What does BatteryThrottle do?
- It gives you a simple menu bar control for an everyday charge ceiling and a separate travel top-up target.
- The goal is to make it easy to avoid leaving your MacBook at 100% when you do not need to.
What charge levels can I choose?
- The everyday ceiling snaps to 80, 85, 90, 95, or 100%.
- The travel top-up target uses higher discrete levels so it stays simple and predictable.
Why use this if macOS is adding more battery controls?
- Apple adding native controls is a good thing.
- BatteryThrottle is still useful if you want one-click access from the menu bar instead of digging through system settings each time.
- It also keeps an everyday ceiling and a separate travel top-up close at hand so you don't have to keep track and adjust manually.
- BatteryThrottle also gives you capabilities like "floating" your charge level and a gentle charge mode that's less harsh on your battery. Things you can't do with the OS tool.
Why a float mode, what is that?
- Holding your battery at too high of a charge is hard on the battery's chemistry, yes, but so is uneccessary cycling. There's a tradeoff there, and most people are better off letting the charge sit a little above their target than immediately forcing it downward. If it's going to be more than a couple of days though, you can use this button to let the charge drift back downward to your target level.