Charging state you can trust, read live
Beta build for testers. Not recommended for general use.
Charging state
WhatCable now reads the charging state live from the Mac's System Management Controller (SMC), the chip that runs charging. Before, it waited on macOS's battery record, which can take a minute to catch up.
- After you plug in, the popover shows charging within a few seconds. It no longer says "Plugged in, charging on hold" for the first minute (#634, thanks @official-Cromatin).
- The open popover updates by itself. You no longer need to close and reopen it.
- New: "Plugged in, charge limit reached" when macOS has stopped charging at the level it's charging the battery to.
- New: "Plugged in, running on battery" when the charger is connected but the Mac isn't taking power from it. It only shows once this has lasted 2 seconds, so the brief blip every Mac has at plug-in never appears.
- The widget and the
whatcableCLI show the same state as the popover. - Macs without these SMC keys, desktops included, behave exactly as before.
Also in here
- Ports: the "USB active" row is gone, because macOS reports it as true on every port. The SuperSpeed row now only shows a live, confirmed USB 3 link (#532).
- The app language setting now reaches the menus too, and macOS's own strings follow it.
- The hardware read that runs every second no longer runs on the main thread, so the popover stays responsive.
- The cable database gains reports #541, #625 and #631.
What to look at
- Plug in with the popover open: does it say charging within a few seconds?
- If you use a charge limit (or Optimized Battery Charging is holding at 80%): does it say "charge limit reached"?
- Do the widget and the popover agree?
- Did you ever see "Plugged in, running on battery"? Tell me what was plugged in at the time.
Install by downloading WhatCable.zip below, unzipping, and dragging WhatCable.app into /Applications over your existing copy.
Please report anything odd on the issue tracker:
https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable/issues