Get more battery life from your MacBook with our guide to the best energy saving tips and tricks.
MacBook Pro and MacBook Airs have enough battery to last between six to eight hours, which much higher amount than you used to get from a notebook, Laptop battery life of just a couple of hours wasn’t unknown in previous years. People used to carry spare batteries around with them, but these days the battery can’t be swapped out of an MacBook, so you have to make the most of it. Sometimes you need to eke as much Mac running time from your Apple 15 inch macbook pro battery as possible.
- Use Software Update. Apple routinely offers patches and enhancements to Mac OS X that improve the battery life. Click on Apple > Software Update.
- Use Energy Saver System Preferences. Open System Preferences (Apple > System Preferences) and click on Energy Saver. Click on Battery and Move the Computer Sleep and Display sleep down. Tick Put The Hard Disks to Sleep when possible.
- Dim your screen. Press the F1 key and move the screen brightness down. You can also control this in System Preferences >
- Turn off Bluetooth. Click the Bluetooth icon in the Menu bar and choose Turn Bluetooth Off (or open System Preferences > Bluetooth and click Turn Bluetooth Off.
- Turn off Wi-Fi. This is a bit more extreme as you won’t be able to use wireless internet. But if you’re not using the Internet or email make sure you turn Wi-Fi off. Click AirPort in the Menu bar and choose Turn Wi-Fi off.
- Eject a CD/DVD. If your MacBook has a SuperDrive then make sure, you eject CD/DVDs from it that aren’t in use. They will occasionally spin up to drain the Apple a1322 battery.
- Mute sound. Tap the Mute Sound button to get rid of any extraneous alerts and noise. You can turn sound on and off as you need to.
- Remove peripherals. Disconnect any SD Cards, external drives, or 4G modems. They all take power from the MacBook.
- Avoid graphical intensive apps. Don’t use any games or 3D graphics or video editing apps if you can help it.
- Shut down any unused apps. Quit any apps that you aren’t using.
Extreme tips that Max out your Mac’s battery
If you really need to eke out the maximum amount of battery life on your Mac, then consider these extreme tricks:
- Use Invert Colours. It takes less battery to display black pixels than white ones. Change your desktop to a solid white (use System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver > Desktop > Solid Colours and choose White). Now click Accessibility and Invert Colors. This runs your Mac in mostly black and white mode. If you can stand the pain of working in such a stark environment (it’s designed for people with low vision) then this is a good way to get more from your Mac’s battery.
- Turn off Notifications. Click on System Preference > Notifications and limit the apps that can check for notifications.
- Turn off Mail’s auto check mode. Open Mail > Preferences and change the Check for New Messages tab to Manually.
- Turn off Spotlight. Open Spotlight preferences, select the Privacy tab, and drag your Mac’s hard drive to the Privacy list.
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