Go Into Low Power Mode/Battery Saving Mode To Extend Battery Life On Your MacBook
In Mac OS X Monterey, Apple has added a new feature similar to the battery saving low-performance mode on Windows. It’s called the “Low Power Mode”.
What low power mode does is basically disable some of the power of the CPU and GPU, and it also turns down screen brightness.
Related Product: Extend The Battery Life Of Your MacBook On The Go With The Anker PowerCore Essential (click to view on Amazon)
The great thing about this new feature is that it has been implemented on not only the latest M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max chip laptops but also the older Intel models.
But how do you enable this battery saving mode on your MacBook Air or Pro? Well, it’s not that hard so let’s get right to it.
Enable “Low Power Mode” On Your MacBook
Step 1: Open System preferences by clicking on the Apple icon up in the left corner and choosing “System Preferences”.
Step 2: Click “Battery” on the bottom row.
Step 3: Click “Battery” from the list on the left.
Step 4: Tick “Low power mode” to enable it. Tick it again to disable.
Is There A Faster Way With A Shortcut?
Yes, since Monterey also has shortcuts, you can use this shortcut.
You can add shortcuts to the top menu, which means that you’re going to be able to enable/disable low power mode without going into settings.
How Much Better Battery Life Will I Get?
It’s hard to say exactly how much the low power mode is going to extend your battery life, since it still depends on what you’re doing on the computer.
You’re going to see reduced performance, so it’s not something you should enable if you’re going to do heavy video/photo editing or play games.
I recommend using it when you know you’re not going to be able to charge your laptop battery for a while, and are going to mostly be surfing the web, study, or watch movies.
You can still run power-hungry applications and games, but you should expect reduced performance since the CPU and GPU are going to be given limited resources.
What Else Can I Do To Extend Battery Life Of My MacBook?
The easiest thing you can do is turn down the screen brightness even more. A lot of the battery power goes to simply keeping the display lit up.
You can also turn off Bluetooth and WiFi if you’re not using it.
If you’re on the go, you can use a power bank like the Anker PowerCore Essential (click to view on Amazon) which will extend the battery life.
Other than that, you can use the activity monitor to figure out which applications are using most power. Activity monitor can be found in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder.
For example, Chrome uses a lot more resources and energy than Safari. And Dropbox uses more resources than iCloud Drive.
Sometimes an application might be left on without you knowing it, and that’s where the Activity monitor can help you find the culprit.
Is There A Similar Mode On iPad/iPhone?
Yes, the Low power mode has been in iOS for a couple of years now. You can find it in the General – Battery on your iDevice.
