Apple lays out coming changes to Mac battery management

The current version of the public release of macOS Catalina is 10.15.4.

In the beta of macOS Catalina 10.15.5 is an update of the Energy Saver System Preferences pane. Follow the link for details.

From Apple’s post:

macOS Catalina 10.15.5 introduces battery health management, a feature designed to improve the lifespan of your Mac notebook’s battery.

And:

All rechargeable batteries are consumable components that become less effective as they get older—and their age isn’t determined only by time. A battery’s lifespan depends on its chemical age, which is affected by factors such as its temperature history and charging pattern. As your notebook’s battery ages chemically, its charging capacity gets smaller.

And:

The battery health management feature in macOS 10.15.5 is designed to improve your battery’s lifespan by reducing the rate at which it chemically ages. The feature does this by monitoring your battery’s temperature history and its charging patterns.

Based on the measurements that it collects, battery health management may reduce your battery’s maximum charge when in this mode. This happens as needed to ensure that your battery charges to a level that’s optimized for your usage—reducing wear on the battery, and slowing its chemical aging.

Bottom line, you’ll get this new battery intelligence when you update to macOS Catalina 10.15.5. Automatically.

If you’ve held off updating to Catalina, this is a strong reason to make the leap, once 10.15.5 becomes public.