ChargeMonitor

A lightweight macOS menu bar utility that surfaces real-time battery insights and highlights apps with significant energy impact.

Why

Built‑in indicators provide only basic status. ChargeMonitor gathers more context at a glance so you can understand what drains your battery and how charging is going.

Features

• Menu bar item with compact battery percentage.
• Popover with extended details:
  • power source and adapter name/manufacturer (when available);
  • charging state and time remaining to full (when available);
  • charging power (W) and fast‑charging indicator;
  • power consumption (W);
  • time remainig to discharge;
  • battery cycle count;
  • "Using Significant Energy": apps with noticeable energy impact.
• Quick actions:
  • open the project’s GitHub page;
  • check for updates (via GitHub Releases);
  • open system Battery Settings;
  • quit the app.

How it works

• Battery data is read from system power sources and the smart battery interface:
  • power source, charging state, time to full;
  • cycles, estimated maximum capacity, charging power.
• «Significant energy» is determined heuristically from process metrics:
  • CPU time, wakeups, disk activity;
  • exponential moving average (EMA) with appearance/disappearance thresholds;
  • mapping PID → app by executable path or responsible process.

Install & Run

• Using Homebrew:

  brew install --cask CrashSystemZ/chargemonitor/chargemonitor

Homebrew will always install the latest official release.

OR

• Download the latest release from GitHub.
• Move the app to /Applications.
• Launch ChargeMonitor — the menu bar will show the battery percentage; click to open the popover.

The app runs as an accessory (no Dock icon) and requires no extra permissions.

Tips & Limitations

• Time to full is available only while charging and when the system provides it.
• The «significant energy» view is a heuristic meant to be stable and useful, not a precise replica of system telemetry.
• Some system processes and panels are intentionally filtered to keep the list focused on user apps.

Privacy

ChargeMonitor does not send any data to external servers. Update checks go only to the public GitHub Releases API and do not include personal data.

Contributing

• Please file issues for bugs and ideas.
• PRs are welcome: from heuristic tuning to UI/UX improvements.

Screenshots