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How to check your AirPods battery on a Mac

Your iPhone shows the AirPods battery the moment you open the case. A Mac makes you go looking. Here are the places macOS shows it, a Terminal command that reads every Bluetooth battery at once, and how Halo keeps all of them, left bud, right bud and case, one click away.

By Otabek Abdiraimov, who makes Halo. Updated 30 October 2026.

1. The Bluetooth menu

The quickest free way. If you don't see the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar, open System Settings › Control Center and set Bluetooth to Show in Menu Bar. Click it while your AirPods are connected and macOS shows the battery of each bud and of the case. If the case is missing, put at least one AirPod in it and open the lid near your Mac: the case reports its level only while an AirPod is inside.

2. System Settings

Connected AirPods get their own entry in the System Settings sidebar, under your name. Open it and the battery levels sit at the top, next to the noise control and ear tip options. For a Magic Mouse, Keyboard or Trackpad, open System Settings › Bluetooth and the level shows under the device's name.

3. The Batteries widget

Right-click the desktop, choose Edit Widgets and search for Batteries. Drop it on the desktop or in Notification Center and it lists your Mac and the Bluetooth devices that report a battery. It's always visible, but only when the desktop or Notification Center is.

4. Terminal

Every Bluetooth battery macOS knows about, in one line. It only reads:

system_profiler SPBluetoothDataType -json | grep -i batterylevel

AirPods report device_batteryLevelLeft, device_batteryLevelRight and device_batteryLevelCase. Other headphones usually report a single device_batteryLevelMain. Apple's mouse, keyboard and trackpad show up in the IORegistry instead:

ioreg -r -l -k BatteryPercent | grep -E '"Product"|"BatteryPercent"'

And your Mac's own battery: pmset -g batt.

All of them in the notch, with Halo

Halo is a Dynamic Island for the Mac. Its Batteries tab reads the same sources as the commands above and shows one ring per device: your Mac, your AirPods (left, right and case), Magic Mouse, Keyboard and Trackpad, and other Bluetooth headphones that report a level.

1. Hover the notch or the island to open it.
2. Click the battery icon in the top corner. On a Mac without a battery, like a Mac mini, Batteries has its own icon in the tab bar instead.
3. Click the icon again to go back.

The tab only reads batteries while it's on screen, so it costs nothing the rest of the time. On a MacBook, Halo also shows the charge when you plug in and warns you at 20, 10 and 5 percent. Both are in Settings › Battery & Storage, where you can turn either one off.

One limit: your iPhone's battery isn't there. macOS only shares it with Apple's own widget, not with other apps.

Which one to pick

• Now and then: the Bluetooth menu. It's free and two clicks away.
• Always in view: the Batteries widget on your desktop.
• From a script: the system_profiler line.
• Every device, from any app, one click: the Batteries tab in Halo's notch.

Questions

More guides: Best Mac notch apps in 2026 · A Now Playing widget on your Mac · All guides

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