Comments on: 11 Tips to Get the Absolute Best Battery Life on a Mac Laptop

By: Battery Life Improves Slightly with OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.1

Battery Life Improves Slightly with OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.1 — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 22:48:13 +0000

[...] you’re unsatisified with the battery life of your Mac running OS X Mountain Lion, you can do a few things to increase it, [...]

By: ps

ps — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 14:39:53 +0000

Came here to mention that app. This more than anything else helps with battery life.

I notice some apps I run frequently like VMWare, Steam, and CoRD all require the discrete card, and after disconnecting lets say a remote session I may forget to shut off the app. I then wonder why my battery is draining so quickly.

By: Elder

Elder — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:45:42 +0000

Aside from Youtube, which are other popular flash websites to avoid when trying to make the battery last? I tried the plugins from the last tips but they didn’t work well and I didn’t like them.

By: Cloovi

Cloovi — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:26:16 +0000

Battery life is great on a MacBook Air, no tips needed for me.

By: Albert M

Albert M — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 21:09:14 +0000

You must be a very busy person, if you think that, because i’m on my laptop almost all day and this tips just come naturally when i use it

By: matt

matt — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:17:34 +0000

For certain MacBook Pro models using the graphics card switcher app can help because then you can push the lower power graphics card into effect.

By: Brian S

Brian S — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:02:19 +0000

Bonus Tip #3: You might as well just shutdown your Mac then!

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 19:38:53 +0000

One more thing I’ll do: If I’m only using chrome I’ll disable the discrete graphics card. (Assuming you have one)

Handy app called GFXcardStatus that will let you monitor and disable that.

As an added bonus, the machine runs cooler – something very appreciated as those of us in the northern hemisphere are approaching Summertime.

By: David

David — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 18:08:31 +0000

I set my brightness to about 40% and don’t change my work habits at all, easily pulls 6-7 hours out of my MacBook Pro.

Another “tip” you might want to add is upgrading to an SSD, they use less power than traditional hard disks.