Use This Free App to Make Your MacBook’s Battery Last Longer
Reading Time: 2 minutesAll batteries will degrade over time, but AlDente can help slow the process.
Modern MacBooks feature exceptional battery life, but like most batteries, they will degrade over time. Around a year after you buy a MacBook, its battery begins to show some performance issues, and their ability to hold a charge diminishes the longer you use them. There’s not much you can do to stop this process from happening, but there is an app that can help reduce the speed at which your MacBook’s battery degrades.
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AlDente‘s free tier lets you set both a lower and upper limit on how much your MacBook can charge. If you set these limits between 20 and 80%, you’ll be able to maintain your MacBook’s battery health for much longer. You can also force your MacBook to run on battery power even when it’s connected to a charger. Whenever your MacBook hits the 80 percent charged mark, AlDente will make it switch to battery power until it reaches the lower end of the charging limit.
Note that AlDente doesn’t support all MacBooks out there. It works best with M1-series MacBooks, which features Apple’s own processors. It also supports some Intel MacBooks, as long as they’re on macOS Big Sur or newer. The full list of supported MacBooks is here.
If your MacBook is unsupported, you’ll still be able to run AlDente in its ‘Intel Mode’ as long as you’re on an OS version supported by the app. The Intel Mode uses a different method to enforce battery-charging limits, and it works even if you use Windows via BootCamp.
However, some of AlDente’s best features are available in the paid tiers. The app can stop charging your MacBook when the battery is too hot. Batteries are known to degrade a lot faster when the temperature is high, and AlDente can prevent it from charging until the battery cools down. The app also ensures that battery calibration remains intact by charging it fully once in a while. This ensures that your MacBook continues to report accurate battery percentages in the menu bar.
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The paid version of this app also gives you a greater degree of customizability. You can choose to stop charging your laptop when it’s in sleep mode, and you get access to live status icons that let you check the current charge status with a quick glance.
AlDente’s free tier is good enough for most people; you can decide if the paid features are worth the asking price of $22 for a permanent license or an annual subscription fee of $10. The app is also available via the Setapp subscription bundle, which lets you use over 100 apps for $10 per month.