Hedroom for MacBooks and battery life
Battery life is mostly about which apps are busy when you are not looking. Hedroom shows which ones, lets you move or pause them with a click or a rule, and measures what that changed. It makes no promise of extra hours.
See which apps use power
Energy per app shows watts per app, read from the energy counter macOS keeps for each process. When macOS gives no counter for an app, Hedroom shows an estimate marked "≈" and "estimate", and never presents it as a measurement. The Energy tile shows chip power split into CPU, GPU, Neural Engine and memory, where your Mac reports them. The "time left" figure uses the battery's own voltage and current, not the chip's watts, so it is not mixed up with them.
A background app burning CPU
Hedroom flags a runaway when a background app averages 80% of a core or more for 3 minutes, and notifies after 10 minutes. On battery, the first suggestion is the efficiency cores: lower the app's priority so its work runs on the low-power cores. After 15 minutes it also offers a pause, which lasts until you switch back to the app, or 60 minutes at most. The receipt compares the app's own watts before and after, when macOS measures them. Fixes.
Hedroom also takes it easy itself on battery: in the background it checks every 10 seconds, and every 15 seconds in Low Power Mode.
Power profiles
In Tools › Power & fans, a profile is a set of rules you can read in Rules:
- All-day battery: sync apps and updaters move to the efficiency cores, and Docker pauses when idle.
- Balanced: adds nothing. Only your own rules.
- Full speed: adds no slowdowns, and uses the Cooler fan curve if fan control is on.
Hedroom can switch profile when you plug in or unplug, but only after you say yes. Low Power Mode stays your switch. Hedroom does not change it.
Heat and fans
If macOS reports a serious or critical thermal state for 2 minutes, Hedroom shows the three apps using the most CPU. On a fanless MacBook Air it says that the Mac slows itself down to stay cool, and never suggests fans.
On a MacBook Pro only, you can run a fan curve: Quiet, Cooler, Max, or your own 2 to 5 points. It needs the small helper, which you approve once. Hedroom never sets a speed outside the fan's own minimum and maximum, gives the fans back to macOS if it reports a serious or critical thermal state, and returns them to automatic when Hedroom quits, crashes, or stops answering for 10 seconds. Fan control on a MacBook Pro: what's safe.
Battery health, read-only
Hedroom shows battery cycles, rated cycles, maximum capacity and whether macOS Optimized Charging is currently holding the charge. It reads these and never changes charging. Optimized Charging has no public setting to read, so Hedroom says it is a macOS setting you can check in System Settings › Battery, and only says it is holding the charge when macOS reports that right now.
Honest limits
- No battery-life numbers. Hedroom does not promise extra hours or a percentage. The receipt shows what changed for one app over a few minutes, and often says "No measurable effect."
- No temperature or noise results. Hedroom does not claim any result for a fan curve. You see the live readings and decide.
- Fan curves are MacBook Pro only. A MacBook Air has no fans, and other Macs keep theirs automatic.
- The helper approval and fan control have not yet been checked on a signed release build.
- The battery capacity figure is Hedroom's reading and can differ by a couple of points from System Settings.
- Not every Mac reports every power channel. Hedroom shows what it can read and leaves out the rest.
Try it, then decide
Monitoring and explanations are free, with no card and no account. Pro will have a 7-day free trial that needs a card, and you can cancel before it ends. Pro is a subscription, from $31.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, planned prices.