A Low-Power Mode for the Mac ⇥ marco.org

Marco Arment:

Laptop battery life is decreasingly relevant to me as more airplanes offer power outlets. But sometimes you lose that lottery, as I did on my latest 8-hour daytime flight.

Apple’s “Up to 10 hours” claim doesn’t apply to my work, which is usually a mix of Xcode, web browsing, and social time-wasting, so I knew I’d have to seriously conserve power.

Sometimes, you just need Low Power Mode: the switch added to iOS a few years ago to conserve battery life when you need it, at the expense of full performance and background tasks.

I’ve long wanted something like this in MacOS, and not just for battery life. All too often, I find myself in a hotel or at a public WiFi hotspot and MacOS will still try to upload photos or download a software update. Many Canadian ISPs also have monthly bandwidth caps, and it would be rude to gobble up their monthly allowance with my giant RAW files. You can disable all of these things individually, but it’s a pain; I’d rather have a single toggle to temporarily reduce my computer’s resource use.

Update: Tully Hansen reminded me about TripMode, a third-party app that allows you to restrict bandwidth on a per-app basis.