You can drop it. It can malfunction. The battery wears out. Battery wear is a problem for laptop owners. Batteries are consumables. And a battery is a built-in component that can determine the lifespan of a laptop. Once upon a time, replacing the battery inside a laptop was easy, but as systems have become thinner and lighter, replacing the battery has become a more involved undertaking. Last year, Apple rolled out a feature in macOS called battery health management, the idea being that by limiting how long the battery is kept at 100% charge, it helps reduce wear on the battery and slows down chemical ageing. The problem with macOS’s battery health management is that Apple has tried to balance giving users the best charging experience while trying to reduce battery wear. But what if you decided that you wanted to be able to manage your battery’s charge level yourself. There’s an app for that. Must read: Seriously, don’t buy these Apple products The app is called Al Dente by AppHouseKitchen, and it comes in both a free version and a pro version. The free version features a charge limiter that reduces battery wear and a discharge feature that allows the MacBook to run on battery even if it is on charge, allowing the battery to be discharged to an optimal level. For most people, the free version will be enough. For those that want more, the pro version adds a number of additional features, including:
Heat protection, that stops battery charging when your battery temperature is too highSailing mode, which keeps your battery at a particular levelLive status icons, giving you an at-a-glance view of what the app is doingTop up mode, which allows you to charge the battery to 100%Calibration mode, which puts your battery through a charge/discharge cycle on a regular basis to prevent calibration issues
I’ve been running AlDente Pro on my MacBooks, and it’s a solid applications that works well. The pro version does a really good job of controlling charge capacity and not charging the battery when the temperature is too high. A one-year license to AlDente Pro costs $11.50, with a lifetime license only $24.18.
