Batteries in a computer have a short lifespan and degrade with time. In a Mac, you can replace your battery on your own or you can pay Apple to do so. However, you can check the health of your battery.
Ascertain the count of Battery Cycle on Your Mac
The cycle of a charge is a full charge and then a discharge and the battery of a modern Mac has a thousand cycles, older Macs have either 500 or 300 cycles. The battery may not fail immediately it reaches its limit, but it hold less charge when it begins to approach that limit. With time, you find that you can’t use your Mac unless while it is connected to a power source.
If you want to determine the number of charge cycles your battery has gone through;
- Hold down the Option key and then click the Apple icon at the top left corner. Note that if you don’t hold down the Option key, the command you will see is “About This Mac”.
- Next, click System Information.
- In the system information pane, expand the “Hardware” category on the left, when you have so done, click the “Power” option.
On the window by the right, you’ll find every information on your battery. The “Cycle Count” is under the segment of “Health Information”.
The cycle count of the MacBook in this example is 695. It requires no replacement at the moment, but it will by the end of the year. If you have a problem with your battery, the “Condition” option (showing Normal in the image) will show “Service Battery” instead.
Use coconutBattery to get More Information
System information gives you most of the information on your battery’s health but not all of them. If you want more data, download the app called coconutBattery.
You will see something that looks like the image below when you run the app.
In addition to the cycle count, coconutBattery displays that the battery has a Full Charge Capacity of 7098mAh. When the battery was new, the capacity was 8755mAh.
System Information or coconutBattery can help you find out the capacity of your battery to let you know if you need to replace it.