Ways to Improve MacBook Battery Life: Does your MacBook drain battery less than normal under light usage? However, before you blame it on the recent macOS update or background apps, there are a few fundamental settings and optimizations that can be checked.

Read: 10 Essential MacBook Settings to Optimize Your New Device

That is why in this Crazy Errors guide, we will review 10 MacBook battery health-related optimizations and one additional advice to increase both the daily backup duration on your MacBook and its total battery lifespan.

Ways to Improve MacBook Battery Life

1. Check Battery Health and Cycle Count:

Start with a check of your battery health.

• Then you need to click on the Apple menu at the top-left of your screen.
• Choose About This Mac → More Info.
• 2018-06-24 MacOS High Sierra: scroll down, then you will see System Report.
• On the left panel, click Power.

Focus on:

• Cycle Count – Under 1000 is fine for most of the MacBooks.
• Condition – Should read Normal. If Service Recommended displays, the battery is chemically aged and cannot be fully corrected with tweaks.

2. Optimize Video Streaming on Battery:

• Settings → System → Battery, then Options.
• This setting allows you to stream SDR content in SDR mode, which consumes very less power, thus saving a lot of battery.
• Change the Energy Mode to Low Power for a quieter, longer usable operation time.

3. Adjust Display Brightness and Enable True Tone:

• Click on System Settings and then Displays.
• Turn on Automatically adjust brightness and True Tone.
• For a longer battery life, do not keep the manual brightness above 80% with light in use, lowering one of MacBook’s worst power-draining features.

4. Turn Off Wi-Fi When Not in Use:

• Disable Wi-Fi from the menu bar when you are not using WiFi, especially when you are traveling.
• The Wi-Fi scans for networks in the background, and this is actively using battery.

5. Use Activity Monitor to Kill Energy-Hungry Apps:

• Open Spotlight Search by searching for Activity Monitor.
• Switch to the Energy tab and sort by Energy Impact (Top>Energy Impact).
• Close down apps that you do not need to have running all the time, using a lot of high-consumption ones (this includes duplicate Chrome tabs and also cloud syncing services like Dropbox or onedrive).
• For performance reasons, use Safari Technology Preview, because it is less burdensome than Chrome or even Firefox.

6. Clean Up Background Processes and Login Apps:

• Open System Settings -> General -> Login Items & Extensions.
• Delete superfluous Open at Login apps
• Turn off the apps which does not require to run always (example: Spotify, Adobe, Zoom) in Allow in Background.

7. Use Dark Mode:

• Change the Dark Theme by going to System Settings → Appearance.
• Dark Mode reduces power usage on OLED and Retina displays by turning more of your pixels off.

8. Reset SMC or NVRAM (If Needed):

Only reset if your battery is behaving abnormally:

• Intel Macs – Shut down → Hold Shift + Control + Option + Power for 10 seconds → Release → Power on.
• Apple Silicon Macs – Shut down → Hold Power for 30 seconds.

9. Disable Dynamic Wallpapers and Screen Savers:

• Enter System Settings → Wallpaper
• In the left pane, click on Dynamic updates > Change from Continuous to Daily or Weekly.
• Animations and changing backgrounds quickly use up the battery.

10. Stop Background Syncing When on Battery:

• If not, then check out 4 Methods to Pause syncing in Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox.
• And finally, turn off iCloud Desktop & Documents syncing if you do not use it.

Extra Tip: Charging the Right Way:

To maximize long-term battery health:

• Keep your charge between 30%–80%.
• Do not allow it to be discharged more than 5% frequently
• Go to Battery Settings and turn on Optimized Battery Charging—this one learns when you tend to charge your laptop, holding off past 80% until it needs charging.

Conclusion:

Updates to MacOS, background apps, for example, and charging habits that are less than ideal can all impact the performance of your battery… but by following these 10 Ways to Improve MacBook Battery Life + Bonus Tip, you should see a marked improvement both in daily usage and lifespan.

Save Today and apply these changes to have your MacBook working all day without having to plug it into a charger!