by Steve Sorbo | Apr 3, 2026 | Uncategorized
The just-released macOS 26.4 Tahoe introduced two battery-related features for MacBook users, helping them understand and control MacBook charging. A Slow Charger indicator now appears in the battery status menu and in Battery settings when your Mac is connected to a charger that isn’t delivering the minimum recommended wattage. More significantly, a new Charge Limit feature lets you manually set a ceiling for what the Mac considers a full charge—between 80% and 100%.
These additions are the latest in Apple’s ongoing effort to extend battery lifespan. Understanding how these features work—and when to override them—can reduce frustration and help keep your MacBook battery healthy.
Why Apple Limits Charging
A battery’s lifespan depends on its “chemical age,” which is affected by charging patterns and temperature history. Lithium-ion batteries degrade faster when they spend extended time at full charge or when they generate excess heat during charging. As batteries chemically age, they hold less charge and deliver reduced performance.
Apple’s solution is to reduce the time batteries spend fully charged. This is particularly important for MacBooks that spend most of their time plugged into power at a desk—a scenario that would otherwise keep the battery at 100% and generate heat, both of which shorten battery life.
Optimized Battery Charging
Apple has rolled out optimized battery charging features on the Mac. The Optimized Battery Charging algorithm uses on-device machine learning to learn your daily charging routine, aiming to ensure your Mac is fully charged by the time you actually need to disconnect it from power and leave for the day.
If your MacBook spends most of its time plugged in at your desk, macOS may keep the battery at 80% and charge to full only when it predicts you’ll need to use it away from a power source. When Optimized Battery Charging is holding your battery at 80%, you’ll see Charging On Hold in the battery status menu. (The iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch have similar features that learn when you typically unplug and delay charging past 80% until shortly before that time.)
The New Charge Limit Feature
Charge Limit in macOS 26.4 takes a different approach. Rather than relying on machine learning to predict when you’ll need a full charge, it lets you explicitly set a maximum charge level. Your Mac will charge to within a few percentage points of your chosen limit, then stop. If the battery drops more than 5% while connected to power, charging resumes until it reaches the limit again.
To set a charge limit, go to System Settings > Battery, click the ⓘ next to Charging, and choose a limit between 80% and 100%. When the limit is active, the battery status menu shows Charged to X% Limit.
Using Charge Limit is ideal if your MacBook rarely leaves your desk. Setting an 80% limit reduces battery wear while ensuring you always have enough charge for brief periods away from power.
When You Need a Full Charge
What about when you want your MacBook’s battery to be at full strength for an unpredictable day away from power, such as for a long flight? You can override both Optimized Battery Charging and Charge Limit when you need maximum battery life:
- For immediate needs: Click the battery icon in the menu bar and choose Charge to Full Now. Your Mac will charge to 100% regardless of current settings.
- To disable limits temporarily: In System Settings > Battery, click the ⓘ next to Charging, turn off Optimized Battery Charging, and click the Turn Off Until Tomorrow button when prompted. Also set Charge Limit to 100%.
- To disable limits permanently: Follow the same steps as the bullet above, but click the Turn Off button in the warning dialog instead. Also set Charge Limit to 100%. Remember, this will likely reduce your battery’s overall lifespan.
(Similar charging limits and workarounds also apply to the iPhone and Apple Watch. On the iPhone, go to Settings > Battery > Charging and turn off Optimized Battery Charging. For the Apple Watch, look in Settings > Battery > Battery Health on the watch itself.)
About That Slow Charger Warning
The new Slow Charger indicator helps explain why your MacBook might be charging slowly or even draining while in use. If the power adapter doesn’t deliver enough wattage for your Mac model, you’ll now see a warning in the battery menu and in System Settings > Battery.
You can check your current power adapter’s wattage by reading the fine print on the charger itself, or by opening the System Information app and checking the AC Charger section in the Power screen. It’s safe to use an adapter with a higher wattage than required, but don’t go below the wattage of Apple’s included adapters.
For optimal charging, use an adapter that delivers at least the minimum wattage recommended for your Mac:
- MacBook Neo: 20 watts (no fast charging available)
- 13-inch MacBook Air: 30 or 35 watts standard, 67 watts for fast charging
- 15-inch MacBook Air: 35 watts standard, 70 watts for fast charging
- 14-inch MacBook Pro: 70 watts standard (or 96 watts for M4 Pro and M4 Max chips); 96 watts for fast charging
- 16-inch MacBook Pro: 140 watts for both standard and fast charging
Using your iPhone’s 20W charger with a MacBook Pro might technically work, but you’ll now be warned that it’s not delivering adequate power.
Finding the Right Balance
Apple’s battery optimization features represent a trade-off between immediate convenience and long-term battery health. For most users, leaving Optimized Battery Charging enabled makes sense—it learns your patterns and charges to full when needed. The new Charge Limit feature offers more explicit control for those who prefer it, particularly those whose MacBooks rarely leave the desk and can be locked at 80%.
If you frequently fight these features, you may have an unpredictable schedule that the algorithms can’t anticipate. In that case, consider turning off Optimized Battery Charging or setting a higher Charge Limit. Just remember that keeping your battery at 100% more often will shorten its lifespan—a trade-off that might be acceptable depending on how long you plan to keep your laptop.
(Featured image by iStock.com/shirophoto)
Social Media: Is your MacBook’s battery stuck at 80%? That’s Apple protecting your battery’s long-term health. macOS 26.4 adds new controls, including Charge Limit and a Slow Charger warning. Learn how these features work—and when to override them.
by Steve Sorbo | Apr 3, 2026 | Uncategorized
A standard piece of advice for staying safe online is to avoid opening attachments from people you don’t know or attachments that seem suspicious. It’s good advice, since PDFs and office documents can contain JavaScript and macros that present a security risk, or they could be maliciously crafted to take advantage of vulnerabilities in common apps to execute code on your computer.
But in the real world, unless the document is attached to a message that is obviously spam, it’s difficult to know whether you should be worried. If you could just look at the document, you might be able to tell, but how can you do that without opening it?
Enter Dangerzone, an open source app created by the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation. The impetus for creating it came from journalists who need to review attachments from possibly untrustworthy sources while protecting themselves from hacking and retaliation from powerful corporate and government interests.
Dangerzone won’t tell you whether or not a document is safe. Instead, when you drop a document on its window, it creates a PDF image of the document that contains nothing of the original other than the visual representation of its pixels. Think of Dangerzone as a virtual photocopier—it makes a visual copy.
But Dangerzone is a highly sophisticated virtual photocopier, since it has to work with malicious documents without allowing them to cause harm. Behind the scenes, Dangerzone first creates a Linux container to keep the document away from your Mac. Within the container, it then creates a sandbox to protect the Linux kernel. Then it uses open source tools—LibreOffice and PyMuPDF—to convert the original document to a PDF, split that PDF into individual pages, and convert each page to RGB pixels—just colored dots. Then it quits the sandbox since the file has been sanitized, and if possible, it converts the RGB pixel data into a compressed, searchable PDF. Finally, it saves the PDF to the specified folder and archives the original file. You can process only one file or batch of files at a time to ensure that the entire secure conversion environment starts fresh each time.
Here are the document types that Dangerzone can convert into safe PDFs:
- PDF (.pdf)
- Microsoft Word (.docx, .doc)
- Microsoft Excel (.xlsx, .xls)
- Microsoft PowerPoint (.pptx, .ppt)
- ODF Text (.odt)
- ODF Spreadsheet (.ods)
- ODF Presentation (.odp)
- ODF Graphics (.odg)
- EPUB (.epub)
- JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg)
- GIF (.gif)
- PNG (.png)
- SVG (.svg)
- TIFF (.tif, .tiff)
- Other image formats (.bmp, .pnm, .pbm, .ppm)
You won’t want to use Dangerzone on every document you receive in email. There’s no reason to fuss with it for attachments that come from people you know, in contexts where it makes sense that they’re sending you something. But if you get an attachment out of the blue that makes you think, “Why is this person sending me a document?” run the document through Dangerzone to make sure it’s safe.
(Featured image by iStock.com/shironosov)
Social Media: Got a suspicious attachment? Dangerzone converts potentially dangerous PDFs and Office docs into safe, pixel-only copies you can view without risk. Think of it as a virtual photocopier that strips any hidden malware, JavaScript, or macros.
by Steve Sorbo | Mar 6, 2026 | Uncategorized
When a Web browser has many tabs open, it can be hard to find the one playing audio if you need to silence it. Worse, when a browser relaunches, it can be tough to identify and silence all the tabs that have automatically started playing audio. Happily, all browsers can help. Tabs with active audio show a speaker icon next to their names; click it to mute the audio. These speaker icons are easier to spot in browsers that display tabs vertically rather than horizontally across the top, where space constraints may prevent the speaker icons from appearing. Safari provides an additional option: a speaker icon on the right side of the address bar (see the top screenshot). Click it to mute all audio, or Control-click it to see which tabs are playing audio. Chromium-based browsers—including Google Chrome, Brave, and Microsoft Edge—display a musical note icon in the upper-right corner of the toolbar (bottom screenshot). Click it to open playback controls and stop playback.
(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/Khosrork)
Social Media: Drowning in open tabs and can’t find the one playing sound? Look for the speaker icon on the tab itself, or use Safari’s address bar icon or Chrome’s music note for quick control.
by Steve Sorbo | Mar 6, 2026 | Uncategorized
In iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 26, Apple added an option in the Messages app to filter messages from unknown people and those marked as spam by the carrier. To enable filtering, open Messages, tap the Filter 
button in the upper-right corner, tap Manage Filtering, and turn on Screen Unknown Senders and Filter Spam. Once those are enabled, the Filter menu gains two new options: Unknown Senders and Spam. If a text from an unknown person comes in, the main app icon will get a red badge, but you won’t see the new message in the usual list. Instead, use the Filter menu—which also gets a blue badge—to switch to Unknown Senders or Spam and look in those lists. The Phone app works similarly—enable call filtering in Settings > Apps > Phone under Call Filtering, and unknown callers will appear in separate lists accessible via the Filter button in the Phone app’s Recents or Calls views. To move a conversation out of Unknown Senders, tap Mark as Known.
(Featured image by iStock.com/Liubomyr Vorona)
Social Media: Missing texts from unknown numbers? iOS 26 filters them into hidden lists. Here’s where to find them in the Messages app—and how to mark senders as known so you don’t miss important messages. PS: The same applies to calls in the Phone app.
by Steve Sorbo | Mar 6, 2026 | Uncategorized
Sadly, not all websites and apps support Apple Pay, so we’ve become accustomed to manually entering our credit card information into fields, like animals. No longer! In iOS 26, the Wallet app now supports AutoFill. If you need to add a card—those set up with Apple Pay are already available—open Wallet, tap the three-dot menu in the top-right corner, tap AutoFill, then tap Add Card. You can scan the card with your camera or enter details manually. Then, whenever you’re checking out on a website or in an app that doesn’t support Apple Pay, tap a payment field. You may be able to select a saved card from the suggestions above the keyboard, or you may have to tap in the field to bring up the text menu, and tap AutoFill > Credit Card (below left). When you invoke AutoFill from above the keyboard, your card number, expiration date, and security code will be automatically entered. Using the menu requires tapping the blue text for the field you want to fill (below right).
(Featured image by iStock.com/BongkarnThanyakij)
Social Media: Tired of typing credit card numbers into websites and apps that don’t support Apple Pay? iOS 26 lets you save cards in Wallet and use AutoFill to enter your payment details anywhere—here’s how to set it up and use it.
by Steve Sorbo | Mar 6, 2026 | Uncategorized
Apple has updated its Studio Display with an improved 12-megapixel Center Stage camera with Desk View support, two Thunderbolt 5 ports, and improved bass from its six-speaker system—all for the same $1,599 starting price. More significantly, Apple introduced the Studio Display XDR at $3,299, bringing professional-grade HDR technology to a broader audience at a much lower price than the $5,000 Pro Display XDR it replaces. The Studio Display XDR features a 27-inch 5K panel with mini-LED backlighting, 2304 local dimming zones, up to 2000 nits of peak HDR brightness, a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and a 120 Hz refresh rate with Adaptive Sync. Both displays require macOS 26.3.1 Tahoe and work with all Apple silicon Macs.
(Featured image by Apple)
Social Media: Apple’s new $3,299 Studio Display XDR brings mini-LED, HDR, and 120 Hz to a 27-inch 5K display—pro display tech at a far more accessible price. The standard Studio Display also gets a refresh with a better camera and Thunderbolt 5.
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