Was curious if anyone here uses AlDente for their macbook, and how well it works. If so, what settings do you use? Has it made a difference in your macbook's battery health?
I generally have it set to keep my MacBook Pro at 80% since it is always plugged in. I use the “sailing” mode. I think it helps, but as the author of the tool explains, it’s hard to know for sure.
I do not recommend paying for the software. The paid version will turn itself off every 30 days unless you let it phone home to verify that it’s still authorized. I’ve written/sold software before, so I get the concern about piracy, but this is going too far.
This means you can’t run it on an air-gapped machine. It also means the developer is collecting data tied to your name, address, credit card, IP, and computer usage every month and you can’t opt out. Most distressingly, it means that someday when the author loses interest in the software (or doesn’t renew his domain name, or has a heart attack, or sells it to some unscrupulous corp) the software you paid for will stop working.
I have been using AlDente since day 1 of my M2 13” MBA, so just about a year now. It doesn’t get out much so stays plugged in almost all the time. I use AlDente pretty much with the stock settings (charge to 80%, sail to 70) and setting it to run on login. I’m currently at 100% battery health with only 7 cycles.
I used to use AlDente. It seemed to work fine for me in Big Sur, but with Monterey and beyond, it wasn't working reliably for me. Sometimes my MBP would charge up to 100%, even with AlDente running and configured correctly.
I use the free version. Works good so far I guess.
My Macbook is plugged in most of the time and I found that the built in battery limiter would want to charge back to 100% for the next week if I ever used it for more than 10min unplugged
I have it limited to 69% (nice) and I don't really know if it has helped the battery health because I never use it.
MacOS has a feature built in, but its not nearly as feature rich. this will let you re-calibrate the battery, set charging schedules, manually force the battery low, manually discharge, etc. it seems awesome!
In my experience the macOS build in version just doesn’t work. My MacBook sits at my desk at least 6 days per week and it still sat at 100% all the time
Yes, using it since I the purchase, while the similar functionality is implemented in macOS itself, it never worked out for me even after months as I wanted, so I configured AlDente and here is the look at my battery health after more than a year of daily use.
All in all this is what I do:
I never keep the battery at 100% for prolonged periods of time. (days, weeks)
When docked, I keep the battery at around 70%.
Once every 2-3 weeks I discharge the battery to approx. 20%, charge fully and keep it as is for at least an hour, then discharge to approx. 70-80%.