How to Show Battery Percent in Menu Bar of macOS Tahoe

Knowing the percentage remaining of your MacBook battery life is valuable information for many Mac laptop users who work on the go or away from a power source, and a simple way to always know where your battery stands is to adjust the Mac battery menu icon to show the battery percentage remaining.

This article will show you how to always show the battery percent remaining in macOS Tahoe, so that you can immediately know how much battery you have left on a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. This might be particularly useful for Mac laptop users who are experiencing bad battery life in macOS Tahoe 26 (total of 2-4 hours for myself, ouch), where keeping an eye on battery remaining is critical so that the MacBook doesn’t die in the middle of work.

How to Always Show Battery Percentage Remaining in MacOS Tahoe Menu bar

1. Open “System Settings” from the  Apple menu
2. Go to “Control Center” (yes, menu bar settings are in Control Center for some reason*)
3. Under the “Menu Bar Controls” section look for “Battery” and click on “Battery Options”
4. Toggle the setting for “Show Percentage” to the ON position, then click “Done” and exit settings

You’ll instantly see the battery percentage remaining alongside the battery icon now within the macOS Tahoe menu bar.

The battery menu item is useful in general on the Mac, which you can also toggle on within the Control Center settings though it should be enabled by default on every Mac laptop. Not only because you can keep an eye on your battery life easily, but also because you can also quickly toggle on Low Power Mode, which can boost your battery life by up to 10-25% in many situations.

Between showing the percentage remaining, and using Low Power Mode, you can make it much easier to manage your battery usage on a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, whether it has fantastic battery life, or abysmal battery life. If you’re in the latter camp and you’ve been experiencing significant reduction in battery performance since updating to macOS Tahoe, you’re not alone, and this article could help you with some Tahoe battery tips. The same workflow that would grant me 7-9 hours of battery life in MacOS Sequoia has been reduced to 2-4 hours with MacOS Tahoe, with the top-end being achievable only by enabling Low Power Mode on this particular MacBook Air. With such lackluster battery performance, always seeing the percentage remaining is essential for my particular workflow, and it could be helpful to yours as well.

* (You might think you’d go to the “Battery” section of System Settings to find settings associated with the battery, but you’d have thought wrong. To add to the curiosity, Control Center is a dropdown menu from the menu bar, but for some reason menu settings are contained within Control Center settings (shouldn’t it be hierarchical?). If you had previously though this setting was somewhere else, you’re probably right, because Apple keeps moving this setting around in MacOS, with it now being in a new spot for macOS Tahoe, while it was in a different location for MacOS Sequoia, Sonoma, and Ventura, and yet again an entirely different location for MacOS Big Sur and Monterey.)

Do you set your Mac Battery menu bar icon to always show percentage remaining? Do you wish the battery menu still showed time remaining as an option as well? Share your thoughts and perspectives on the battery menu, battery life, and whatever else is topical and on your mind, in the comments below.