Save Your Mac’s Battery With This Keyboard Customization
Every time I fly, I always dim my laptop to the lowest possible value. On some occasions I strain my eyes to see what’s on the screen, but it’s well worth it for the precious few extra minutes of battery life I can get while I’m in the air and away from a power source.
CNET this week made another battery saving proposal worth trying: turn off the keyboard backlight.
The idea here is to set the keyboard backlighting so that it turns off after a period of inactivity, rather than constantly (I know I definitely need it, especially in those dimly lit situations). This is the same concept as the power saving feature, which you can use to turn off the display when you leave, but depends on the keyboard and is in a different menu.
To get to it, go to System Preferences on your Mac and then to Keyboard. From there, check the box next to “Turn off keyboard backlight after __ inactivity” and then choose how long you want to wait.
You can choose from 5 seconds to 5 minutes here. CNET recommends using 30 seconds. This is not a bad idea, but I can also see some of the benefits of shortening. You don’t want to do 5 seconds and turn your keyboard into a strobe of stop and start lights, but 10 seconds is a decent option depending on how you usually use your computer.
Test a few settings and see what works for you.
You won’t save a huge amount of battery power with this, but when you’re away from a wall outlet, every second counts.