AlDente 1.39.4 for macOS

AlDente is a charging assistant that lets you cap your MacBook battery at a percentage you choose instead of always rushing to 100%.

Stops charging at your set percentage

It puts you in control of the charge ceiling. Set a limit and your MacBook stops pulling power from the charger once it hits that number, which can ease the wear on an always-plugged-in battery.

Built for long-term desk dockers

Anyone who keeps their MacBook docked on a desk for long stretches and wants to be kinder to the battery long-term. It works on most Apple silicon and Intel machines.

What is Sailing Mode?

Instead of holding a rigid charge limit, Sailing Mode lets the battery drift a little — charging up, then coasting down on battery power for a bit. It keeps the electrons moving without the user lifting a finger.

How do you keep tabs on things?

The app shows live battery stats right in the menu bar. You can glance at temperature, charge level, and overall health without digging through System Information. The interface speaks plenty of languages too, including German, French, and Spanish.

Overrides only the charge limit, not macOS

AlDente doesn't fight macOS — it works alongside it. When you set a charge limit, the app overrides the system's default "charge to 100%" instruction at a firmware level, but the rest of the power management stack still runs as usual. Low Power Mode, battery health reporting in System Settings, Activity Monitor's Energy tab — none of that gets confused.

A few things worth knowing about daily coexistence:

• Optimized Battery Charging — macOS has its own charging delay feature, and the two can step on each other's toes. Most people turn Apple's version off once AlDente takes over, since you're already handling the scheduling yourself.
• Menu bar real estate — if you run a crowded menu bar with iStat Menus, Bartender, or similar utilities, AlDente's icon plays nicely. It's compact, updates without flickering, and you can hide the percentage readout if you want just the battery glyph.
• Shortcuts and automation — you can toggle the charge limit with AppleScript or a shell command, which means it slots into Shortcuts workflows, Keyboard Maestro macros, or a simple Alfred trigger without fuss.
• Sleep and clamshell mode — the limit holds while the lid is closed and the MacBook is asleep on power. No surprises when you open it in the morning.

The app also exposes charge state through notifications, so if you use something like Pushover or a focused notification setup, you can catch a heads-up when the battery hits its ceiling.

Fixes garbled text on macOS 27.2 betas

Version 1.39.4 is a maintenance release that cleaned up a visual hiccup in the Popover during early betas of macOS 27.2 — some users saw garbled text and misaligned controls, and that's now settled. Before that, the 1.39 line brought refinements that affected everyday use more than a changelog suggests.

In practice, the Popover fix means the interface doesn't stutter when you click the menu bar icon anymore. On those beta builds, the stats panel would sometimes draw half-baked, and you'd have to click away and open it again. That friction is gone.

Earlier in the 1.38 cycle, the developer tightened how Sailing Mode responds to small charge dips, so the battery doesn't micro-cycle as aggressively. If you left your MacBook plugged in overnight with a 75% limit and Sailing Mode active, you'd see it drift down to maybe 73% before topping up — now the drift window is slightly wider, which puts fewer tiny charge cycles on the battery over a week.

The 1.37 releases also improved compatibility with newer Apple silicon power controllers, meaning fewer instances where the charging limit would unexpectedly reset after a reboot. That used to be a once-a-month annoyance for some users; it's now rare enough that most people forget it ever happened.

Sits under 30 MB of RAM at idle

AlDente is light. On an M1 MacBook Air with the app running for a week straight, Activity Monitor typically shows it using under 30 MB of RAM and a flat zero on CPU unless you're actively clicking through the popover. There's no background indexing, no network chatter, no helper process that balloons over time.

The charge limiting itself happens in the battery management controller — AlDente just writes a value and gets out of the way. That means once your limit is set, the app could crash entirely and the limit still holds until the next reboot. I appreciate that kind of design: the tool does its job and doesn't linger in the way.

Stability-wise, it's been uneventful in the best sense. Over months of use across macOS Ventura and Sonoma, the app hasn't caused kernel panics, sleep-wake failures, or the dreaded "battery not charging" confusion that third-party power tools sometimes trigger. The worst I've seen is the menu bar icon taking a second to refresh after waking from deep sleep — and even that's rare.

If you're curious about alternatives or want to search around, you'll find people looking for terms like aldente mac torrent or digging up older builds such as aldente pro 1.39 and aldente pro 1.38.1. Some even hunt for a aldente pro 1.37.3 setup or an aldente pro license key free — just know that the free version already handles charge limiting, and the app's resource footprint is so small you won't feel it on your machine regardless of which build you run.

Bottom line: it works quietly, doesn't tax your Mac, and the recent updates have been about polishing rough edges rather than bolting on features nobody asked for.

Version 1.39.4 tidies up a few rough edges. The popover window had some visual hiccups in the early macOS 27.2 betas, and those are now ironed out.

• macOS 12 Monterey or newer
• Works on Apple silicon and Intel MacBooks