How to increase the endurance of your Mac: 5 tips in macOS 12.5 that are guaranteed to help

Are you one of those individuals who try to update their devices to the latest versions of operating systems as soon as possible? If you answered yes, then I have good news for you. A few days ago, Apple released new versions of its operating systems to the public – namely iOS and iPadOS 15.6, macOS 12.5 Monterey and watchOS 8.7. So Apple is not only dedicated to the development of new major versions of its systems, but also continues to develop the existing ones. Classically, after updates, a handful of users appear who have a problem with endurance or performance. Therefore, in this article, we will show you 5 tips to increase the endurance of your Mac with macOS 12.5 Monterey.

Challenging applications

From time to time it happens that some applications do not quite understand each other with new versions of operating systems. There could either be optimization issues, or the application may simply not work at all. In some cases, the application can get stuck and start using hardware resources excessively, which causes both slowdown and reduced endurance. Fortunately, such applications can be easily identified in the Activity Monitor application. Sort all processes here descending according to CPU %, which will show you the applications that make the most of the hardware on the first rungs. To end it, you just have to tap to mark then pressed the X icon at the top of the window and finally clicked on End, or on Force termination.

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Idle time

Among other things, the display is very demanding on the battery. Therefore, if you want to ensure that the battery life is as long as possible, it is necessary that the display automatically turns off during inactivity. It's not complicated - just go to  → System Preferences → Battery → Battery, where you use above slider set up after how many minutes should the display turn off when powered from the battery. Choose a time of inactivity that suits you, in any case, keep in mind that the lower you set this time, the longer you will get.

Slight dimming of brightness on battery power

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Low power mode

In the event that the battery charge on your iPhone drops to 20 or 10%, you will see a dialog box that informs you of this fact and offers you to activate the low power mode. Within macOS, you will not see any such notification, anyway if you have macOS Monterey and later, you can finally activate low power mode on Macs at least manually. You just need to go to  → System Preferences → Battery → Battery, where you check Low power mode. Alternatively, you can use our shortcut to activate the low power mode, which you can find in this article.

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Working with brightness

As I mentioned on one of the previous pages, the display is very demanding on the battery. At the same time, the higher the brightness of the display, the higher the energy consumption. In order to save energy, Macs (and not only) have an ambient light sensor, with which the system automatically adjusts the brightness of the display to the ideal value. If you don't have auto-brightness turned on, just do so in  → System Preferences → Monitors. Here tick possibility Adjust brightness automatically. 

Auto brightness

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In addition, you can also activate the function, when the brightness will automatically decrease when powered by battery, in  → System Preferences → Battery → Battery, where just activate Dim the screen brightness slightly when on battery power.

Slight dimming of brightness on battery power

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Charge up to 80%

Battery life also depends on its health. After all, the battery loses its properties over time and with use, so if you want the battery to last in the long term, it is necessary to take care of it. It is primarily necessary that you avoid using it in extreme temperatures, and you should also ensure that the charge is between 20% and 80%, which is ideal for the battery. macOS includes the feature Optimized charging, but it is necessary to mention that in order to use it, the user must meet strict conditions and charge his MacBook regularly at the same times, which is impossible in most cases. That's why I recommend the free app Al Dente, which does not ask anything and charging at 80% (or other percentages) simply ticks.