Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. Guides

How to show the battery percentage of your Mac

By and

You rely on your MacBook for just about everything, so don’t you think it’s important to keep its battery topped off? After all, it is laptop, and while laptop batteries are stronger than ever these days, your MacBook likely won’t last a full day without its power adapter. But how does one know exactly how much juice a MacBook has left? Why, with the battery percentage indicator!

Recommended Videos

Difficulty

Easy

Duration

5 minutes

What You Need

  • A MacBook

By default, you’ll find this status icon in the top-right corner of your MacBook screen, but maybe you’ve accidentally disabled it. No worries: our step-by-step guide will teach you how to get it back, as well as answer some frequently asked questions.

Enabling the Mac’s battery percentage indicator

There are a few ways to enable the battery percentage indicator for your Mac, but how you'll go about enabling it will depend on what version of MacOS you’re running. For starters, let’s cover the two latest versions of the Apple OS: Sonoma and Ventura.

Step 1: Open System Settings, then click Control Center > Battery.

Step 2: You should see a Show Percentage option. Go ahead and toggle this on.

The Control Center and Battery options highlighted in macOS Sonoma.
Digital Trends

Step 3: For Catalina users and older MacOS versions, select the Battery icon on the top-right of your Mac and then choose the Show percentage option.

The Show Percentage option for the Mac's battery.
Digital Trends

Enabling the Mac’s battery icon

If the battery icon is not showing up at all on your Mac, then here’s how to fix that.

Step 1: For the latest MacOS versions (Sonoma and Ventura), click System Settings, then click Control Center > Battery.

Step 2: Toggle on the Show in menu bar setting.

The Show in Menu Bar option in macOS Sonoma.
Digital Trends

Step 3: For those who have Catalina or below, select Energy saver within System preferences, and then tick the Show battery status in menu bar box at the bottom.

The Show battery status option for Mac.
Digital Trends

Step 4: If your computer is running Big Sur or Monterey, select the Battery icon within System preferences instead. Now choose the Show battery status in menu bar option.

Configuring Energy Saver settings

If you find your Mac’s battery constantly depleted and want to better preserve and optimize the system’s battery usage, then you can do so via Apple’s Energy Saver settings.

Do note that the Energy Saver setting was removed in Sonoma.

Step 1: Select Energy saver from System settings (for Ventura users) or System preferences (for all other OS versions), and then adjust the settings to your liking. You have a few options to choose from via the Battery tab:

  • Turn the display off after a specific amount of time.
  • Put hard disks to sleep when possible.
  • Slightly dim the screen when the Mac is not being charged through a power outlet.
The Battery Energy Saver options on Mac.
Digital Trends

Step 2: Adjacent to the Battery tab is Power adapter. Here, you also have a few settings you can turn on and off as well:

  • Prevent the computer from sleeping automatically when the display is switched off.
  • Put hard disks to sleep when possible.
  • Wake the Mac for Wi-Fi network access.
  • Enable Power Nap while plugged into a power adapter.
The Power Adapter Energy Saver options on Mac.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Step 3: A Schedule button on the bottom-right of the window can also set an exact time to start up/wake your system, in addition to when it automatically goes to sleep.

The Schedule button for Energy Saver options on Mac.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

If you want to see the overall health of your Mac’s battery itself, then be sure to check out our guide on that as well as our article on how to show the battery percentage on your iPhone.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Zak Islam
Zak Islam
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Zak Islam was a freelance writer at Digital Trends covering the latest news in the technology world, particularly the…
Best laptop deals: Save on the Dell XPS 14, MacBook Pro 16 and more
The Dell XPS 14 on a white table with the screen open.

There are a lot of excellent laptop brands on the market, and if you're looking to pick up a new laptop, then you'll be happy to know that there are a huge ton of options out there, and there are a surprising amount of deals to be had. While it's true that desktop computers tend to offer a lot more in terms of specs, they aren't as portable, and for those who need to take their computers to work or school, the laptop is the only choice. On the bright side, you don't have to get one of the best laptops to get a well-specced machine, and that's part of the reason why we've collected some of our favorites below.
Since we've collected these deals from the best brands, you'll find HP laptop deals, Dell laptop deals, Acer laptop deals, Lenovo laptop deals, and more. They run the gamut from Chromebook deals and 2-in-1 laptop deals to powerful gaming laptop deals and everything in between.

HP Chromebook 14a -- $300, was $370

Read more
iMac deals: New, renewed and refurbished iMac computers
Apple iMac with Retina 5K Display review close

The Apple ecosystem is one of the smoothest out there, and if you're already in it and want a computer that's more substantial than a MacBook, then you may want to grab yourself an Apple iMac. It's one of the best all-in-one computers on the market in the various configurations it comes in, and it has a pretty large screen to boot. As such, we've gone and collected our favorite Apple deals on the iMac to help save you a bit of hassle. That said, if you'd still like to go with a laptop, there are these MacBook deals you can check out, or even potentially these refurbished MacBook deals for even more of a deal, or you could always go outside of Apple with these desktop deals instead.
Apple 21.5-inch iMac (2018) Renewed -- $409, was $460

Even cheaper than any of the MacBook deals going on, this Apple 21.5-inch iMac (2018) might be a few years old but it offers plenty of juice for the price. That's the beauty behind many iMacs -- they last a long time thanks to offering reliable hardware and the benefits of MacOS, which tends to mean they stay fast for awhile. In the case of the 2018 21.5-inch iMac, you get a 2.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 processor paired up with 16GB of memory which is a great set of specs for ensuring you can get plenty of work done.

Read more
I tested the most popular free antivirus apps for Mac. Here are the very best
A MacBook Air is shown with the Bitdefender for Mac dashboard open.

If you’re a Mac user, you probably love the sleek desktop experience and how easy it is to use and understand. Luckily, it's not the most popular target for hackers, but antivirus software is still an important step in securing your Mac and protecting your personal and financial data from malware.

Finding the best antivirus software can be challenging. While subscription prices are affordable, your budget might already be tight. Thankfully, there are several good, free malware solutions for macOS. Here are our top picks for free antivirus software for Mac, each specially tailored to protect your Apple computer.
Bitdefender Virus Scanner

Read more