Gadgetory

more efficient chips and improvements of software have helped battery life on Apple's MacBooks to improve with each new model year while things have gotten better battery life isn't perfect i'm dan Graziano and it's days how-to I'm going to share with you a few ways to extend the battery life on your MacBook Air and MacBook Pro before we get started you will first want to determine the health of your battery the easiest way to do this is to hold down the option key and click the battery icon in the top menu bar you are looking for a condition of normal rather than a replace soon warning if this is the case you will need to replace the battery this can be performed at your own risk or you can bring your Mac in for service to get it done professionally the next thing you will want to do is enable the battery percentage indicator click on the battery icon in the menu bar and select the show percentage option while this won't actually increase your battery life it will make it a lot easier to monitor if you haven't upgraded OS X 10.9 Mavericks you should really think about doing so the operating system is much more efficient than earlier versions and can really boost your battery life to ensure you're on the latest version of OS X click on the Apple icon at the top left hand side of the screen and select software update the screen on your macbook is bright and vibrant this is great for when you're connected to a power source but it takes up a lot of energy when you're not I recommend dimming the brightness down below 1/2 or to a suitable level for your eyes to do this press the f1 button on the keyboard or if that doesn't work press the f1 + FN button together you should also disable the MacBooks auto brightness feature this can be done by going to System Preferences selecting display and unchecking the box all of apples aluminum MacBooks include a backlit keyboard and as is the case with the display the stronger the backlight the more energy it's using to disable it press and hold the f5 key or the FN + f5 key you can then use f6 key or the FN + f6 key together to turn the backlight back on I bet you aren't carrying around a bluetooth mouse or speaker which means there is no point to have bluetooth-enabled with nothing to connect to you're just letting it drain your battery the easiest way to disable bluetooth is by clicking the icon in the top menu bar as is the case with bluetooth if you aren't actively using a USB connected device such as a flash drive you should unplug it to prevent battery drain to conserve battery you should also try to avoid charging your smartphone or tablet via the MacBooks USB port and last but not least don't forget to quit out of any apps that you are no longer using this can be done by clicking on the command + Q key while the program is open or clicking on the name of the program in the top menu bar and selecting quit if an app is frozen and click on the Apple icon in the menu bar select force quit and click on the program that won't close for more tips like these be sure to check out how to see TOCOM you can also reach out to me on Twitter with any questions or comments I'm Dan graziano CNET thanks for watching