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godly-devotion / charge-limiter

macOS app to set battery charge limit for Intel MacBooks
GNU General Public License v3.0
644 stars 26 forks source link

Is it better to use this or Catalina's health management feature? #4

Closed quantumgolem closed 4 years ago

quantumgolem commented 4 years ago

Wondering if it's better to use this or to just use Catalina's health management feature. Any ideas?

quantumgolem commented 4 years ago

Also, what happens if you keep both of them on at the same time? too scared to try that out

Knightfall77 commented 4 years ago

Wondering if it's better to use this or to just use Catalina's health management feature. Any ideas?

Personally I would use the built in feature rather than this. This is for older OS's or for folks who don't want Catalina.

quantumgolem commented 4 years ago

Wondering if it's better to use this or to just use Catalina's health management feature. Any ideas?

Personally I would use the built in feature rather than this. This is for older OS's or for folks who don't want Catalina.

That's a fair point. But I'm wondering if Apple favors convenience more. Of course Apple would never release a feature where the charge level is perpetually 50%, but wouldn't that be better for the battery than leaving it at 100% for 96% of the day?

godly-devotion commented 4 years ago

I think it really depends on your work habits and how much convenience you'd like.

If you are someone who takes your laptop to many different places, the native health management feature of Catalina can be definitely easier to use because there are no options and it keeps it close to full charge.

As @sn0wyfall mentioned, Apple's solution is something for the most common scenario of its users. However everybody has different use cases. After all, just because keeping the battery charged less is good doesn't mean it will work for those who need all the charge they can get.

I personally use my laptop connected to power most of the time so I leave the battery charged to only 50-70%, and on the few days I take it somewhere with me I make sure to allow charging to 100%.

So in the end, it really depends on what your work pattern is and how much convenience you will trade off for longer battery life.

quantumgolem commented 4 years ago

@godly-devotion Awesome, thanks for the reply! For the time being I'm going to be running my laptop off AC power. So would it be better for now to switch to limiting my charge (i.e. better than Apple's health management feature)? I've noticed that Apple's solution increases battery cycles, albeit slowly.

I guess in the end it's a question of, if I ignore convenience, whether it's better to limit to 50% or cycle between 90-100 daily. Do you have any thoughts?

godly-devotion commented 4 years ago

Probably better to limit to 50% as I’m doing then. That way you won’t be increasing your charge cycle count even albeit slowly.

quantumgolem commented 4 years ago

Awesome, that's what I figured too. Thanks a lot!