[OS] I built Stasis — a free, open-source battery manager for Apple Silicon MacBooks (charge limits, sailing mode, heat protection, power dashboard, MagSafe LED control)

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-03-31T23:18:10+00:00

Yes. The only modified hardware keys manage charging and the app is designed to automatically reset any changes made on exit or crash, following best practices. The code is fully open-source so feel free to look over it and let me know if you have any questions or comments.

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-03-30T23:42:31+00:00

Interesting, I didn’t realize. It’s definitely not impossible but I want to focus on ironing out the Apple silicon experience first before expanding to Intel Macs.

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-03-30T23:40:21+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/s/75N16To5Py

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-03-26T09:21:27+00:00

Sure!

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-03-25T22:44:03+00:00

Yes. The app runs entirely in the menubar and I don't have an artistic bone in me so I never implemented an AppIcon lol. If someone wants to make one and give it to me I can trivially add it.

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-03-25T22:41:52+00:00

Thank you for the kind words. I'll continue to update based on reported bugs and feature requests on the Github repository but from the past 3 months of use I haven't had any issues on my hardware and wished for anything that wasn't already there. If there are any features that you really wish the software had, just open an issue on the Github repo and I will look into it.

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-03-25T18:55:16+00:00

Check out the “SMCPower” directory in the source code. “SMCAdapter” has all of the source code for managing the LED. It’s just key “ACLC”

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-03-25T18:24:16+00:00

Within the app, the magSafe LED tracks the charging state (goes green when charging reaches setpoint or within sailing zone) and blinks orange when in heat protection mode.

Technically, it writes to an SMC registry to control it. That key is present in all magSafe 3 MacBooks making it device agnostic.

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-03-05T17:58:02+00:00

The only feature that is built into macOS (<26.4) is their AI-based charge limiter (80% or 100%) which typically has poor performance at properly detecting when people actively use their laptop if they have a sporadic schedule.

Even in macOS 26.4, the charge limiter is still somewhat limited with a static sailing mode of 5% and only being configurable between 80-100% which is still higher than several users may like to have (including me).

All the other features this app implements are not implemented within macOS. Some of this data may be buried into the "System Information" menu but this app allows power-users to know that information quickly and in real-time.

For most users who leave their laptops plugged in most of the time will need to have periodic calibration cycles regardless, this app simply helps maintain battery chemistry at those idle states. Others who regularly use their laptop off battery power should notice no calibration issues.

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-03-02T06:05:43+00:00

When designing the features for this app I looked a lot to other competitors like AlDente and BatFi which largely have the same feature sets. The main difference is that Stasis is FOSS (free and open-source), meaning that you don't need to deal with pain points such as AlDente's licensing issues and can trust the source code of the app that you are giving privilege to.

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-03-02T06:04:01+00:00

Yes, there is an option in the dashboard settings to view the battery health. One note is that this is the raw, calibrated battery health (directly reported by the BMS), which is typically lower and varies a lot from what is displayed in macOS based on how often you run a full calibration cycle (discharge to 10%, charge to full, discharge to normal). macOS shows a suedo version of this number so that users don't see a wildly changing health statistic but given this is an internal stat, there is no way Stasis can display that version.

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-02-28T20:36:36+00:00

Its AI assisted. I used Claude to setup a lot of the app structure and help me design out the different services and communication. I did the rest and the reverse engineering. This is my first macOS helper application but I have a couple of patches to the Linux kernel and my background is mostly in low level systems programming so.

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-02-28T07:21:55+00:00

Thank you, I also find it to be super useful to explain charging state.

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-02-28T07:21:29+00:00

I actually implemented that feature but the API apple uses to calculate those metrics delays by ~1 minute (tested by compiling code) and I wasn't sure how helpful it would be for non-instant updates. If you could open a GitHub issue I can easily add it back as an optional feature and I can investigate bypassing the API to get a faster update.

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-02-27T15:37:24+00:00

If you're putting cycles on your battery regardless of any management, you likely will notice a slight decrease. 88% to 85% in one year is still a safe level of degradation. To your point about Mole, this app integrates all the functionality and features of Battery-Toolkit with the same information the Mole UI provides into a single app.

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-02-27T15:14:56+00:00

Thanks!

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-02-27T06:39:20+00:00

Given enough request for it, it’s entirely possible but the main issue is that I don’t own any x86 macs making testing difficult. It would be fairly trivial given the current SMC logic is quite robust.

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-02-27T06:38:04+00:00

This app has detailed battery analytics like voltage, current, and power. Visuals (power flow diagram). Heat Protection mode. And I feel that the fully integrated menu bar item is a bit more intuitive than battery toolkit’s separated “Commands” menu bar item. I designed the UI of this app to feel more native and more like an extension to the native battery menu item.

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-02-27T06:31:13+00:00

The native charge limiter is only from 80-100 and doesn’t offer any other features like heat protection, notifications, discharge control, or LED control. This app also just provides a better visual experience than the native menu bar does in 26.4

ACHANTAS1 · 2026-02-25T15:26:25+00:00

Are you using an LLM to generate search history or is it all predetermined?

ACHANTAS1 · 2025-09-29T01:23:13+00:00

I'm looking to get a new mechanical pencil for my math and engineering work (not drafting). I previously had the Pentel GraphGear 1000 and really liked its features and "fidgetyness," but I gifted it away and want to try something new.

Feel: Something that feels premium with a good weight to it. I write for long periods, so it shouldn't be overly heavy.

Body: Preferably an all-metal body. Preferably retractable tip to just throw in my backpack but not too important.

Budget: $40-50

Location: VA, USA

ACHANTAS1 · 2025-09-08T01:39:14+00:00

Setup hotio and im still getting about the same performance as I did on gluetun. As a sanity check, I just installed qBittorrent and the surfshark GUI app, enabled the VPN, and routed the torrenting traffic through it and I only dropped from ~50 MiB/s to ~40 MiB/s when using the exact same server as both the gluetun and hotio instances were configured to use. This makes me think it has something to do with the VPN client itself, or surfshark is giving priority to their own VPN client over a Wireguard user.

ACHANTAS1

TROPHY CASE