Not everyone owns the latest generation Mac, with M1 and M2 chips that are super energy efficient. Many of us are left with the old Intel Mac models, with a few years old battery that is fiercely starting to fail. The good news however is that you can stretch the battery life with a few canny tricks. In this guide, you will learn 4 Tips and Tricks to maximize the battery life of your MacBook Pro and MacBook Air notebooks.
4 Tips and Tricks to Maximize MacBook Pro/Air Battery Life
Even if Apple laptops have admirable autonomy, the battery is never enough, but still, there is little you can do. So here are the 4 best tips and tricks to maximize the battery life of MacBook Pro and MacBook Air as much as possible.
1. Check Consumption
From time to time, take a look at the consumption. Just click on the battery icon (or open System Preferences > Battery) to have the list of applications that consume too much energy. For example, there could also be an excessive brightness of the screen to make matters worse. Close energy-intensive apps you don’t need.
2. Don’t Close Too Many Apps
It seems like a contradiction, but it is better not to be too drastic in closing the applications. The energy expenditure of an open app is in fact lower than the closing and reopening of the same app. Very large applications require a lot of resources to load. Therefore, it makes more sense to keep Pages, Word, Photoshop, and iMovie open in the background, rather than closing and reopening them 8 times in a row.
3. Optimized Charging
From the Big Sur operating system onward, the Mac integrates a feature called Optimized Loading, and with this feature, your Mac learns your daily charging habits and waits until you actually need a 100% charge before charging beyond 80%. In fact, staying below this threshold as much as possible drastically increases the average life span of lithium-ion batteries. You find the option in Settings > Battery > Battery.
4. Closing Google Chrome and Derivatives
Chrome is notoriously a resource-hungry browser and requires a huge amount of computational power. Better to avoid it and prefer Safari browser, when autonomy is an issue. And also avoid all browsers derived from Chrome, such as Vivaldi, Opera, Brave Browser, and the excellent Microsoft Edge.
Finally, don’t forget that apps like Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Skype, and Messenger are also based on Chrome. Close them all while you can.
That is all you need to know about the 4 best tips and tricks to maximize the battery life of your MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops. While you are here, you might be also interested to know our other guides here: How long do MacBook M1 Pro and M1 Max Battery Life Last, and Fix MacBook Pro Battery Drains fast after macOS Ventura 13 update.
