Apple has launched a new Battery Health Management feature that will aim to preserve battery health and longevity as part of the latest update for macOS Catalina.
The fifth update for Apple’s laptop and desktop operating system, 10.15.5, arrived earlier this week and included a range of new features and updates for users.
The headline addition is Battery Health Management, a new feature that promises to maximise the lifespan of batteries in MacBook devices.
Users can access the new information via settings and the ‘Energy Saver’ preference pane, which will now show battery condition and offer a recommendation on whether it needs to be replaced or serviced.
The new management feature will also prevent a MacBook from charging to 100% when it is plugged in.
Keeping a battery fully charged with a mains charger can cause damage over time and reduce its lifespan.
Apple offers something similar for iPhones with its iOS battery-based settings.
Users can disable Battery Health Management entirely on MacBooks if they want to by navigating to the System Preferences app.
Apple rolled out a few other changes in the latest update, including a new ‘Prominence Preference’ in FaceTime and more calibration options for fine-tuning a Pro Display XDR.
There are eight bug fixes and other improvements.
The 10.15.5 update clears up an issue that caused the Finder app to crash when certain large data sets were being transferred.
There are also fixes for a video conferencing problem when using the built-in camera and an issue that prevented Reminders from sending the right notifications in specific settings.
Apple said in a statement: “macOS Catalina 10.15.5 introduces battery health management in the Energy Saver settings for notebooks, an option to control automatic prominence of video tiles on Group FaceTime calls, and controls to fine-tune the built-in calibration of your Pro Display XDR.”
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