Knowledge base

Apple Portables: Determining Battery Cycle Count

Posted in Apple Portable Computers

Summary

For computers with Mac OS X v10.4.x or later, use the steps in this article to determine the cycles on your Apple portable computer's battery.

Products Affected

Portable Computers

Use of your Apple portable computer battery on accrues in the form of "charge cycles". Each time a charge cycle is completed on a battery its overall capacity is slightly diminished. Knowing how many charge cycles are on your battery and how many are left can help you determine when a battery placement is required.

Follow these steps to access information on your Apple computer's battery, including the cycle count:

  1. Open Apple System Profiler (Choose About this Mac from the Apple (?) menu, then click More Info.)
  2. Select Power in the Contents list (under the Hardware section as seen below).
  3. Cycle Count is listed under the Battery Information section.

Cycle count in System Profiler

Example 1: The example above shows Battery Information as listed under System Profiler on Mac OS X v10.6 on a MacBook Pro. The battery here has six cycles on it.

About Battery Cycles

A charge cycle means using all of the battery