Battery Calibration

A Mac portable is just that: a portable computer. It was designed to be plugged and unplugged to allow the battery to discharge and recharge on a normal cycle. As such, if you use your machine plugged in all the time, then it is important that you discharge (or calibrate) your battery every so often. If you rarely use the battery, then Apple recommends completely discharging the battery and charging it again at least once a month. If you use your notebook frequently on the battery and plug it in to "top off" the battery, then a full discharge cycle is required less often.

Follow these steps to calibrate the battery:

1. Plug in the power adapter and fully charge your MacBooks's battery until the light ring or LED on the power adapter plug changes to green and the onscreen meter in the menu bar indicates that the battery is fully charged.

2. Allow the battery to rest in the fully charged state for at least two hours. You may use your computer during this time as long as the adapter is plugged in.

3. Disconnect the power adapter while the computer still on and start running the computer off battery power. You may use your computer during this time. When your battery gets low, the low battery warning dialog appears on the screen.

4. At this point, save your work. Continue to use your computer; when the battery gets very low, the computer will automatically go to sleep.

5. Turn off the computer or allow it to sleep for five hours or more.

6. Connect the power adapter and leave it connected until the battery is fully charged again.

Checking Battery Condition

If you hold down the Option (alt) key on your keyboard while clicking the menu bar battery icon, then you'll see a Condition option. The battery condition can be in either one of four states: Normal, Replace Soon, Replace Now, or Service Battery.

Normal means that the battery is operating properly. 

Replace Soon means that the battery is functioning normally, but is currently holding less charge than it did when new, and may need replacing.

Replace Now means that the battery is functioning normally, but holds significantly less charge than the battery when new, and needs replacing before it could possibly do harm to your hardware.

Service Battery means that the battery isn't functioning properly or your computer has noticed a change in its behavior. You should take your battery and/or computer in for servicing if this problem continues after a few restarts.  

Long-term Storage

If you don't plan on using your Mac portable for more than a six-month time period, then you'll want to properly store your Mac's battery with a 50% charge. This will ensure that it won't fall into a deep-discharge state, or lose capacity and therefore have a shorter life.

Temperature is also a huge factor when storing your computer. You'll want to ensure your Mac and its battery are stored in an environment where the temperature is between 50ºF and 95ºF (10ºC and 35ºC). Anything more or less, and you could seriously damage your battery over a long period of time.

• Open Calendar in macOS and create a new event, either by clicking the [+] plus button or by double-clicking on any date
• Double-click the event to display event details
• Click on the date and time section
• Pull down the "alert" menu and choose "Custom…"
• Pull down the "Message" menu and choose "Open file"
• Directly under the menu, pull down the next menu and choose "Other...", then use the file browser to select the file you want to open on a schedule
• Choose "OK" when finished

Once the date arrives, the selected file will launch automatically in the default application at the date and time specified in Calendar as the alert. Use the “repeat" function to set the file to consistently relaunch on the given date and time provided. These can be standard, or custom repeating schedules like every last Friday of the month. The repeat feature is an excellent additional trick for repetitive tasks that use the same file, like a weekly or monthly earnings report, tax document, expense sheet, or whatever else requires regular use on a scheduled basis.

Entering "apple" in the location bar of Safari will yield you Google search results for those terms. However, including a trailing slash will cause Safari to add the ".com" to a logical location in the address, and take you to that URL. So, "apple/" will take you to "apple.com". Finally, if you type “apple/macbook”, Safari will go to "apple.com/macbook”.

Printing a document without first launching the app that created it is easy. Just select the document and use the Command-P keyboard shortcut (or go the the File menu and choose Print). The default app for the file's format will launch, and in most cases will send the document to your default printer without any interaction.

Applications that expect more user input before printing, like professional design apps, will wait for you to configure your print settings before putting ink on paper. It adds back in an extra step, but for file formats that default to Preview, it's as simple as select-and-print.

Command+D
Selects Desktop as the destination.

Command+Shift+H
Sets the Home directory as the destination.

Command+Shift+A
Sets Applications directory as the destination.

Command+Shift+.
Toggle invisible items.

Command+Shift+G
Bring up Go To Folder window.

Command+R
Open the selected item in the Finder.

Command+F
Move the cursor to the Find field.

Command+.
Close the Open/Save dialog window.

Spacebar
View the selected item in Quick Look.

Tab
Tab key auto-completes paths and file names from the aforementioned Go To Folder window.