At PMUG last night we talked about calibrating your laptop battery. I mentioned using the ‘yes’ unix application to run the battery down, but it appears at OS X now sleeps even though yes is running.
Apple’s instructions just state to use the machine until the battery is dead, but if you want the battery to drain while you sleep, you’ll need to turn off sleep.
- Open System Preferences
- Open Energy Saver
- Click the Battery tab
- Slide computer sleep to ‘Never’
Now the machine will drain the battery over night, hibernate and then sleep for the Apple required 5 hours. You can recharge it in the morning while using it.
Be sure to reset your Energy Saver settings when done 🙂
I’d bet that there is an application to keep the machine awake, but I prefer this approach as it makes sure there is no extra software running the 99.99% of the time you are not calibrating your battery.