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My MacBook Pro’s battery is living on borrowed time. It has experienced a whopping 1,044 cycles, which puts it over Apple’s maximum cycle count of 1,000 for my early-2011 model. Thanks to the Monity widget, I can monitor my MacBook Pro’s battery cycles along with a boatload of other system information.
Monity usually costs $4.99, £3.99, AU$7.99 but is currently discounted to $1.99, £1.49, AU$2.99 as part of Two Dollar Tuesday. It installs as a widget in the Notification Center, providing a host of information that’s only a click away.
After installing Monity, you will need to add the widget to Notification Center. To do so, click the list icon in the upper-right corner of your Mac to open the Notification Center panel. Next, click the Today button at the top (as opposed to Notifications). Next, click the Edit button at the bottom of the Today view and then click the green “+” button to add Monity from the list of widgets.
Enlarge ImageScreenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
With the Monity widget added to Notification Center, you will be able monitor certain system information. Four panels are installed by default: System, Memory, Network and Battery. You can adjust how and what information is displayed for each panel in Monity’s settings.
Additionally, you can add eight more panels by downloading the free Monity Helper app from the Monity website. The Helper app lets you monitor Processes, Allocations, Energy, Fan Speed, Temperature, Voltage, Power and Current.
It does no good to install a system monitor that, in turn, you would need to monitor for potentially egregious use of system resources. Thankfully, Monity and Monity Helper are small applications that, according to Activity Monitor, take up only 2 to 3 percent of the CPU.
