Apple is finally giving Mac users something they’ve been begging for — real control over how far their laptop battery charges. With macOS Tahoe 26.4, a new Charge Limit feature brings iPhone-style battery caps to the Mac, letting you tell your machine, “Stop at 80%, I’m good,” instead of quietly cooking the battery at 100% all day on the charger.

Until now, Apple’s main answer to battery longevity on the Mac was Optimized Battery Charging, a background system that tries to learn your routine and delay charging beyond 80% until you’re likely to unplug. In theory, that means your Mac spends less time at a full charge, which is better for long-term battery health. In practice, plenty of people have noticed the same thing: their Mac happily climbs to 100% anyway, especially if it lives on a desk plugged into power most of the time.

Charge Limit is a much more direct tool. In the macOS Tahoe 26.4 beta, Apple has added a slider in System Settings under Battery → Charging that lets you pick a hard ceiling: 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%, or 100%. Once you set that, the Mac won’t just “try” to hang around 80% — it will simply never top up beyond your chosen number, full stop. It’s the first time macOS has exposed this level of control without relying on third‑party utilities.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because Apple already tested the idea on the iPhone. The iPhone 15 family introduced an 80% limit option alongside Optimized Battery Charging and “None,” aimed at users willing to trade some daily runtime for a longer battery lifespan. As feedback rolled in that 80% felt too conservative for heavy users, Apple expanded things and now offers a set of stops at 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%, and 100% so people can tune the balance between convenience and care. macOS Tahoe’s Charge Limit is essentially the same philosophy brought over to the Mac.

The timing matters because laptops are the perfect candidates for this kind of feature. Lithium‑ion cells generally age more slowly when they live somewhere in the middle of their charge range — not constantly at 100%, not regularly drained to near zero. Apple itself has long advised users to keep software up to date, avoid extreme temperatures, and understand that batteries have a finite cycle count before capacity drops. By keeping a Mac parked at, say, 80–90% while it sits on a desk plugged in all day, you’re reducing stress on the battery chemistry and, in theory, stretching out how long it stays healthy.

If you’ve ever installed tools like AlDente to micromanage your MacBook’s charging, this all probably feels overdue. Apps like that became popular specifically because macOS didn’t offer a simple “stop charging at X%” switch. They let you cap the battery at a chosen percentage and even force controlled discharges to bring the battery back down when needed, and many long‑time laptop users credit them with keeping cycle counts low and health percentages high years into ownership. Apple’s new Charge Limit doesn’t try to replicate all those advanced tricks, but it does cover the core desire: a built‑in way to stop a Mac from hitting 100% every time you plug in.

From a user’s point of view, the workflow is refreshingly simple. You go into System Settings, open the Battery section, click the “i” button next to Charging, and drag a slider to your preferred maximum level. That’s it — no menu‑bar utility, no scripting, no kernel extensions. Optimized Battery Charging still exists alongside it and continues to do its predictive thing in the background, but Charge Limit adds a clear, predictable rule on top: this percentage and no more.

The interesting question is how people will actually use it. An office worker who almost never unplugs might set their MacBook to 80% and leave it there indefinitely, occasionally bumping it to 100% before a flight or a long day away from a charger. A student might choose 90% as a middle ground, keeping a bit more buffer without treating the battery like a disposable component. And then there are power users who will probably tweak it constantly — 80% while docked, 100% the night before a trip — the same way some already obsess over cycle counts and full‑charge capacity stats in Apple’s battery health tools.

For Apple, this is part of a broader trend: exposing a bit more of the battery management logic that used to be completely opaque. On the support side, the company now clearly explains that macOS monitors temperature history, charging patterns, and cycle counts and may deliberately cap maximum charge to slow chemical aging. It also tells users that hitting certain cycle counts means performance will inevitably decline and a replacement battery will eventually be needed — not because something is “wrong,” but because that’s just how batteries work. Charge Limit drops a new control into that ecosystem, handing users a simple lever instead of asking them to trust the system blindly.

There’s also a subtle psychological benefit. When your Mac shows “Service Recommended” for the battery or you watch capacity slide down from 100% to the mid‑90s after a year or two, it’s easy to feel like something has gone wrong, even though that decline is normal. Giving people a built‑in way to treat their battery more gently — especially those who know they’re always plugged in — can help reduce that anxiety. You’re not just at the mercy of algorithms; you can make a conscious choice to prioritize longevity over maximum runtime.

It’s worth noting that Apple’s own documentation still emphasizes basics: keep your Mac updated, avoid intense heat, don’t store devices fully drained, and understand that some capacity loss is inevitable. Charge Limit doesn’t magically freeze your battery at “100% health forever,” and Apple’s battery health management will still make its own decisions under the hood. But for the first time on the Mac, there’s a native, user‑facing way to align the system’s behavior with how you actually use your machine.

For Mac owners who baby their laptops — and for anyone who just leaves a MacBook connected to a monitor 24/7 — this small slider in macOS Tahoe 26.4 is a quietly big deal. It brings the Mac in line with the iPhone’s more flexible charging options, borrows the lessons Apple has learned about battery wear, and acknowledges what power users have been saying for years: sometimes, 80% really is enough.