In today’s article, I’ll be showing you ten easy ways to save battery life and extend the time needed between charges on a MacBook.

This should work on any MacBook Air or Pro running macOS, although some methods might be slightly different depending on the exact version of macOS you are running.

You don’t need to follow all of the strategies to extend your battery life, so feel free to skip if you have already done them or don’t think they will work. Battery life will also heavily depend on how old your device is, but hopefully, the methods will still make a difference no matter the age.

METHOD TO EXTEND BATTERY

Let’s get into the methods.

First method

1. Close and stop apps from running in the background. You should be able to close many apps when you aren’t using them to save battery life.

Apps running in the background will still use system resources and therefore use the battery.

If you notice the small circle beneath the app on the dock at the bottom of the screen, it means that the app isn’t completely closed.

Would you mind making sure you fully close an app to prevent it from using the resources of your MacBook?

To guarantee an app is fully closed, open it and first make sure your work is saved.

You can use the keyboard shortcut of Command and the Q key to close it entirely. You may need to hold down this key combination on certain apps for it to close. Let’s move onto the following method.

The second method is related to the first method.

We are now going to focus on preventing startup apps.

These apps will run automatically when you turn on your MacBook, and they might run in the background and use resources.

To stop apps from starting automatically when you start your MacBook, the first go-to system preferences. You can reach there by ticking on the apple icon in the top left and selecting system preferences from the list.

Within system preferences, click on users and groups.

It should be somewhere on the second row. Here, choose your profile from the list on the left. Now go to the login items tab. It will be next to the password tab.

You should now see the list of applications that will run automatically when you start your MacBook.

To stop a program from running at startup, select it here by clicking on it once and then clicking on the minus icon.

You can always add it again in the future by clicking on the plus icon and then navigating to where it is stored on your MacBook.

This will likely be the applications folder.

Third method.

Method three is to lower the brightness of your device.

You should be able to do this easily by using the lower brightness button on the keyboard. You can also reduce the brightness of the keyboard light. This won’t save much battery life but should make some difference.

To lower the brightness of the keyboard backlight, first, go to and click on the options icon

in the top right. This is the icon to the left of the time and date.

In here, click on the option called keyboard brightness and then drag the bar to the left to lower the keyboard’s brightness.

Fourth method.

The following method to save battery life on your MacBook is to make sure Bluetooth and WiFi are turned off when not in use.

Even if you have no devices connected to WiFi and Bluetooth, it will still use a battery.

It could use so much battery that turning it off will make a noticeable difference in some cases.

To turn off Bluetooth or WiFi when not in use, go back to the options icon we used in the last method for keyboard brightness.

It’s in the top right of the screen. This time, click on the Bluetooth or WiFi icon if they are coloured blue, and this should turn it grey, indicating it is turned off.

Fifth method

The fifth method is to keep your software updated.

Out of date software can cause compatibility issues, and it is possible that these and similar problems can cause extra battery usage because of minor optimization.

To check for updates and see if you have the latest update, head to the Apple icon in the top left and clicked on that.

Now click on about this Mac from the list. It should be at the top.

In here, make sure you are currently in the overview tab. This should be the furthest left option. Click on the software update button, and then it should begin to check if there are any updates available.

If there are, follow the steps to install it but remember to save and close any work you have open as your system will probably restart.

Now that we have the latest software update let’s move onto method six.

The sixth method is to disconnect any devices when you aren’t using them. This can include devices such as USB flash drives, external drives, mice, keyboards and more.

These devices will use a small amount of battery power that can save if you unplug them when they aren’t being used.

The seventh method is to check and see which apps use the most battery. This will allow us to limit usage on the most power-hungry apps. A quick way to see which apps use the most battery is to use the activity monitor.

You can get to the activity monitor by using spotlight search.

In the activity monitor, go to the energy tab and wait a moment.

You should see the energy impact column give you numbers on the power usage of each app.

Use this info to see which apps use the most energy and close them if you can, or limit the amount of time you spend using them.

You can also go into the CPU tab to get similar information, based on how many apps use the CPU and GPU.

Let’s move onto the next method.

Method eight is to customize some of the battery settings on your MacBook.

To get to the battery settings, first go to system preferences.

You can reach there by ticking on the Apple icon in the top left and selecting system preferences from the list. Within system preferences, click on battery.

Now that you are in the battery settings, there are a few ways to help with saving battery life.

In the battery tab, you can change settings relating to when on battery power, such as the display brightness and battery optimization settings.

In the power adapter tab, you can change settings for when connected to power. These settings are up to you, but obviously, the more you change to help with the battery, the more noticeable the saving will be.

Method nine.

The ninth method is to use lite versions of apps if available and change settings within apps and games to save battery life.

Certain apps may have separate versions that are designed to use fewer resources and, therefore, battery.

Alternatively, have a look in the settings for the apps you use for any battery-saving options.

In games, for example, you could lower the resolution or maximum framerate to help limit the battery usage of that app.

As these settings will be different in every app, it is not easy to show specific examples.

Final method.

The tenth and final method to save battery life on your MacBook is to take care of your MacBook and its battery to optimize its energy and capacity.

This can include charging at the right time and to the right amount, ensuring temperatures are within the recommended range or allowing for ventilation on devices with fans.

Thankfully, Apple has a lot of helpful resources to assist you in this.

I’ll leave a link in the description to the official Apple site for their

advice on batteries.

And so those are my ten easy ways to save battery life on your MacBook.Click the card onscreen now to watch a video of mine showing you ten easy ways you can speed up your macOS device.

If you have any inquiries, then let me know in the comments beneath.