Battery Monitor

Category

Description of App

NOTE: A computer with a battery compliant with the Smart Battery standard is required. All portable Apple computers with Intel processors fulfill this requirement.

More and more computers are mobile devices nowadays. The most important prerequisite for a portable computer is a chargable battery which keeps the device powered. Batteries are not really cheap replacement parts and they are subject to wear and tear. Their lifetimes should be optimized, handling them with the necessary care. Battery Monitor is a small auxiliary application useful in this regard. It offers the following features:

  • Display of the charge state in the Dock: This is useful if you cannot or do not like to use the display in the menubar of Mac OS X, e.g. when you have a screen which is not very wide.
  • Display of internal battery information: In addition to the charge state, many other technical specifications, e.g. age, temperature, discharge current, number of charge cycles, expected lifetime, or capacity can be retrieved. The states of each of the battery cells and the manufacturer of the cells can also be determined.
  • Capturing charge and discharge curves: The history of the readings measured by the battery unit can be displayed graphically. This way you can plot the charge and discharge curves, for example, one of the most important characteristics for the health of a battery. You can also review the graphical profile of the amperage drawn by the computer, helping to find “power guzzling applications”.
  • Bookkeeping of the aging process of the battery: Battery Monitor automatically keeps a log about the charge capacity of the battery which will decrease as the battery ages. This helps you to exactly monitor how the behavior of the battery is changing over time. You can assess if your battery is working normally or if it might be defective. You can also estimate more exactly when the right time has come to purchase a new battery. For computers with replaceable battery units, Battery Monitor can of course monitor multiple battery packs at the same time.
  • Notifications during charge or discharge: In addition to the display of the charge state in the Dock, Battery Monitor can optionally inform you about the progress of the charge or discharge process by other means. Inobtrusive notifications using speech, the Notification Center of OS X, or via Growl technology can be set up.

Version

1.6

Free or Paid

Paid

Version Of macOS App Was Tested On

10.8.4

Accessibility Comments

To get the app to speak battery charring or discharging, just go in to preferences with Command+, (comma), select notifications tab, check charge or discharge checkbox notifications, and speech checkbox should be selected by default: if not, just check it.

Usability

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver and is easy to navigate and use.

Other Comments

Been looking for an app like this for quite a while: makes it a lot easier to manage the battery in the Macbook, especially since I don't have to keep checking the Extra's menu for the battery status.

Recommendations

2 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by David Woodbridge 10 years 8 months ago

Options

Comments

By Ekaj on Friday, March 21, 2014 - 23:13

Just installed this app yesterday and it seems to work very well. I'm wondering how to enable Growl technology. Also, is there a way to have this app start when the Mac is first booted up?

By Justin on Friday, March 21, 2014 - 23:13

Hi Jake, I don't know about Growl, but ou can set your notifications to be presented with speech. This works for me a lot of the time. I also like the fact that you can set a warning to let you know every ten percent when the battery is dischargingg or charging. The fully charged notification is great too.

By KE7ZUM on Friday, March 21, 2014 - 23:13

to make it start at log in either add it to the doc and go to the options for the app in the doc with vo shift m, then choose option and choose start at log in, or add it to the log in items in user accounts in system prefs.

Take care.

By Ekaj on Saturday, February 21, 2015 - 23:13

This app is even a bit more accessible under OS X Yosemite. I've been at my parents' house for the day because I had 2 appointments, and my MBA needed some juice. I brought it because I needed to get some work done. So I plugged it in, and even though VO now speaks the low-battery notification by default that is built in, I thought I'd check and see if Battery Monitor still worked. So I started it up, and was pleasantly surprised to hear VO speak something other than "Image." So I navigated around in the main window, and low and behold VO actually read more of the items. Not that I have a very keen understanding of all these items, but I'm very happy that it reads better. The version of the app I have installed on here is still 1.8 . In addition, I could hear clicks which were perhaps a progress bar or something. So has anyone else seen this?