MacOS – make the laptop tell me when battery is low even while “show battery status in menu bar” is not checked

automationmacosmojave

I unchecked "Show battery status in menu bar" in System Preferences > Energy Saver, because I use coconutBattery instead (and obviously I don't want to just re-check that).

But this means that now my MacBook doesn't alert me when the battery is getting low and just drains itself to 0% then dies on me.

I want to make an automatic AppleScript/cron job/whatever to alert me when the battery is less than 50%, and again when it's less than 20%.

How can I do that?

Best Answer

I had the same issue when I use a Bitbar plugin on OSX and have the default battery menubar unchecked. Here is what I use in my shell script to include a osascript call to create a notification pop up.

# Get info
power_source=( $(pmset -g batt | awk 'FNR == 1 {print $4$NF}' ) )
battery_level=( $(pmset -g batt | awk -F"\t" 'FNR == 2 {print $2}' | grep -o '[0-9]\+' ) )

# Notification when battery level is low
if [ "$power_source" != "'ACPower'" ] && [ "$battery_level" -le 5 ]; then osascript -e 'display notification "️⚠️ LOW POWER! ⚡" with title "Battery"';
fi

You could use this as a cron job. =)

Related Solutions

MacOS – Have battery status only show in menu bar when running on battery power

I use SlimBatteryMonitor (free, donations accepted, not nagware) instead of the default menu item for the battery status.

SBM can be configured to almost disappear from the menu bar when fully charged.

If that isn't enough for you, you could run a launchd script every few minutes to check the status of the battery, to see whether or not it is fully charged, and act accordingly:

If the battery is fully charged, quit SlimBatteryMonitor (if it is running)
If the battery is NOT fully charged, run SlimBatteryMonitor (if it isn't already running)

I am actually doing something like this already. I just uploaded the necessary files to https://github.com/tjluoma/slimbatterymonitor

MacOS – Make the Menu Bar never show while in Full Screen

Save the following AppleScript to a file named fullscreen.scpt:

use framework "AppKit"
use scripting additions

repeat with runningApp in current application's NSWorkspace's sharedWorkspace's runningApplications()
    if runningApp's isActive()
        set frontApp to (localizedName of runningApp) as text
        exit repeat
    end if
end repeat

tell application "System Events"
    tell process frontApp to set isFullScreen to value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of first window
    if frontApp = "Finder"
        tell process frontApp to set value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of first window to not isFullScreen
    else if isFullScreen
        do shell script "lsappinfo setinfo -app " & quoted form of frontApp & " ApplicationType=Foreground"
        tell process frontApp to set value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of first window to false

        (*fix to make sure the menu bar is not stuck*)
        delay 0.42
        tell application "Finder" to activate
        tell process frontApp to set frontmost to true
    else
        do shell script "lsappinfo setinfo -app " & quoted form of frontApp & " ApplicationType=UIElement"
        tell process frontApp to set value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of first window to true
    end if
end tell

From terminal, compile it to an application with the following command:
```
osacompile -o "/Applications/Full Screen.app" fullscreen.scpt
```
Open the Full Screen.app's Info.plist (e.g. vim '/Applications/Full Screen.app/Contents/Info.plist') and add the following to the dict:
```
    <key>NSUIElement</key>
    <true/>
```
Add Full Screen.app as an exception in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility.
Launch Automator and create a new Service.
Change "Service receives" to "no input in any application".
Add a Library > Utilities > Launch Application action.
Configure the action to launch the previously created Full Screen application.
Save the service as Full Screen and close Automator.
On System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services, scroll down to the bottom of the list and the just created Full Screen service should be listed there. Associate an unique Command shortcut for it, like Shift+Command+\ or Command+F11 for example.

This creates a shortcut to cause an application to enter full screen while removing the menu bar, or to exit full screen bringing the menu bar back. It provides an alternative full screen shortcut!

For application-specific full screen launchers, check my other answer.

Caveats

There may be some disadvantages and/or misbehavior using this approach:

It works by setting ApplicationType=UIElement, which causes the application icon not be added/highlighted in the Dock and make the application inaccessible via Command+Tab. The Command+Tab issue was reported in comments, I didn't notice it since I mostly use the Mission Control overview to change between full screen applications.
It may not behave as expected for some specific applications, I've noticed issues with the Activity Monitor application (which is generally not used full screen anyway) and there's a report on Chrome, which I didn't try since I use Firefox and it works great.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – Have battery status only show in menu bar when running on battery power

MacOS – Make the Menu Bar never show while in Full Screen

Caveats

Related Question