Batteries is a macOS menu bar app that surfaces the charge level of every Apple device in your ecosystem — iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, Magic Keyboard, trackpad, and more — in a single glance, without opening Settings or picking up your phone.
What is Batteries?
Batteries is a lightweight macOS utility that aggregates the battery status of all your Apple devices into one consolidated menu bar widget. Instead of hunting through separate system panes or reaching for each physical gadget to check how much charge is left, you get a live dashboard the moment you click the menu bar icon.
The premise sounds simple because it is — and that discipline is exactly what makes it indispensable. I have an iPhone, AirPods Pro, Apple Watch, Magic Keyboard, and a Magic Trackpad on my desk at any given moment. Before Batteries, a dying trackpad would ambush me mid-sentence. Now a quick glance at the menu bar tells me everything I need.
What does Batteries do best?
Batteries excels at surfacing the right information at exactly the right moment through configurable low-battery alerts. You set a threshold — say, 20 percent — and Batteries fires a native macOS notification before any device starts silently dying on you.
The menu bar popover is well-designed: device icons are immediately recognisable, charge percentages are legible at a glance, and the layout adapts cleanly to however many devices you have paired. There is no bloat, no settings labyrinth, no subscription dashboard asking you to "unlock insights." It does one thing and it does it consistently.
- Multi-device overview — iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods (individual buds + case), Magic accessories, even connected Bluetooth controllers
- Proactive alerts — customisable per-device low-battery notifications before you hit critical
- Always-visible menu bar — optional persistent percentage badge so your most-watched device is always in peripheral vision
- Minimal footprint — no background agent hogging RAM; it piggybacks on Bluetooth data macOS already collects
Is Batteries free?
Batteries is available on the Mac App Store with a free tier that covers basic battery monitoring for a handful of devices. A one-time purchase or small subscription unlocks unlimited device slots and the notification system — pricing is modest and there is no recurring SaaS trap. Check the App Store listing for the current price; it has historically been one of the more fairly-priced utilities in the menu bar space.
Who should use Batteries?
Anyone living inside Apple's hardware ecosystem with more than two wireless devices will feel the return on investment immediately. Power users with a full desk setup — Mac, iPhone, Watch, AirPods, keyboard, trackpad, maybe a Bluetooth game controller — will find Batteries practically mandatory.
It is equally useful for people who travel with multiple devices and need to know at a glance what needs charging before leaving the hotel room. If you only own a Mac and a single set of AirPods, the built-in macOS Bluetooth menu already shows you that — Batteries earns its place when the device count climbs past three.
What are the best Batteries alternatives?
The closest competitor in the same category is AirBattery, which focuses specifically on AirPods and Beats headphones rather than the full device spectrum. coconutBattery goes deeper in the other direction — it gives you detailed cycle counts and health diagnostics for your Mac's internal battery and connected iOS devices over USB, but does not do live wireless monitoring across your desk accessories. Stats (the open-source system monitor) includes a battery module but it only covers the Mac's own battery, not paired devices.
For the specific use case of "show me every wireless device's charge at a glance," Batteries has no real peer on macOS. It is the most polished, most comprehensive option in this niche.
How does Batteries compare to Apple's built-in tools?
macOS does show some device batteries in the Bluetooth menu and in Control Centre, but the experience is fragmented: you click into Bluetooth for keyboards and trackpads, swipe into Control Centre for AirPods and Apple Watch, and pick up your iPhone to check the Watch charge. Batteries collapses all of that into a single popover and adds the alerting layer that Apple's native UI completely lacks. It is the kind of app Apple probably should have shipped and didn't.
