Apple has seeded a new developer build of macOS Catalina with some new tricks up its sleeve to improve the longevity of Mac notebooks by monitoring their battery temperature and charging data.
The feature works by analyzing the temperature of the battery over time, as well as the charging pattern the laptop has experienced—in other words, does the laptop frequently get drained most of the way and then recharge fully, or is it mostly kept full and plugged in? In the latter case, Battery Health Management is more likely to stop a bit short of full capacity in order to extend the battery’s long-term lifespan. (All charging data is kept private on the MacBook unless the Mac has been opted in to share anonymous analytics data with Apple.)
It seems that the new system will be on by default when it ships, but there will be a new option in System Preferences to turn it off if you want, or want to know for a fact that your notebook will be at 100% when you unplug after a night on the charger.
I’ll be leaving this on for my MacBook Pro, which I don’t use everyday, but especially for my wife’s MacBook Air which is used in Clamshell Mode with an LG UltraFine 4K Display. That notebook’s battery is hardly ever cycled, and this new system should help with that, too, as Snell writes:
Charging a modern laptop battery to 100% and leaving it there for extended periods of time—especially at warm temperatures—can dramatically reduce the battery’s usable life. This is hardly limited to laptops: I own an electric car, and the manufacturer makes it very clear that it should be routinely charged to only 80 percent to extend its battery lifespan.
I’m glad to see this sort of engineering going into macOS, especially in a point update. Apple should always be pushing forward in making its devices last longer and be more useful, and this should do both.