Show HN: I made an app that tracks your devices' batteries from your Mac | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I made an app that tracks your devices' batteries from your Mac

fadel.io

111 pointsronyfadel64 comments

Congrats on the release! As a part-time nit-picker, I found some issues on your landing page:

The "hero image" overlaps the subsequent heading. https://i.imgur.com/PiCekWg.png

Your links (the "Batteries for Mac" heading, "Buy Now" button and "Download" button) do not work in a non-JavaScript-enabled browser.

The foldout FAQs are permanently hidden on a non-JavaScript-enabled browser. Suggestion: Have them visible by default and use JS to hide them.

You have a "they're talking about us" section, but no links. I'll have to take your word for it.

In the FAQ, the screenshots have some intense JPG compression artifacts. Consider reacquiring using a lossless format such as PNG.

In the FAQ, the screenshots are absolutely huge. Consider setting a width/height based on the density-factor of your screen. Web layout pixels are not physical pixels, so if your Mac is 2x density, these screenshots should be set to half their actual size.

Thanks for the nit-pick, these are all valid points. Thank you!

Which device are you viewing the website on btw? Tried to reproduce on iPad and Mac and couldn’t get the overlap.

Firefox 97 on Windows at 16:9 1440p

In fact you prompted me to test the site on my other screen which is 1080p, and it doesn't happen there, only on the 1440p.

Thank you, I’ll get fixing.

What does this do that iStat Menus' battery menu doesn't do? (https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/)

iStat Menus costs $1 more than this, and gives you "detailed info on your battery’s current state and a highly configurable menu item that can change if you’re draining, charging, or completely charged. Plus, battery levels for AirPods, Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad and other devices." (copied from their page), as well as giving you menus for several other things you might want to monitor (fans/temperature, date/time/calendar, CPU/memory/disc usage, and the weather).

The only unique thing I can see that this does is put stuff in the touchbar.

----

Also, searching for "cult of mac batteries" brought me to an article for a notification center widget that shows this same stuff for all of three bucks: https://www.cultofmac.com/659946/batteries-widget-for-mac-ap...

...actually that seems to be the same app as this? It's got the line about "missing little things that make iOS special"?

Hey! The second one is an earlier, clunkier version of this very same app :)

Don't take my word for it, but personally I like how "un-designed" Batteries is.. it feels like it's part of macOS. iStat is great but it invades by Mac's UI.

Does iStat Menus even do what this does? This shows the charge level of your iPhones, iPads, and iPods, as long as they're on the same WiFi network. I don't see that feature mentioned in iStat Menus' docs at all.

And how is this different from the iPadOS app “Cloud Battery”?

Cloud Battery doesn’t do AirPods, and doesn’t report iPhone/iPad in a big number of cases, including when they’re in low battery mode

This was a no-brainer purchase, if only for the low battery notifications alone! I can't tell you how many times I've gone to pick up my iPad or work phone, only to find the battery at <10%, or completely drained. I very much look forward to seeing a gentle reminder to plug them in before they are gone.

Is there any way this can also include the battery level of my Apple Watch? I'm a sleep tracking user, so I have to find some time during the day to charge it, and I frequently find myself missing the taps when it gets to low battery.

Thank you for your work on this!

Isn’t this the default behaviour on clicking the Bluetooth icon when a device is connected to a Mac?

I am on macOS Monterey (12.0.1) and this is what I see: https://imgur.com/a/SAKj3Cs

Here are some differences with the bluetooth menu:

- Batteries also shows non-bluetooth devices (iPhone/iPad and AirPods/AirPods case even when not connected via bluetooth).

- Batteries shows your devices in the Menu Bar, Touch Bar and Notification Center.

- Batteries sends you notifications when any of your devices are low on battery.

Ah thanks for the clarification, kudos on the launch! :)

I think your messaging should say "Apple Devices" as clearly it does not track Android.

It tracks other brands’ bluetooth devices as well, not just Apple. The messaging could be clearer though you’re right.

Yeah, but macOS already does that for regular bluetooth devices...

The app still tracks them…

First, congratulations on the App release; and I think I saw this highlighted on SetApp few days/weeks back. Sorry, I didn't install this time around. I do love to try indie-developed apps and have quite a few in my toolset.

Personally, I have been moving more and more towards "defaults", tools as means and get to my end (the work) as much as I can. Spend some time learning the features, nuances of the default apps and they become part of your muscle memory. For instance, swiping left-right on the iPhone screen shows the battery of the phone and the watch. Doing the same on the iPad, shows its and the Pencil. I like clean, non-distracting desktop and try to minimize anything beyond the must-haves.

I stopped using any percentage/number indicator for batteries since 2013 (or so)[1] to stop the anxiety of charging/topping up. If something dies, good time for a break, slow-down, or read a physical book or just play around with the kids.

A rather personal thought and opinion, which might help others be actually productive in short burst and to be busy at all times with notifications sneaking round the corner.

1. https://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activi...

I like the idea, and I'd be happy to pay for it if it worked properly, but I can't get it to see my iPad. I followed the procedure at the bottom of your page but it still doesn't work. My iPhone shows up (didn't need to do anything for that) but I can't get the iPad to work.

A couple of other issues:

- The linking procedure is poorly explained. It took me a while to figure out what you wanted me to do. (Maybe I still got it wrong.) Showing devices in Finder is a feature most people have probably never heard about - who has any reason to physically plug a device into a Mac these days? I had never seen that screen before.

- I suspect you only tested this on laptops, because it tries to show the battery status of my desktop iMac and reports "Battery 0% Power Source: Unknown" :)

Vaguely off topic, but I plug my devices into my mac to charge and make local backups. I guess theoretically backing up locally works over wifi (it's an option, anyway), but I've not once had it succeed. I just tried it on two devices for the sake of this comment and both failed.

Hey! Please email me (address in bio) and we’ll get this sorted out.

Mainly geared for MBP, yes, but Desktops will get some love too.

Tried to contact you but can't find your address.

This is genius. Really good idea.

It makes me sad on your behalf to wonder just how long it will take for Apple to see this and put it into their next OS release. For your sake hopefully not right away.

Thanks!

I bought it before I tried; I have "Show this iPhone when on WiFi" checked in Finder / Locations / myiphone, but alas - my iphone does not show up in the menu. My Apple Watch showed up in the menu for a few minutes (with no battery level) and then disappeared. I guess I'll try restarting each device to see if that helps.

I wonder if this is flakey over a mesh network like eero?

This is cool I was ready to try it! Then I saw it wasn't free :( I pay for lots of apps but this doesn't seem worth it to me.

I'm an indie developer, and the $7.99 lifetime license purchase sustains Batteries' development.

I do respect that. And if you find people paying for it then I say keep at it! I definitely think it is a neat app, but I just didn't see the value proposition personally. Others probably do. I know the macOS software market is usually higher priced than iOS and others.

Thats just my reaction and I wanted to give my feedback.

As a side note: I'm trying to break into the iOS/macOS dev market, do you mind sharing if you make all of your income from indie development? And how long have you been at it?

This is so offensive. Why reply? $7.99 is too much for you? Then don't buy it. God forbid someone try and recoup their Apple Developer Program annual fee.

This isn't offensive. That's ridiculous to say. My entire reply was to give feedback, I didn't ask him to lower his price, or give it to me for free. There is lots of software I will use if it is free, and lots I will pay for. I was just speaking my thoughts the value added by such an app.

You don't get to choose whether or not it sounded offensive to someone. It's just trashy. Then you ask the guy for advice.

Sure you have your opinion but without bringing some level of objectivity to the conversation, it really doesn't mean much. Have you developed a product on your own before? When I have I am usually DYING for feedback of all kinds. Typically that's why people put things on hacker news.

The balls you have to say your app is too expensive... THEN ask for help as you try and become and indie developer on same platform!

Nah I wouldn't go indie. Just curious if he really is able to make a living off one-off $8 apps. I doubt it really. BTW it's called feedback.

For others who might be curious, here's how you break into the app dev market: 1. Dev an app.* 2. Market it.

* abbreviated for clarity

You forgot the part where you fail to make any money and then get a job with new skills a big tech haha

> sustains Batteries' development

What future development needs to be sustained? I developed a similarly-sized app back in the days of Snow Leopard and I’ve not really needed to do much maintenance to keep it going. An hour at most every major OS X version and that was mostly just updating dependencies and recompiling. That’s less time than I spend scrolling HN so I couldn’t justify charging for it.

New features (tracking other Mac batteries as well, better Apple Watch support), bug fixes, supporting new devices (Logitech, and new Apple devices), localization into new languages.

You’d be surprised!

nah they're definitely done introducing new products and/or changing the way their devices communicate.

I see this as a case not to charge a subscription, but I don't see why that should stop him from charging out right. My comment before was more about marketing, and reaching maximum people than doing what was justifiable.

I'm just thrilled there is a time-limited trial and that the purchase is one-time.

Based on how iOS usually goes, I anticipated being disappointed by a "just a cup of coffee every quad-fortnight" subscription of $3.99/56 days or the like.

Nice. Dead simple, costs less than two lattes, might save me from forgetting to throw my phone/AirPods on the charger while working (a regular occurrence...), I've got a watch on the way, I'm sure it'll help a lot with reminding me to charge it too. I got a copy!

I suppose it can't connect with AirPods while they're hanging out in the case?

The AirPods stop transmitting BLE battery info while in the case AFAIK, so you get the same behavior as on the iPhone Batteries widget.

How much time did you spend on the touchbar integration? I was at an Apple store recently and saw that the newest Macbooks have gotten rid of the touchbar. I'm wondering whether making such integrations is still worthwhile.

I would say it took about a day of work to get everything right.

I have the “old” MBP with Touch Bar as well as the new Pro, so it’s nice to know that I can make my Touch Bar a tad more useful with this.

Thanks — that doesn't sound bad at all.

I would love an iOS app that notifies me when my AirPods reach a configurable battery level.

This would be help me do two things: - Manage battery wear - Avoid losing audio when I'm using just one AirPod at a time

Does anyone know if this is possible?

This is awesome! Gonna pick it up as soon as I'm on my laptop :)

Related question: is there an app that would allow me to see my Android phone's signal strength from other devices that are tethered to it? (Android, iPhone, Linux and/or Mac)

Yes, KDE Connect will display the battery status of all connected devices (iOS, Android, Linux laptops) and is free.

Will you add the Apple Watch too? Something I struggle with is timing when to charge it in the evening. I've used the Bedtime function and it works alright but not well enough.

As mentioned in the FAQ, Apple Watch support is in beta. The reason is that the watch seems stubborn as to not wanting to sent frequent battery info to the Mac.

Love this! Congrats on the launch. Can't wait to try it out.

Loving the layout of your site as a whole. props on the launch

Agreed, really good looking and fast.

Thank you both! The CSS animation for the MBP took a while to make, but otherwise I wanted to make something simple and that loads decently fast.

Interesing. I know this is something that is supported by Find My, but they don't make it easy to see the battery levels at a glance.

I don't even turn on showing percentage in my phone, watch, headsets. Am I the only one don't care about battery percentage?

I would love for my iOS to also show the battery status of my car and highlight it similarly if low.

Maybe you can add that too?

Maybe this could be helpful? https://www.nikolaapp.com/

Seems useful, I'm kinda sad that I can't use it, because I'm one of these psychopaths who like macOS, but dread iOS. And kudos for not making it a subscription model.

Congrats on the launch. This is really interesting to me, not because I need it, but because I don't, and it would never have occurred to me that anyone else might. Personally I don't think I've ever, in my entire technology-using life, had a device run out of battery or even drop below around 40% [1].

So it's always a good reminder to pay attention not ONLY to building products that solve your own needs, but also finding what needs other people might have that you'd never even considered!

[1] with the notable exception of some awful NiCd-powered VHS camcorders in the 80s

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