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Get MacBook battery info with terminal command

It's possible to access MacOS battery information from the terminal. The following command will output the battery's:

  • design capacity - its maximum capacity when new
  • maximum capacity - its current maximum capacity (which is usually lower than the design capacity and will decrease a small amount every battery cycle)
  • the current capacity - the current amount of charge remaining in the battery (this is the amount shown in the battery icon in the menu bar)
ioreg -l |grep -e '"DesignCapacity" =' -e '"AppleRawMaxCapacity" =' -e '"AppleRawCurrentCapacity" ='
Terminal command explained

ioreg -l

  • ioreg: This is a command-line utility in macOS that displays the I/O Kit registry, which contains data about all the hardware and devices connected to the system.
  • -l: This option requests a detailed (verbose) listing of the properties for each object in the I/O Kit registry. This is required to get the battery information.

| grep -e

  • |: This is a pipe operator, used to pass the output of one command as input to another command. In this case, the entire verbose listing of the I/O Kit registry is passed to the grep command.
  • grep: This command searches for specific patterns within the input text and outputs the line(s) containing the pattern. It's similar to Ctrl/Cmd + F in a text editor.
  • -e: This option allows specifying multiple patterns to search for. Each pattern is specified after -e.

'"DesignCapacity" =' -e '"AppleRawMaxCapacity" =' -e '"AppleRawCurrentCapacity" ='

These are the patterns we are searching for in the output of ioreg -l. Each pattern corresponds to battery property. Notice the patterns are separated by -e and each pattern is enclosed in double quotes and followed by an equal sign and a space. This is to ensure that we only match the exact property names and not other text that might contain similar words.

💡 ioreg -l contains a LOT of info. It's fun to grep around for other patterns and see what you can uncover. Have fun!


The output will look something like this:

    | |   |       |   |       "AppleRawCurrentCapacity" = 6367
    | |   |       |   |       "DesignCapacity" = 6249
    | |   |       |   |       "AppleRawMaxCapacity" = 6406

In this case, the MacBook is very new so AppleRawMaxCapacity and AppleRawCurrentCapacity are higher than DesignCapacity. This is normal for new batteries and is a result of the manfuacturing process. Manufacturers aim to deliver batteries with the design capacity but manufacturing processes are imprecise so real capacity can be a bit higher or lower. If they produce batteries with a capacity higher than the design capacity they can ensure that all customers will receive a battery with at least the design capacity, even though some will get a bit of free bonus battery capacity.

References