min park

NLP and Data Analytics

Bringing back remaining Battery time in Mac OS 10.12+ (not in 11.x)

June 16, 2023Miscellaneous

Disclaimer: Seeing how many years have passed since the debut of Big Sur (Mac OS 11.0), this article seems pretty old (originally, this was written in 2020). However, I hope it might be helpful for someone (incluing myself).

Unbeknown to Mac users who are still using El Capitan or earlier versions of Mac OS, Apple killed off Remaining battery indicator in the menu. As a long-time user of that specific version, I was in the dark until I decided to update to Mojave this week.

While not so satisfactory compared to its responsive early sibling, I'm in the process of getting accustomed to this new environment.

However, no battery indicator could have been deal-breaker. Admittedly, while it can be unreliable, it's pretty useful and even essential one. I wouldn't care if I used the desktop version, either Mac Mini or iMac, but I'm not using them.

Thankfully, after some researching, I found out that I copy the file from El Capitan or earlier version, I can enjoy the same functionality as before.

Procedures are simple enough.

  • Back up Battery.menu file from previous version, which is located at System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras.
  • Restart Mac in Recovery mode (⌘+R) and Disable SIP by running csrutil disable in terminal (Enable after copying).
  • Restart and copy Battery.menu file into System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras.
  • Run killall SystemUIServer, which will reload menu items.

Done. Et voila!