MacPulse: Forecast Battery Runtime, Not Just the Percentage

MacPulse turns a macOS menu-bar item into a small battery and memory console. Its distinguishing idea is to estimate remaining runtime from measured power draw rather than treating the battery percentage as a clock. The code is real and MIT-licensed, but installation and the optional automation deserve more scrutiny than the README suggests.

What the menu-bar app measures

The SwiftUI app reads battery charge, current draw, battery health, memory pressure and Low Power Mode state. It also samples the busiest process by CPU share as an energy-use proxy, and compares resident memory over time to flag a process that grows by more than 300 MB across a ten-minute window. That is a useful signal, not a direct per-process wattmeter or a memory cleaner.

For runtime, MacPulse applies a local-trend Kalman filter to recent power measurements and presents a conservative estimate. The value is still a forecast: workload, battery condition and macOS scheduling can change it. It should not be read as a guaranteed shutdown countdown.

Guard and Tune are system changes, not cosmetic switches

Guard installs scripts and two launchd services under /Library/Application Support/MacPulse and /Library/LaunchDaemons. A root daemon runs every 60 seconds. On battery it can enable Low Power Mode when its lower-bound runtime estimate reaches 120 minutes, charge reaches 40%, or free memory falls to 25%; it releases that mode only after recovery thresholds (180 minutes, 50% charge and 40% free memory). It also watches memory trends while on AC.

Tune writes battery-profile settings through pmset: Power Nap and selected wake features off, display and disk sleep at five minutes, shorter standby delays, and integrated graphics on supported dual-GPU Intel Macs. These are real behavior changes. Review the commands for your hardware before approving an administrator prompt; the script’s suggested restoredefaults command resets the system power configuration broadly, not just MacPulse’s edits.

One easily missed detail: if Guard is not already installed, pressing Tune or Deep Scan first installs the privileged engine and launchd services. Deep Scan then records a hardware, thermal, kernel and process-energy report. The services are not removed when the scan finishes; turn Guard off in the app to invoke its removal path, and note that removal also sets Low Power Mode off globally.

How to get it

As checked on 23 September 2026, the GitHub Releases page has no published installer, and we found no App Store listing. A ZIP committed inside the repository is not the same as a maintained Release. The README’s download instructions do not match the repository’s actual build process, so do not treat them as a one-click installation.

The available route is a source build on a Mac with Apple’s command-line developer tools. Start from the official repository, inspect the build script and shell helpers, then use:

git clone https://github.com/1fof4648/MacPulse.git
cd MacPulse

# Review build.sh and the bundled shell scripts before running
./build.sh

Important: build.sh runs rm -rf on ~/Applications/MacPulse.app, recreates that exact path, signs the bundle ad hoc, and opens it. It does not ask before replacing an existing app. Back up or rename any existing MacPulse.app first. Our verification compiled the Swift source, assembled and signed a temporary bundle, and linted its plist; we deliberately did not run this destructive installer or launch the app.

Permissions, compatibility and privacy

The source makes administrator-level changes only for operations such as installing/removing the services, tuning power settings and deep scanning. Read those scripts before entering a password. The repository’s Info.plist declares macOS 13.0 as the minimum, but its README says macOS 27; treat that mismatch as unresolved, not as a verified compatibility promise.

In the source files reviewed, we found no application-level networking client; measurements and reports appear local. This is a code inspection, not an independent traffic audit. Reports include machine and process details, so handle exported report files accordingly.

MacPulse’s source is released under the MIT License, which permits reuse while retaining the copyright and license notice. That license covers the project’s source, not Apple’s platform assets.

Who should try it?

MacPulse is best approached as a developer-facing system utility for people comfortable reviewing Swift and shell scripts—not as a ready-to-install consumer download. Its forecasting and memory trend ideas are interesting; the root daemon, broad power-profile edits, conflicting OS claims and replacement behavior in build.sh are the facts to weigh before trying it.

git clone https://github.com/1fof4648/MacPulse.git
cd MacPulse

# Review build.sh and the bundled shell scripts before running
./build.sh