How to View Your Mac's Battery Capacity and Cycle Count

In this episode, Siddarth walks you through the process of checking your MacBook's battery capacity—an indicator of how well the battery retains a charge compared to when it was new. He also explains how to determine the cycle count, which tracks the number of times the battery has been completely drained and recharged.

Battery capacity can be viewed by going to System Settings > Battery and clicking the "Show detail" button. Cycle count can be viewed by opening System Information (located in the Utilities folder), selecting "power" in the table, and pressing VO-J to jump to the information pane.

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI Note Taker – VoicePen, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

[00:00.05] You're listening to an AppleVis podcast. Hi, welcome to a short tutorial on how to check the charging cycles count on MacBook. So ever wondered how to check your MacBook battery cycles?

[00:00.25] When we get into settings of a Mac and when we interact in the battery, we can only find the details of the battery health. It might be 100% or 95% or 90%.

[00:00.39] Depending on your usage. But how to find the battery cycle count or how many times we have charged our battery? For that, in this demonstration I'll be showing you how we can find it and how we can understand the overall battery details. So first, I'll show you what we can get in the settings battery of Mac. So I'm on my MacBook...

[00:01.08] ...desktop. I'll open my settings with VO-M (system settings) and I will navigate here to the battery with VO-Right Arrow (battery) and I'll interact here.

[00:01.35] Alright, my current battery level is 59%. I just navigate here by VO-Right. Sorry, I'll interact here. My Low Power Mode is set to only on battery. I don't need the Low Power Mode activated when I'm connected to my charger.

[00:01.54] Okay, Battery Health. And if I right arrow again with VO-Right – Normal – Show Detail – right, I'll hit VO-Space. So it's great that even after one and a half month – sorry, one and a half year – of my Mac, still the battery health is Normal. And we'll see how much percent the battery health is.

[00:02.19] Right, and go... VO-Left here, to the left side of the screen. Yes, that's right. It's 100%. And I feel it's a great...

[00:02.35] ...battery. I like the way battery optimizes on Mac more than the iPhone. Maximum capacity – the maximum capacity is 100% – but we can't really see the cycle count here. For that, what we have to do is, first, I'll close the settings...

[00:02.53] Right. I'll open the search box again with Command-Space – Spotlight. Spotlight Search. Alright, here I will type "System Information". If I just type “System” I get the filtered it here – S-Y-S-T-E-M – some information – space – I just type I-N-F...

[00:03.15] ...it will be already taken, so just hit Enter here. Excellent. So here, you can get all the details regarding your hardware, your Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, audio devices, whatever.

[00:03.31] Now, we need to find something called “Power.” And I'll interact here. I interacted with the VO-Down Arrow, VO-Shift-Down Arrow. I keep going right with VO-Right. You don't need all these things. I'll just keep moving till I get “Power.”

[00:03.56] Right, Power. Power. I'll un-interact here – out of table – and I go right with VO-Right – Vertical Splitter – Vertical Splitter – Battery Information – My Information – I'll go in text here.

[00:04.12] Alright. I navigated in text here. I'm getting all the battery information. We need a cycle count here.

[00:04.40] Firmware version one. Hardware revision one. Cell revision two. Set charge information. The battery's charge is below the warning level – no. Fully charged – no. Charging – no. State of charge – 59%. And if I down arrow again – Health Information – Cycle Count: 24. Yes! What's the cycle count? Condition: Cycle Count – 24.

[00:05.04] Can you imagine I just charged 24 cycles in two years? Almost – sorry – almost 1.5 years, 1.6 years. So this is how we can check the cycle count. So right now, I don't need to worry about my battery or changing it. I guess I can still handle this for another three to four years...

[00:05.28] ...easily. Right? So this is how you can check the charging cycle count – or battery cycle count, whatever you call it – on the MacBook. Hope this tutorial is useful for you. Thank you so much.

[00:05.43] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.