Batteries Widget for Mac keeps tabs on your devices’ battery levels

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Batteries widget for mac
A batteries widget. For you Mac.
Photo: Rony Fadel

See if you can guess what the new Batteries Widget for Mac app does. That’s right. It adds an iOS-style battery widget to the Mac’s Today panel, in the Notification Center. Anytime your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch is on the same Wi-Fi network as your Mac, its battery level will show up in the widget.

You will get low-battery notifications when your devices start to run out of juice. Plus, the app shows battery levels for trackpads, AirPods and so on.

A battery widget, on your Mac

This fairly essential utility comes from Fadel.io, the developer that makes Mission Control Plus, a Mac-modification app that lets you quit apps from the Mission Control app viewer by clicking on a little cross that the app overlays on the thumbnails of your open apps.

Batteries Widget for Mac is similarly simple. It adds a panel to the Mac’s Notification/Today sidebar, with all your nearby devices listed. It’s just like the one on iOS, except it’s on the Mac. AirPods and Magic Trackpads just appear, but you’ll have to do a little but of setup for iOS devices.

The app uses the Mac’s built-in iTunes sync framework to connect to your iPhone, etc. To make it work, you just have to enable wireless iTunes sync in iTunes. On macOS Catalina, this setting is now found in the Finder.

It’s set-and-forget, so once you’ve hooked up the iTunes Wi-Fi sync (or the Catalina equivalent), it just works. (Plus, you don’t need to keep iTunes running for it work.)

As mentioned above, Batteries Widget for Mac is not just for iPhones and the like. It also works with AirPods, Magic Trackpads and any other connected Bluetooth devices that make their battery levels available.

Low-battery alerts

Finally, if the battery level of one of those connected devices drops too low, the Batteries Widget gives you a standard macOS notification to warn you. Then you can throw your iPhone onto its Qi charger, or — in the case of trackpads — ignore it for another few days until the battery really runs out.

I like this app quite a bit. I use iOS devices far more than the Mac. But when I do use the Mac, I miss some of the little things that make iOS special. This is one of those things. I’m glad to see it on the Mac. The app is also really, really inexpensive.

Price: $2.99

Download: Batteries Widget for Mac from Fadel.io (macOS)

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