AlDente alternatives: decide what you can drop

The short answer: on an Apple silicon MacBook running macOS Tahoe 26.4 or later, the most direct AlDente alternative is already installed. System Settings now has a Charge Limit that can be set anywhere from 80 to 100 percent. If a limit below 80 percent is needed, two open source tools, Battery Toolkit and battery, go lower for free. If the Mac is an Intel model, or the limit has to hold while the lid is closed, AlDente itself, in its free or Pro form, is still the tool that covers those cases.

Which of those fits depends less on feature lists than on three facts about the machine and the way it is used: the chip, the number the battery should sit at, and what happens to the Mac overnight. This guide walks through each option with the limits that the vendors publish, checked on 2026-10-18, and ends with the one thing that switching apps does not change.

The built in option: Charge Limit in macOS Tahoe 26.4

Apple's support article About Optimized Battery Charging and Charge Limit on Mac, published on 6 April 2026, describes the feature that changed this search. Charge Limit requires macOS Tahoe 26.4 or later and a Mac with Apple silicon.

To set it, using the names shown on screen:

1. From the Apple menu, choose System Settings.
2. Click Battery in the sidebar.
3. Click the info button next to Charging.
4. Choose a Charge Limit setting between 80% and 100%.
5. Click Done.

Apple describes the behaviour in plain terms. The Mac charges to within a few percentage points of the limit, stops, and shows "Charged to [%] Limit" in the battery status menu. If the charge drops more than 5 percent while still connected to power, charging resumes. When a full battery is needed for a trip, "Charge to Full Now" in the battery status menu overrides the limit. Apple also notes that the Mac will occasionally charge to 100 percent on its own, whether Charge Limit or Optimized Battery Charging is in use, to keep the battery's state of charge estimate accurate.

What the built in limit does not do

Three boundaries follow directly from Apple's page:

• The floor is 80 percent. Anyone who keeps a desk bound MacBook at 60 or 70 percent cannot do that with the built in setting.
• Intel MacBooks are excluded. The requirement is Apple silicon.
• There is no discharge control. The setting stops charging; it does not run the Mac from the battery while plugged in to bring the level down.

AlDente's developer adds one more point in its FAQ: the macOS charge limit does not stay in effect while the MacBook is turned off. Apple's own page does not address that case either way, so treat it as the developer's observation rather than a published specification.

For a MacBook that lives on a desk and is happy at 80 percent, these boundaries do not matter. That use case, which is the most common one, now needs no extra app at all.

AlDente Free and Pro: where the line sits

AlDente has not stood still since Apple's announcement. In a blog post about Apple "Sherlocking" the app, the developers write that Apple's approach prioritises simplicity while AlDente focuses on control, and that they have already worked out how to integrate the new macOS charge management into the app. The same post dates the first release to 19 February 2020 and the Pro tier to April 2021.

The pricing page splits the features like this:

Feature	AlDente Free	AlDente Pro
Charge Limiter	Included	Included
Discharge	Included	Included
Automatic Discharge, Discharge in Clamshell Mode	Not included	Included
Heat Protection, Sailing Mode, Top Up	Not included	Included
Calibration Mode	Not included	Included
Control MagSafe LED, Apple Shortcuts support	Not included	Included
Customizable menu bar icons and pop-up window	Not included	Included
Email support	Not included	Included

Pro costs 11.49 euro per year as a subscription or 23.99 euro as a lifetime licence. It is also part of Setapp at 9.99 US dollars per month, which bundles more than 240 other apps. One purchase gives one licence key for up to three macOS user accounts, on one Mac or spread across three. The pricing page lists support from macOS 12 Monterey through macOS 27, and the compatibility list covers Apple silicon and Intel MacBooks back to 2013 models.

The sleep and shutdown gap

The FAQ is explicit that AlDente Free cannot control charging while the MacBook is asleep or shut down, so it will charge to 100 percent when the lid is closed. Pro has two features aimed at that gap, Stop Charging when Sleeping and Stop Charging when App Closed. That is the clearest reason to pay: a Mac that is plugged in, closed and left overnight every day behaves differently from one that stays awake at a desk.

Note also what the free column contains. Free AlDente sets a charge limit and can discharge, and its FAQ discusses batteries that usually sit around 50 percent, so the app is not tied to Apple's 80 percent floor. On an Intel MacBook, where the macOS Charge Limit is not available, free AlDente is the simplest way to hold a number.

Open source limiters: Battery Toolkit and battery

Two free projects come up in nearly every thread on this topic. Both are limited to Apple silicon.

	Battery Toolkit	battery
What it says it does	Controls the platform power state of Apple silicon Macs	CLI and GUI for managing charging on Apple silicon Macs
Licence	BSD-3-Clause	MIT
Lowest upper limit	50 percent, a safety floor set by the project	Custom percentages through the command line tool
Install	Manual or Homebrew	brew install battery, or the GUI app
Intel Macs	Not supported	Not supported

Battery Toolkit lets the user set an upper limit past which charging turns off, and a lower limit below which charging turns back on. For safety the project does not allow an upper limit below 50 percent or a lower limit below 20 percent. Its README also notes a boundary worth knowing: the settings are not honoured during cold boots or reboots, because Apple silicon Macs reset their platform state then, so charging may run up to the upper limit after a restart.

battery is aimed at keeping a chronically plugged in MacBook at 80 percent, and it installs a command line tool alongside the GUI. The README says a custom charging percentage is only available through that command line tool. It also states plainly that it will not work on Intel Macs, and points owners of older Macs to the free version of AlDente.

The trade with both projects is support. Questions go to an issue tracker, not to an email address, and changes in macOS can break things until a contributor catches up. For readers comfortable with Homebrew and a terminal, that is a fair exchange for a free tool with a lower floor than Apple's.

Picking by situation

The options do not compete on the same ground. Matching them to the setup is quicker than reading feature lists:

Situation	Option that covers it
Apple silicon, macOS 26.4 or later, 80 percent is fine	macOS Charge Limit, no extra app
Apple silicon, wants 60 or 70 percent	AlDente Free, Battery Toolkit or battery
Intel MacBook	AlDente Free or Pro
Lid closed and plugged in overnight, limit must hold	AlDente Pro
Wants heat protection, calibration cycles or Shortcuts actions	AlDente Pro
Wants a runtime estimate rather than a limit	A battery monitor, which is a different category

That last row matters because some of the pages that rank for this search are battery monitors. They report time remaining or power draw while unplugged. They do not stop charging at a level. If the goal was ever battery longevity at a desk, a monitor is not a replacement; if the goal was knowing how long the battery will last on the train, a charge limiter never was the right tool.

One caution applies to every combination. AlDente's FAQ recommends setting the macOS charge limit to 100 percent and turning off Optimized Battery Charging while AlDente manages charging, so the two do not interfere. The same logic applies to the open source tools. Pick one owner for charging behaviour, and leave the others off.

Switching without breaking charging

The vendor documents a failure that is worth avoiding: a MacBook that stops charging after a limiter is removed mid state. The safe order, based on AlDente's FAQ and uninstall guidance:

1. In AlDente, set the charge limit back to 100 percent and turn off its other features, as the uninstall guide recommends.
2. Open AlDente Settings, then General, and click Remove AlDente. Choose what to delete, then enter the Mac password when macOS asks to remove the helper.
3. Restart the MacBook. The guide says this resets the charging settings in the SMC.
4. If a Pro licence will be used on another Mac, deactivate it on this one first.
5. Turn on the replacement, either the macOS Charge Limit or one of the open source tools, and only one of them.

If the Mac has already stopped charging, the FAQ gives the recovery. On Apple silicon, keep the MacBook plugged in, turn it off, close the lid, wait two minutes, and turn it on again. On Intel, follow Apple's procedure to reset the SMC.

After switching, watch the battery status menu for a few days. "Charged to [%] Limit" confirms that the macOS limit is active. A limit that silently stopped working looks identical to one that is working until the battery health figure drifts, so checking once is cheaper than finding out months later.

A new app does not free menu bar space

Some searches for an alternative start with a crowded menu bar rather than a battery problem. That one is worth separating out, because swapping AlDente for another limiter does not change it. Every third party limiter in the table above puts one item in the menu bar. Moving to the macOS Charge Limit does remove one icon, but the battery status item that shows "Charged to [%] Limit" stays.

What a battery icon really needs is to be visible at the right moment: when the charge is low, or when the Mac is running on battery. A menu bar organizer can hide the icon behind a divider and bring it back on a condition. The features page of one such tool lists rules such as battery at or below a set level, or while on battery power, and the pricing page compares one-time licences across menu bar managers with the date each price was checked.

What to change first

On an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 26.4 or later, set Charge Limit to 80 percent in Battery settings and live with it for two weeks before buying anything. If a lower number, an Intel Mac, or a closed lid overnight makes that insufficient, move to AlDente or an open source limiter, and if the bar itself is the problem, a menu bar manager such as Koffret can keep the battery icon out of sight until it matters.