen. Swipe down on the next screen to open the options you want. Then turn off the Do Not Disturb option. You will not receive any notifications until you disable this setting.
12. Update OS version
Older versions of macOS may not be as energy efficient as newer versions. So make sure your Mac is running the latest OS.
Click on the Apple logo in the upper left corner and select About This Mac. Click “Software Update” on the next screen to update your Mac.
13. Mute Sounds
Some apps and websites play sounds even if you don’t want to listen to them. These sounds consume battery power.
Turning off these sounds will help you get rid of this annoyance and also save battery power. Press the mute key on your keyboard to mute the sound.
14. Use Dark Mode
Dark mode makes the screen easier to use and helps conserve battery power. However, this option is only available on macOS Mojave and later.
Open System Preferences and click General. Choose “Dark” from the “Appearance” menu and you’re done.
15. Configure Power Save
Your Mac has a built-in power saving tool to help you complete various tasks to help conserve battery power.
This feature can be accessed by going to System Preferences Power Saving. When you get there, just turn on the options that suit you and you will get more battery life.
Conclusion
Increasing the battery life of your Mac does not mean that the appearance and function of your machine will deteriorate. With some tweaks, you can easily get a few extra hours of battery life on your Mac.
–