Only works with Catalina?

[cyclism6486]

when I open the DMG on my laptops running Mojave I see the dreaded "circle with line" over the app's icon. I really wanted this to work for Mojave since I don't plan on going to Catalina until next September. Maybe update the readme to state "requires macOS 10.15.x"

[krackers]

You can compile command line version of SMCUtil from https://github.com/sicreative/BatteryStatusShow and run sudo SMCUtil -w BCLM <hex val>. Works as far back as 10.9 (probably even further, as it just needs the smc key to be defined).

[alexwhittemore]

If you want a slightly easier way, I built a quick wrapper around that same utility in the form of an Alfred workflow that lets you set charging level to either 70% or 100% cap.

It's here, midway down below the Alfred screenshot https://www.alexwhittemore.com/controlling-macbook-pro-charging-cap-with-alfred/

[alexwhittemore]

@krackers you can also take the easy route and just download it pre-compiled, which is what I did for that Alfred workflow :) https://github.com/sicreative/BatteryStatusShow/tree/master/BatteryStatusShow/smcutil/Products/usr/local/bin

[cyclism6486]

@krackers - just because I figured out how to leave an "issue" here doesn't mean I'm a developer. Last time I used a compiler was with Fortran 77, so I have no idea how to do what you said. @alexwhittemore - I will take a look at that Alfred workflow....but first I need to install Alfred.

[godly-devotion]

Thanks for the tips everybody. I decided to create a small utility using Script Editor to set the max charge level using smcutil. It should run on almost all versions of macOS, though it was specifically tested on my MacBook Pro 13" (early 2015) with macOS Mojave 10.14.6.

https://github.com/godly-devotion/charge-limiter

[krackers]

@alexwhittemore Nice work! I believe the pre-compiled binary uses the os_unfair_lock symbol which was only defined in 10.12+.

https://github.com/sicreative/BatteryStatusShow/blob/4e64c47a8d6c51416ad9fd250650929b327162c8/BatteryStatusShow/smc.c#L140

To build for older platforms it should be safe to replace this with the commented out variant (OSSpinLock). I haven't done enough kernel development to be sure of the difference but I think the switch to unfair_lock was just a performance optimization – since we're not calling it repeatedly it should be fine.

[davidwernhart]

Hi guys!

Since I developed and compiled this tool on Catalina, I was not able to test if it works for other versions of MacOS. I am sad to hear that it apparently does not.

Also @alexwhittemore congrats on your Alfred workflow, it seems to be very handy and convenient!

Best regards, David