🍎🧃 apple-juice

Keep your Mac battery healthy, the secure way

A security-hardened fork of BatteryOptimizer_for_Mac, rewritten in Swift.

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💚 Longevity Mode

The best way to preserve your Mac's battery health.

brew install MoonBoi9001/tap/apple-juice
sudo apple-juice visudo
apple-juice maintain longevity

Three commands. Set it and forget it. Configure macOS settings for notifications.

What it does	Why it matters
Maintains charge between 60-65%	Sweet spot for lithium-ion longevity
Runs on wall power when plugged in	Battery sits idle at low voltage, minimal degradation
Cell imbalance monitoring	Shows per-cell voltages and imbalance in status
BMS balancing	Charges to 100% and holds for equalization when cells drift

Lithium-ion cells degrade faster at higher voltages. At 100% charge each cell sits at ~4.2V, accelerating chemical wear. At 60-65% the resting voltage drops to ~3.95V/cell, significantly reducing stress. Once the battery reaches 65%, charging is disabled. The laptop then runs entirely from wall power — no current flows through the battery at all. Charging re-enables if the battery drops below 60%.

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⚡ Quick Start

Homebrew (Apple Silicon only):

brew install MoonBoi9001/tap/apple-juice
sudo apple-juice visudo

Then run:

apple-juice maintain longevity    # recommended

Or pick your own level:

apple-juice maintain 80           # maintain 75-80%
apple-juice maintain 80 50        # maintain 50-80%

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🎯 All Commands

🔋 Battery Management

Command	Description
apple-juice maintain longevity	Recommended. Maintain 60-65% for max lifespan
apple-juice maintain 80	Maintain 75-80%
apple-juice maintain 80 50	Maintain 50-80%
apple-juice maintain suspend	Temporarily charge to 100%
apple-juice maintain recover	Resume after suspend
apple-juice maintain stop	Disable completely
apple-juice charge 90	Charge to specific level
apple-juice discharge 50	Discharge to specific level

🔄 Calibration

Command	Description
apple-juice calibrate	Full calibration cycle
apple-juice calibrate stop	Stop calibration
apple-juice balance	Charges to 100%, holds 90 min for BMS equalization, then resumes previous mode
apple-juice schedule	Configure scheduled calibration
apple-juice schedule disable	Disable scheduled calibration

📊 Monitoring

Command	Description
apple-juice status	Health, temp, cycle count
apple-juice status --csv	Machine-readable CSV output
apple-juice dailylog	View daily battery log
apple-juice calibratelog	View calibration history
apple-juice logs	View CLI logs
apple-juice ssd	SSD health status
apple-juice ssdlog	SSD daily log

⚙️ System

Command	Description
brew upgrade moonboi9001/tap/apple-juice	Upgrade via Homebrew
apple-juice update	Update to latest version
apple-juice version	Show current version
apple-juice changelog	View latest changelog
apple-juice reinstall	Reinstall from scratch
apple-juice uninstall	Remove completely

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🔒 Security

The v2.0 rewrite eliminates entire classes of vulnerabilities present in the original bash implementation:

• No shell interpolation — native Swift binary, no bash/sed/awk attack surface
• Atomic file writes for all config and PID files
• Signal handler serialization via GCD (no re-entrancy)
• Input validation on all user-facing commands
• Process verification on PID files (confirms apple-juice owns the process)

SMC access is granted through visudo with specific command allowlists — only the exact smc key/value pairs needed for charging control are permitted.

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🔧 How It Works

apple-juice runs as a background daemon managed by macOS launchd. It reads battery state through IOKit and controls charging via SMC keys using the bundled smc binary.

When the battery reaches the upper limit (65% in longevity mode), charging is disabled via SMC. The laptop continues to run entirely from wall power — the battery sits idle at its resting voltage with no current flowing. Charging only re-enables when the battery drops below the lower limit (60%), which only happens if you unplug.

The daemon is configured as a LaunchAgent with KeepAlive, so macOS automatically restarts it if the process dies unexpectedly. On clean shutdown (maintain stop), it re-enables charging and stays stopped. A startup recovery check runs before every command: if charging is found disabled but the daemon is not running, charging is re-enabled automatically. This ensures a Mac is never left in a non-charging state.

Architecture:

• Native Swift binary (no bash, no Python, no runtime dependencies)
• IOKit for direct battery reads (no ioreg subprocess overhead)
• IOKit power notifications for sleep/wake handling (no sleepwatcher dependency)
• IOPMAssertionCreateWithName for sleep prevention (no caffeinate)
• File-per-key config storage with atomic writes
• Serial dispatch queue for thread-safe SMC access

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🗑️ Uninstalling

Always use apple-juice uninstall rather than brew uninstall directly. The uninstall command re-enables charging, stops the LaunchAgent, and cleans up all configuration files.

apple-juice uninstall
brew uninstall apple-juice    # optional, removes the binary

Running brew uninstall alone will remove the binary but leave the LaunchAgent plist and configuration in place.

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⚙️ Setup

Three quick settings to configure:

🔋 STEP 1	System Settings → Battery → Battery Health Turn off Optimize Battery Charging
🔔 STEP 2	System Settings → Notifications Turn on Allow notifications when mirroring or sharing
📝 STEP 3	System Settings → Notifications → Script Editor Select Alerts

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🐛 Report Issue · ⭐ Star on GitHub

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                ║                        DISCLAIMER                             ║
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                ║   This software is provided as-is, without warranty of any    ║
                ║   kind. Use at your own risk. Battery management involves     ║
                ║   low-level system operations. The authors are not liable     ║
                ║   for any damage to your device. Back up before use.          ║
                ║                                                               ║
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_{Made with 🧃 by the community}