Apple releases macOS Catalina 10.15.5 with new Battery Health Management feature

Following the launch of iOS 13.5 last week, Apple today has released macOS Catalina 10.15.5 as well. This update brings a new feature to improve the lifespan of Mac notebook’s battery, besides bug fixes and performance improvements.

The biggest change in macOS 10.15.5 is a new Battery Health Management feature. The goal of the change is to reduce the chemical aging of a MacBook’s battery and extend its lifespan, but without comprising battery life.

Here’s how Apple describes the feature:

The battery health management feature in macOS 10.15.5 is designed to improve your battery’s lifespan by reducing the rate at which it chemically ages. The feature does this by monitoring your battery’s temperature history and its charging patterns.

Based on the measurements that it collects, battery health management may reduce your battery’s maximum charge when in this mode. This happens as needed to ensure that your battery charges to a level that’s optimized for your usage — reducing wear on the battery, and slowing its chemical aging.

Today’s update also fixes an issue where large data transfers to RAID volumes could cause Finder to become unresponsive.

macOS Catalina 10.15.5 is available now through the System Preferences application for Mac users. You can check the full release notes for today’s update below:

macOS Catalina 10.15.5 introduces battery health management in the Energy Saver settings for notebooks, an option to control automatic prominence of video tiles on Group FaceTime calls, and controls to fine-tune the built-in calibration of your Pro Display XDR. The update also improves the stability, reliability, and security of your Mac.

Battery Health Management

• Battery health management to help maximize battery lifespan for Mac notebooks
• Energy Saver preference pane now displays battery condition and recommends if the battery needs to be serviced
• Option to disable battery health management

For more information, please visit https://support.apple.com/kb/HT211094

FaceTime Prominence Preference

• Option to control automatic prominence on Group FaceTime calls so video tiles do not change size when a participant speaks

Calibration Fine-Tuning for Pro Display XDR

• Controls to fine-tune the built-in calibration of your Pro Display XDR by adjusting the white point and luminance for a precise match to your own display calibration target

This update also includes bug fixes and other improvements.

• Fixes an issue that may prevent Reminders from sending notifications for recurring reminders
• Addresses an issue that may prevent password entry on the login screen
• Fixes an issue where System Preferences would continue to show a notification badge even after installing an update
• Resolves an issue where the built-in camera may not be detected when trying to use it after using a video conferencing app
• Addresses an issue for Mac computers with the Apple T2 Security Chip where internal speakers may not appear as a sound output device in Sound preferences
• Fixes a stability issue with uploading and downloading media files from iCloud Photo Library while your Mac is asleep
• Resolves a stability issue when transferring large amounts of data to RAID volumes
• Fixes an issue where the Reduce Motion Accessibility preference did not reduce the speed of animations in a FaceTime group call

Some features may not be available for all regions, or on all Apple devices.

For more detailed information about this update, please visit: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210642

For detailed information about the security content of this update, please visit: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201222