An easy guide to ruining your MacBook’s battery

You’ve got a brand new MacBook? Perfect. Now’s the time for you to completely ruin its battery, to ensure it only lasts for minutes when you’re out and about. I mean, what’s the point in your laptop being portable? As far as I’m concerned, none.

That’s why we’ve put together a handy guide outlining everything you should do to mess up your MacBook’s battery as quickly as possible. And yes, you are very welcome.

Keep all your apps running all of the time

Answer me this: what’s the fastest way to open that bit of software you sometimes need? You guessed correctly: never close it.

Every single app on your laptop should be open all the time. Only use that bit of accounting software once a week? Keep it open. Make music a single time a year? Who cares, leave Garageband primed and ready to go 24 hours a day. Opened Outlook by mistake in 2012? It must stay active forever.

In fact, you should also leave Spotify playing even when you don’t want to listen to music, just turn the volume off. While I’m thinking about it, you should probably just leave videos constantly playing in the background. Who knows when you might have the urge to catch a few seconds of The Simpsons.

And on the topic of apps…

Never, ever update your software

It’s my firm belief that the first draft of anything is perfect. Why spend time refining or revising when the thing already exists? It’s there. It’s real. It can’t get any better than that — and the same goes for apps.

Who cares about “tweaks,” “improvements,” or “optimizations?” I’ll tell you: losers. Big old boring losers. And, friends, one thing we’re not are big old boring losers. We’re winners.

Winners never, ever update apps. Winners deliberately go and turn off automatic software updates. Winners stay on a version of macOS so old, the terms and conditions are carved into stone. Winners have MacBook batteries that are so drained, you can barely turn your computer on before it shuts down. Winners. Winners. Winners.

Unplug and discharge and plug in and unplug and plug in again.

Laptops these days are made to energy efficient, and most modern MacBooks are created to manage and optimize charging to protect the battery.

But that sounds boring and dull.

I suggest that everytime you charge your MacBook to 100%, wait until it goes back down to 99% — and then plug it back in again. And do this repeatedly. Over and over. Teach that laptop who owns who.

On this note, another fantastic way to ruin your MacBook’s battery is to run it all the way down. If you ever see a warning pop up telling you your laptop’s about to go to sleep because it’s low on juice, good. That’s what you want. Run it all the way into the ground. Drain your computer like it’s a weak human, and you’re a thirsty vampire. It’s the natural order of things.

Turn up your screen’s brightness

Really, there shouldn’t even be an option to dim the screen on your MacBook. Instead, it should remain so bright there’s a chance of eye damage.

Ignore the elements, the time of the day, whatever — your laptop should, nay, must be bright enough to guide ships past rocky shorelines; it must be so illuminated that it upsets the migration patterns of local wildlife, it must be visible from space.

In fact, if possible, you should try and find a bit of software that allows you to turn up your MacBook’s display brightness even higher than what Apple allows by default.

That’ll show your battery who’s boss.

Keep your volume pumped up

While we’re on the topic of keeping things pumped to the max, you should have a look at draining your MacBook with the handy tool of noise. Keep it loud. Pump it up. To the max. All the time.

It doesn’t matter where you are, your machine should be emitting enough noise that you’re effectively a public nuisance.

Use your MacBook as a device charger

In the future, there will only be one gadget. Technology will have advanced so far that a television, speakers, mobile, headphones, and even more will be in a single, glorious unit. We don’t have to wait for it though, we can bring the future to us, today.

There’s no reason that you, a person of such refined taste to be reading this article, should have to carry both a laptop and an external battery pack. Instead, you should just dump the latter and charge all your devices using your MacBook battery.

And, whatever you do, don’t plug your laptop in while you’re juicing up your phone or earbuds or hairdryer or oven, make sure it’s running all from that sweet laptop battery.

Always leave your machine in direct sunlight

If you want to degrade your MacBook battery — and we all know that’s the case by now — then I’d recommend moving your laptop around so it’s always in sunlight.

Try imagining your computer is like a cat. Every time the sun moves, you move. Following its roasting rays and ensuring the sweet metal case of your laptop is hot enough to fry an egg on. Hell, actually try cooking on your machine.

There you have it! A selection of tips and tricks to help you deplete your MacBook battery in record time. Good luck with your honorable quest. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up seeing something like this very soon:

You can download CleanMyMacX — an all-in-one app to keep your Mac clean, fast and protected — to get free access to Menu App to monitor your battery and Mac health.