Baddery

October 1, 2016 2:35 PM

Is there an OSX utility that will notify me if my battery time remaining suddenly decreases, e.g., going from five hours remaining to three hours remaining by opening a certain website? The fan spinning is a hint, but it isn't reliable. I've googled this but had no success.
posted by michaelh to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Best answer: I use iStat Menus for all my system status, including battery. This is what it looks like when I click the battery icon. It doesn't have a visual alert if an application starts using significant energy, but you can display %age and time at the same time, and it's easy to get the application list by clicking. (The built-in battery icon does the same thing now.) Or you could keep Activity Monitor open which has this little graph; too bad it isn't a pop-out widget.

Honestly, though, I like iStat Menus to keep an eye on CPU, RAM, and network activity, since that's what actually drains the battery. There's just no notification when it hits some threshold.

There is this utility that looks a little more customizable, but I've never used it.
posted by supercres at 2:59 PM on October 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

The battery icon in the menu bar, if you click it, will have an "Apps Using Significant Energy" listing which is pretty much for this. Not perfect, but it'll let you know when your browser is really 'going for it' which can clue you into a site that is causing problems.

Edit: what supercres said!
posted by destructive cactus at 3:57 PM on October 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

I prefer MenuMeters (free, open source) for putting graphs of processor usage, memory, and network traffic in my menu bar.
posted by D.C. at 4:52 PM on October 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Was a comment about Ghostery deleted? I thought that was a legitimate suggestion even though it is off-topic. I am a happy user of it.

I auto-hide the menu bar, which is why I'm looking for a notification. I've purchased Battery Monitor and I think it's going to do exactly what I want! Plus, the detailed graphs are cool. Thanks, everyone.
posted by michaelh at 6:02 PM on October 2, 2016