{"id":44052,"date":"2024-07-11T18:20:56","date_gmt":"2024-07-11T22:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=44052"},"modified":"2024-07-11T18:20:56","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T22:20:56","slug":"mac-ups-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/11\/mac-ups-software\/","title":{"rendered":"Mac UPS Software"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howard Oakley<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The commonest error in deciding whether to use a UPS is the argument that, because your Mac isn’t left on 24\/7, it’s always attended, so should anything go wrong with the power, you’ll be able to deal with it. Even if you’re sat at your Mac, with instant reactions, there’s no way that it can shut down in time to protect it. Whether you use your Mac for half an hour a day or only power it off once a year for cleaning, it still needs a UPS.<\/p>\n

Next in the reasons we persuade ourselves to believe is that UPSes are expensive. Yes, many are, but the more expensive ones are designed to keep things like power-hungry servers running for an hour or more. Most Macs are well-protected if the UPS keeps them going long enough to allow an orderly shutdown, a minute or two at most. It’s far better for a Mac to be given that chance than to have no UPS at all.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Sadly, few manufacturers bother to provide software that supports Macs. CyberPower is one of those few, and although its bundled software looks oddly blurry, it has valuable features that go well beyond the basics reported by Energy Saver settings.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

My Tripp Lite UPS<\/a> continues to work well, but the Energy Saver integration broke with macOS Catalina, and as far as I know it was never fixed.<\/p>\n\n

Howard Oakley<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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If you use a wireless keyboard, mouse or trackpad, or have a UPS connected to your Mac, you might wonder how often macOS checks their charge and functional status. The answer is often, typically every 2-5 seconds. You can follow those checks in the log by listing entries for the subsystem com.apple.BatteryCenter<\/code>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Howard Oakley<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Unless your Mac has a Battery widget installed, perhaps on its Desktop, Battery Center entries don’t appear in its log. When you do add a Battery widget to the Desktop, though, checks are made every few seconds, and their results written to the log, and those continue even after removing the widget, at least until the next time that Mac is shut down or restarted.<\/p>\n

Third-party software isn’t supposed to access private services like Battery Center, so creating an independent utility to perform similar functions would have to capture its own data. However, given access to the log, it’s possible to read Battery Center’s entries there instead.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

This initial version [of Unhidden] does one job: each time you open a new window in the app, it displays the most recent results obtained by Battery Center, across all the devices that it checks.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n