"Li-ion and polymer batteries (like the one in your MacBook) last the longest when operated between 20% and 60%. Keeping your battery at 100% most of the time will significantly shorten the lifespan of your MacBooks battery and Replacing an old battery is not only harmful to the environment but also costs up to $ 199. With AlDente installed, you can set a charging limit in a more healthy charging range, and with more features like Sailing Mode or Heat Protection you can keep your battery healthy even longer." - AppHouseKitchen.com
Why you shouldn't charge up to 100%
Charging your laptop's battery to 100%, or any Li-ion/polymer battery for that matter, puts excess strain on it's capacity limits and overtime will decrease the capacity that you can actually charge your laptop too. After some time of straining it, the 100% charge displayed by your computer will no longer represent the amount of time it used to and your computer will become more and more useless as it ages. You won't be able to last through the work day, or through a long meeting anymore like you used to. Your computer will be crippled due to it's old age.
The worst situation would be to keep your laptop plugged in all the time. This will keep your battery at full capacity indefinitely and will wear it out extremely quickly. You could be looking at a dead battery in a few years if you do this! Your battery NEEDS to be cycled every now and then or it will forget how to do so.
The MacBook's "Optimized Charging" Mode
On more recent models of MacBooks, Apple has included a feature in MacOS which is meant to help with this problem. The feature will track your charging and usage history and use it to prevent your MacBook from charging up past 80% until "you need to use it" on battery.
This sounds like an excellent idea, and yes it will most certainly help increase the lifespan of your battery, but it's still not the best care possible. You are not in direct control of the charging, at least apart from physically plugging and unplugging the laptop, and you can't really be sure if the algorithm is doing the best job it could. What does it mean by "when you need to use it"? That could be a little off, especially if you are a random user and don't really have a consistent schedule.
The best care you could take would be to NEVER charge up to 100%, keeping the battery above 20%, allowing a slow discharge over time with a full 20%-80% cycle at least every week or so. This is what AlDente allows you to do.
What does AlDente Do?
AlDente solves all these issues by giving you a slider to set the maximum charge level. Once your laptop charges up to this percentage, even when plugged in, it will stop charging. I use this when my laptop is docked so that I can use my external monitor and USB type-A hub all day long while still sleeping at night. There is also a whole list of other features, like "Discharge" and "Top Off", which allow for further control of charging while plugged in. These extra features are included in the paid version of the app, however. I don't have the paid version because the simple slider for maximum percentage does exactly what I need it to do and I don't need the other features, but some may find them handy.
Check it out!
View the AlDente website here. It seems to be an app development team's website that has been solely devoted to just this one app. So, if that changes and their site no longer relates just to AlDente, you'll have to navigate to it.