Time remaining on Mountain Lion battery

I really can't realize how an enginner could imagine that a percentual indicator would be better than a time indicator...

Battery Time Remaining is a simple app that sits in your menu bar. It looks exactly like the default battery icon, but adds a battery life indicator next to it. Clicking on the icon brings you all the traditional options of the old battery icon, plus a few extra features under "Advanced Mode"—particularly the ability to customize battery notifications, so you know when it's reached a certain level. It's handy for those of us that are always whittling our battery down to its last few minutes.

Battery Time Remaining is a free download for OS X.

Here's the link : Battery Time Remaining

I've just installed mountain lion yesterday and wanted to revert back to lion after within few hours. Thanks for the app that shows battery time, that makes me stay with new OS and explore it more. However, i'll always keep a backup of my favourite lion, in case apple makes some sh** again.

I suspect the developer who removed this setting from Mountain Lion is the same developer who is selling the $1 app on the store to bring it back.

@Methi99 This is great! Solves this problem temporarily. However, there are two battery icons on my menu bar now. Would you (or anyone else) happen to know how to get rid of the old one? Haha.

EDIT: Silly me, I found it! System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Uncheck "Show battery status in menu bar"

Seriously?

Just click the battery icon in the menu bar and click "Show Percentage" ... done.

Saved0ne wrote:

Seriously?

Just click the battery icon in the menu bar and click "Show Percentage" ... done.

You should not write a reply if you haven't read the thread. The discussion is about the Remaining Time not about the precentage shown in the menu bar. This was possible in earlier OS X versions and has been removed in Mountain Lion.

1) it's about remaining time, not percentage 2) it's about showing it inside the menu bar, without having to click somewhere. this is about usability, not about users being idiots. 😉 read first, then reply.

imronburgundy wrote:

On Mountain Lion, is there a way to have the menu bar show the time remaining as Lion used to? All it shows now is a battery percentage.

No. Not officially anyway. That feature was removed with OS X 10.8.

Will it return? Probably not - but I could be wrong... afterall I said Apple would never resort to cost cutting on high end products using inferior build materials, but here we are with an iPhone 5 C - does the c stand for colour or cheap? - some might say crap.

It's really simple. The "remaining time" value can decrease but can also go up, depending on your application usage. At one moment it would tell you that you have 1h left, but once you quit your power hungry application it will tell you that you'll be covered for 2 more hours. Start one really CPU intensive app and you'll see you have a measly 0h:20m remaining. This constant fluctuation does not look good and it is confusing. The most stable value is the percentage value, which can go only down (as long as you don't re-attach the power cord, of course).

i guess 99% of us know that. We still want it. For example it's not confusing when you're watching a movie - there is no such fluctuation. Also: Don't assume others are stupid ;-) hours/minutes is a measurement we are most familiar with (and we all know that this is an approximation based on the current level of power usage). we all know that from any modern car, showing how far you can go on with the current remaining gas. everyone knows that it also depends on the way you are driving. nobody will ever be able to tell you, how long 56% of remaining battery life will last. especially because the variation you are talking about, is also applying to the percentage. it will be decreased faster or slower depending on the current power usage. so it's nothing better and nothing more meaningful than remaining time. it's simply taking away a feature without providing a better alternative.

"This constant fluctuation does not look good and it is confusing."

Probably the most ridiculous comment I've read to date on this thread. Clocks are pretty much everywhere in life, they tell the time being it be hands running around a face, or numbers on a display. Absolutely NONE of them tell you how much of the day has elasped in terms of a percentage.

While displaying the remaining capacity as a percentage of the level of a fully charged battery has its merits, how long this will last, irrespective of the load determined by applications running, is best suited by the most meaningful units, that being TIME!

"This constant fluctuation does not look good and it is confusing."

It's a heck of a lot easier to know that you have 10 hours of battery than a 100%. They could throw a 2 hour battery in your Mac and tell you that you have a 100%. Nice to know what you have a 100% of. 😉

p.s. Luckily "MiniBatteryLogger" and "Battery Time Remaining" are both *great* alternatives. While "Battery Time Remaining" looks exactly the same as the original OSX indicator, MiniBatteryLogger may also show you historic diagrams etc. - Both are truly great alternatives.

to me it is quite simple. let it be an option so we can choose. just like the time indicator can tell us how long it will take to recharge, I want to be able to 'at a glance' see how much time I have left.

The fluctuation based on performance is probably one of the main reasons to make the time more prominent.

If you're sitting in a coffee shop working on Photoshop, and you see you've got 20min left, you'll quickly kill Photoshop if that will allow you to remain online for a extra 20 to 30 min.

It's about clicking less and seeing more.

It's also about user preference and user experience.