Subscribe to our newsletter
- macOS 26.4 has introduced a new feature to protect your battery
- It lets you set a charge limit that stops your battery overcharging
- The limit can be set between 80% and 100% and mirrors a feature from iOS
Apple users have been able to set charge limits on their iPhones for some time now – and now the feature is finally going to make the jump to Macs in macOS Tahoe 26, allowing users of the best Macs to protect their devices from battery wear and tear.
The charge limit feature has just been revealed as part of the macOS 26.4 update, which is currently available for beta testing. We don’t know when the full version of macOS 26.4 will launch, but Apple’s .4 releases tend to fall somewhere in the spring (or sometime between March and May).
Once your Mac is running macOS 26.4, you’ll be able to set a charge limit from 80% to 100% in 5% increments, meaning you could define a limit of 85% if you wanted. That would ensure that your MacBook would stop charging once it reached 85% rather than the regular limit of 100%.
Why would you do this? Well, it’s thought that regularly charging your laptop all the way up to full can add extra wear to your battery, which in turn shortens its lifespan. By stopping your MacBook’s charging process at a lower boundary, you can potentially slow down your battery’s degradation, thereby helping your laptop last longer.
This is a feature that’s previously been offered by third-party apps like AlDente, but now Apple is now finally baking it into its Mac operating system.
How to set a charge limit
To get macOS 26.4, you’ll need to sign up for Apple’s macOS 26 beta program. Then, open the System Settings app and go to General > Software Update and download the beta from there. Once that’s done, you can find the new charge limit feature by going to System Settings > Battery, clicking the ‘i’ button next to Charging, then setting a charge limit using the slider at the top of the window.
Interestingly, Apple has also added a new feature to the Shortcuts app in macOS 26.4 that lets you build a charge limit into your workflows. For example, you could create a shortcut that automatically sets a higher or lower charge limit depending on what Focus mode is in effect – if you’re going to be busy or away from a charger and know you need more power, you could set a work or travel Focus mode, trigger a higher charge limit, and get more juice out of your battery. This shortcut is also available in iOS 26.4.
The charge limit has a notable exception. As Apple says on its website, your device “will occasionally charge to 100 percent to maintain accurate battery state-of-charge estimates” if your charge limit is below 100%. That’s Apple’s guidance for the iPhone, but it’s expected to be the same for the Mac as well.
And now that the Mac has feature parity with the iPhone in this respect, you’ll have ways to prolong your device’s battery life whichever Apple product you’re using. If you’re concerned about your battery prematurely giving up the ghost, setting a charge limit could be worth a shot.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/C6ytvHTQfrEmKzdhdthKgL-1678-80.jpg
Source link
alexblake.techradar@gmail.com (Alex Blake)
