How to View Your Mac's Battery Capacity and Cycle Count

In this episode, Siddarth B walks you through the process of checking your MacBook's battery capacity—an indicator of how well the battery retains a charge compared to when it was new. He also explains how to determine the cycle count, which tracks the number of times the battery has been completely drained and recharged.

Battery capacity can be viewed by going to System Settings > Battery and clicking the "Show detail" button. Cycle count can be viewed by opening System Information (located in the Utilities folder), selecting "power" in the table, and pressing VO-J to jump to the information pane.

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI Note Taker – VoicePen, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

Siddarth: Hi, welcome to a short tutorial on how to check the charging cycles count on MacBook. So ever wondered how to check your MacBook battery cycles? When we get into settings of a Mac and when we interact in the battery, we can only find the details of the battery health. It might be 100% or 95% or 90%. depending on your usage.

Siddarth: But how to find the battery cycle count or how many times we have charged our battery? For that, in this demonstration, I'll be showing you how can we find it and how can we understand the overall battery details. So first, I'll show you what we can get in the settings slash battery of Mac. So I'm on my MacBook desktop.

Siddarth: I'll open my settings with Vivo M.

VoiceOver: System settings.

Siddarth: And I'll navigate here to the battery. With Vivo right arrow.

VoiceOver: Battery.

Siddarth: I'll interact here.

Siddarth: Alright, my current battery level is 59%. I'll just navigate here by Vivo right. Sorry, I'll interact it here. My low power mode is set to only on battery. I don't need the low power mode activated when I'm connected to my charger.

VoiceOver: Your Mac will reduce energy usage to increase battery life. Battery health.

Siddarth: Okay, battery health. And if I right arrow again with Vivo, right?

VoiceOver: Normal. Battery health.

Siddarth: Normal.

VoiceOver: Show detail.

Siddarth: Show detail, right? I'll hit Vivo Space. So it's great that even after one and a half month, sorry, one and a half year of my Mac, still the battery health is normal. And we'll see how much percent the battery health is.

VoiceOver: Nine items optimized battery charging on switch.

Siddarth: Right, I'll go... We were left here to the left side of the screen. Yes, it's right.

Siddarth: It's 100%. And I feel it's a great battery. I like the way battery, how it optimizes on Mac than the iPhone. The maximum capacity is 100%. But we can't really see the cycle count here. For that, what we have to do is, first I'll close the settings.

VoiceOver: authentication

Siddarth: right i'll open the search box again with command space

VoiceOver: spotlight spotlight spotlight search

Siddarth: all right ere i will type system information if i just type system i get the uh the filled it here s-y-s-t-e-m some information space i'll just type i-n-f i-n-f it will be already uh taken so i just hit enter here authentication

VoiceOver: System information, MacBook Air, window, table, row 151, hardware.

Siddarth: Excellent. So here, you can get all the details regarding your hardware, your Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, audio devices, whatever. Now, we need to find something called as power. And I'll interact here.

VoiceOver: Table, row 151, hardware.

Siddarth: I interacted with the Vivo down arrow, Vivo shift down arrow. I keep going right with Vivo Right. We don't need all these things. I'll just keep moving till I get power.

VoiceOver: Power.

Siddarth: I'll un-interact here. And I go right with Vivo Right.

VoiceOver: Vertical splitter. Battery information.

Siddarth: I'll go in text here. All right. I navigated in text here. I'm getting all the battery information.

VoiceOver: firmware version hardware revision one cell revision two sec charge information the battery charges below the warning level no no fully charged no no charging no charging no state of charge percent five nine fifty nine percent state of charge and health information health cycle count two four yes what's the cycle count condition cycle count two four twenty four

Siddarth: Can you imagine I just charged 24 cycles just in two years? Almost, sorry, almost 1.5 years, 1.6 years. So this is how we can check the cycle count. So right now, I don't need to worry about my battery or if I need to change, I don't need to. I guess I can still handle with this for another three to four years easily. Right.

Siddarth: So this is how you can charge or how you can check the charging cycle count, a battery cycle count, whatever you call on the MacBook. Hope this tutorial is useful for you. Thank you so much.