10 Tips to Extend Your Mac Laptop’s Battery Life

February 7th, 2012 by Michael A. Prospero, LAPTOP Reviews Editor

6. Turn off Time Machine.

Time Machine makes it very easy to back up all the data on your Mac, but copying that data to another drive consumes system resources. Fortunately, you can turn off Time Machine while your laptop is running on battery power.

Select System Preferences.
Select Time Machine > Options.
Uncheck “Back up while on battery power.”

7. Enable private browsing.

Believe it or not, private browsing will let you squeeze out a bit more battery life, because the browser is no longer accessing the hard drive to cache pages and images. Of course, Safari won’t remember your search history or autofill forms, so you have to balance its convenience with the potential battery savings.

In Safari, tap the Safari tab.
Select Private Browsing.

8. Turn off Spotlight indexing.

Apple’s Spotlight, which instantly returns search results of everything on your hard drive, is very useful. But the way it works consumes CPU resources. You can prevent Spotlight from searching your drive.

Click System Preferences.
Select Spotlight > Privacy.
Press the + button and add your hard drive, or drag the hard drive into the list.

9. Choose Automatic Graphic Switching (MacBook Pros only).

MacBook Pros have both integrated and discrete GPUs and can switch between the two seamlessly, so you can get better battery life or increased performance, depending on the task. However, the discrete GPU can seriously cut into battery life.

Select System Preferences.
Select Energy Saver > Automatic Graphics Switching.
On MacBook Pros from 2008 to 2009—those with Nvidia GeForce 9400M and 9600M GPUs—Select Better Battery Life in the Energy Saver control panel.

10. Eject optical disks if you’re not using them/disconnect unused peripherals.

Even when not in use, whenever you have an optical disk in your notebook, the system will occasionally spin up the drive (and the laser) to check the disk. While this isn’t an issue for MacBook Airs, which lack optical drives, you can save battery life by disconnecting any peripherals, such as external hard drives and mice. These devices don’t draw a ton of power, but every little bit helps.