3.1 KiB
Power reporting
Battery telemetry now uses IORegistryEntryCreateCFProperties on AppleSmartBattery,
not regular expressions over human-readable ioreg output. On this macOS build,
the tree-prefix indentation caused the old reader to miss BatteryInstalled and
every top-level battery/adapter field.
Readings have separate meanings:
- System load: PowerTelemetryData.SystemLoad in milliwatts, converted to watts.
- Charger → Mac: SystemPowerIn, only while ExternalConnected. This includes charging; it is not wall-socket consumption or the charger's rated maximum.
- Battery: voltage × signed current. Positive current charges, negative current discharges. Two's-complement unsigned current is decoded as signed Int64.
- Reported capability: AdapterDetails.Watts. The charger's model name may say 140 W while the current connection reports only 94 W available.
- Negotiated ceiling: AdapterVoltage × Current, not measured current draw.
Unknown readings are not rendered as zero. Zero battery current remains a valid idle reading. Disconnected adapters are dropped even if stale registry details remain. Capacity falls back to nested BatteryData on newer registry layouts. Missing capacity/temperature no longer implies a dead battery or 0 °C. Available SMC power readings remain a fallback; fresh registry data takes priority.
Registry keys are hardware/OS-dependent and are not a universal power-meter API. Values are point-in-time samples; their sum may differ because of sampling times, conversion losses and sensor coverage. No wall-power or cable e-marker claims.
The dropdown is a native NSPopover anchored to an NSStatusItem. Left-click toggles the panel, right-click presents native metric/update-speed submenus. Command-Shift-M opens the same panel from the Options menu. Power rows have contextual copy actions and explanatory help. The native popover owns its outer material and rounding; actions use Liquid Glass on macOS 26+. Reduce Transparency uses an opaque content background. There is no second glass rectangle with competing corner radii.
Popover show/close events join the existing demand scheduler. Opening it requests power/system samples at five-second cadence, without full process inventory, port enumeration, fan scanning or slow hardware diagnostics. Closing it drops that demand. Menu-bar readings remain observed even with the main window closed.
Tests cover charging, discharging, two's-complement current, zero vs unknown, invalid values, nested capacities and dropdown-only sampling demand.
Validation on 22 September 2026: 38 tests passed and Release built successfully. Computer use verified the panel's live battery/charger values, removed duplicate corner arcs, and opened the native reading submenu with Battery power and Charger input choices. The submenu originally dismissed its parent; native menu-tracking notifications now suspend transient popover dismissal while menus are active. Actual right-click status-button behavior and all appearance/accessibility modes still need broader manual coverage; automated tests do not establish those.
Native API reference: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/iokit/1514310-ioregistryentrycreatecfpropertie