If you’re like me, recharge your devices tirelessly, even if it could damage the battery over time. “This is the way,” I think to myself as I look at the AirPods Pro charging case that I’ve left plugged in for the past three weeks.
One of the best forms of preventive maintenance that you can easily do for any Apple device is to regularly check the condition of the battery. I’m not talking about the number in the top right corner of your screen that tells you how much juice you have left as a percentage. I mean the slightly more buried setting that gives you an indication of how your battery is doing overall.
For more information on battery life, see the following video:
While there’s not much you can do when your battery is bad other than a new one, you at least have a clue that your device is nearing its “old” status, or that your charging habits may be preventing you from sucking so much life out Your device as you can. With luck, you will find that the battery is dead while your device is still under warranty, so your battery replacement is free instead of $$$.
To check the health of the battery on any Apple device:
How to check your iPhone’s battery level
To see how good your iPhone’s battery is, drag this the settings App and tap battery. Wait a moment and you will be presented with a series of graphs showing you your battery level (and activity) over the past 24 hours or the past 10 days.
These are all well and good, but what you really want to do is tap on Battery Health, which could bring you the gritty news:
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However, don’t be alarmed if you see this message above. Again, these are just data points. If your iPhone can still get you through the day without any problems – and you don’t experience that significant performance degradation as a result of your meh battery – then you don’t sweat. You may want to consider upgrading to a new phone (or an expensive battery replacement) at some point, but it isn’t strictly necessary unless you have really noticeable problems using your phone or tablet every day.
What about the iPad?
So bad news: you can see your charge and usage graphs on an iPad, but there isn’t a dedicated Battery Health section that gives you an idea of how long your battery will last. You’ll need to turn to a third-party app like. turn iMazing or Coconut battery to get such details. Too bad.
How to check the health of your Mac’s battery
When or when you upgrade to upgrade macOS Big Sur, you will see that the “Energy Saving” section is no longer present in your system settings. In its place is a new battery section. You can probably guess where this is going.
Click on that and you’ll get a setup that looks similar to iOS. You can see how much you’ve used your battery over the last 24 hours and 10 days, and you can access all of your previous power saving settings – including scheduled startup and shutdown of your Mac.
Unfortunately, like the iPad, you can’t see the overall health of your Mac’s battery. You can get a sense of how many charge cycles your battery has gone through by pulling the one up on your Mac System information and then click on power (to find under “hardware“Section). There you can see the number of cycles, the condition and the maximum capacity of your battery and you can compare this number with Apple’s limits to get a feel for how your battery is doing.
Here’s how to check the battery status of your Apple Watch
After upgrading to watchOS 7, you can check your device’s battery status right on your wrist. Pull yours the settings App and tap battery. You will be presented with a graph showing the charge level of your Apple Watch over the past day:
Scroll down a bit and tap Battery Heath, where you can see the total battery capacity of your Apple Watch. It’s that simple. As with the other types of Apple products, you shouldn’t stress if this number isn’t what you expected. As long as you can get through the day without having to charge your Apple Watch in the middle, you’re probably fine.
This article was originally published June 24, 2020 and was updated on June 11, 2021 to add new photos and revised to comply with the latest Lifehacker style guidelines.
