How to check the battery level of a mouse or keyboard connected to your Mac

A wireless mouse gives no warning before it dies. It slows down, then stutters, then stops, usually in the middle of something. The Mac knows the charge level and has known it the whole time. The problem is that the reading is two clicks deep, in a menu most people open for pairing rather than for status, and on some devices it is not there at all.

There are three separate questions tangled together in this search. Where does macOS show the level. Why is it sometimes blank. And how do you get at it without hunting for it every time. They have different answers.

The one place macOS always shows it

The charge level for a connected input device lives in the Bluetooth section of Control Center. Apple states the route plainly on its support page for the built-in batteries in its own accessories.

To check your device's charge level, click the Control Centre Icon in the menu bar, then click Bluetooth. Or click the Bluetooth menu in the menu bar. Your device itself does not have an indicator of its charge level. Source: support.apple.com, read September 23, 2026

Clicking Bluetooth inside Control Center expands a list of paired devices. Each connected device that reports a level shows it as a percentage under its name. The same list appears if the Bluetooth icon has been switched on in the menu bar, which saves one click.

Earbuds get more than one figure. The Bluetooth panel has separate readings for the left unit, the right unit, and the charging case, which is why a pair of earbuds can show three different numbers and why the case reading is often the one that has gone flat while the buds themselves are full.

System Settings shows the same information in the Bluetooth pane, listed beside each device. The figure there and the figure in Control Center come from the same place, so there is no reason to prefer one over the other except that Control Center is faster to reach.

Why the reading is sometimes missing

A blank where the percentage should be is not a fault in macOS. Bluetooth devices are responsible for reporting their own battery state, and a device that does not report it leaves the Mac with nothing to display.

Apple's own keyboards, mice and trackpads all report it. Most brand name wireless headphones report it. A large share of inexpensive Bluetooth mice do not, and there is no way to make them. On a Mac checked while writing this, a currently connected third party Bluetooth mouse listed its address, vendor identifier, product identifier and device type, and no battery information whatsoever, while an Apple trackpad on the same machine reported a precise percentage.

Device	Where a level appears	If it is blank
Apple mouse, keyboard, trackpad	Control Center, Bluetooth pane, Terminal	Reconnect the device, since a level is always reported when connected
Bluetooth earbuds and headphones	Control Center, split by unit and case	Usually means the device is connected for audio only
Third party Bluetooth mouse	Control Center, if the maker implemented it	Nothing in macOS can add it. Use the maker's own app if one exists
USB dongle mouse using a proprietary radio	Nowhere in macOS	The maker's own app is the only route

That last row catches people out. A mouse that connects through its own small USB receiver rather than through Bluetooth is not a Bluetooth device at all as far as macOS is concerned. It will not appear in the Bluetooth list, and no amount of looking in Control Center will produce a figure. Several manufacturers ship a macOS utility that reads the level over their own protocol, and that utility is the only place the number exists.

The underlying reason is worth understanding, because it stops the search for a setting that does not exist. Bluetooth defines an optional service for reporting battery state, and a mouse is a complete, functioning mouse without implementing it. Pointer movement and clicks travel over a different part of the specification entirely. A manufacturer that skips the battery service ships a device that works perfectly and reports nothing, and there is no system preference, permission, or driver on the Mac side that can extract a figure the device never sends. Checking the product page before buying is the only point at which this is decidable, and the phrase to look for is battery status or battery reporting in macOS rather than simply long battery life.

Older Apple accessories that take replaceable AA cells behave differently again. They report a level, but the level is a reading of whatever cells are installed, so a fresh set of budget alkaline cells can read lower than a half-used set of good ones. The percentage on those models is best treated as a rough band rather than a precise figure.

Reading it from the Terminal

Two commands answer the question without any clicking, which is useful for a machine being checked remotely or for anyone who wants the figure in a script.

The first lists every paired Bluetooth device along with whatever each one reports:

system_profiler SPBluetoothDataType

The output is long. Devices are grouped under Connected and Not Connected, and a device that reports its battery shows a line reading Battery Level, or separate Left, Right and Case lines for earbuds. Filtering makes it readable:

system_profiler SPBluetoothDataType | grep -E "Battery Level|Minor Type"

The second command reaches Apple input devices specifically, through the driver that handles them:

ioreg -r -c AppleDeviceManagementHIDEventService -l | grep -E '"Product"|"BatteryPercent"'

That prints the product name of each Apple keyboard, mouse and trackpad followed by its charge as a whole number. It is the fastest way to get one figure with no interface at all, and it works over a remote shell where Control Center is not available.

Neither command needs administrator rights, and neither changes anything. They read the same values the graphical interface reads.

The two commands reach different sets of hardware, which is why both are listed. The first speaks to the Bluetooth stack and therefore covers everything paired over Bluetooth, Apple and otherwise, but shows only what each device chose to report. The second speaks to the driver that Apple uses for its own keyboards, mice and trackpads, so it covers fewer devices and reports a clean whole number for every one of them. If a device appears in the first command's output with no battery line, the second command will not rescue it.

A stale figure is the one genuine glitch that shows up in both. A device that has been asleep for a long time can report the level it had when it last checked in, which is why a mouse occasionally shows a healthy number an hour before it stops working. Clicking the mouse a few times and reading the figure again gives a current value. If the number never moves across several days of use, switching the device off and on again forces a fresh report.

Making the check a habit rather than a rescue

The reason people search for this in the first place is almost never curiosity. It is that something has already gone flat. Turning the check into something that happens before that point takes one of three shapes, and they suit different machines.

The first is a fixed interval. Reading the figure once a week, on the same day, catches every Apple accessory long before it matters, because these devices last weeks rather than days. The second is charging on a schedule instead of on a reading, which for a mouse used daily means plugging it in overnight roughly once a month and never checking the number at all. The third is keeping a short cable in the drawer next to the desk, which does not prevent the problem but reduces it from an interruption to an inconvenience.

Whichever shape fits, the figure itself is only useful if it is easy to reach. That is the part of this problem that lives in the menu bar rather than in the battery.

What the percentage is actually telling you

The figure is an estimate produced by the device, not a measurement of remaining minutes, and it does not decay evenly. Apple input devices commonly sit at a high reading for weeks and then drop quickly through the last stretch, which is why a mouse can seem to go from comfortable to dead in a day.

Charging behaviour differs between Apple's accessories in a way worth knowing before the battery runs out.

For the fastest battery charging performance, make sure your device is on while charging. Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad can be used while charging. Magic Mouse is unavailable for use while charging. Source: support.apple.com, read September 23, 2026

A keyboard or trackpad can be plugged in and kept in use. A mouse cannot, so a flat mouse means finding a wired mouse, using the trackpad, or stopping. That asymmetry is the practical argument for checking the mouse figure on a schedule rather than waiting for a warning.

The number also drops faster than expected when a device is left switched on in a bag, because a mouse that is being jostled keeps waking up. A mouse that seems to lose charge without being used is usually reporting honestly.

Getting the number without going looking for it

Checking a figure that is two clicks away is fine once. Doing it every few days is the kind of task people stop doing, right up until the mouse dies.

The cheap fix is to put the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar, which turns two clicks into one. Open System Settings, click Menu Bar in the sidebar, and select Bluetooth. The icon itself does not show a percentage, but clicking it drops straight into the device list.

The cost is width. The menu bar is not an expandable container, and every icon added to it takes space from the icons already there. Apple documents the two keyboard-free ways to manage the strip.

To rearrange status menus, press and hold the Command key while you drag an icon. To quickly remove a status menu, press and hold the Command key while you drag the icon out of the menu bar. Source: support.apple.com, read September 23, 2026

On a machine with a notch and a dozen resident utilities, adding Bluetooth to the strip can push something else off the left end of the group where it stops being drawn at all. That is the point where the decision stops being about Bluetooth and becomes a decision about the whole strip: which icons are read at a glance, and which are only ever clicked. A menu bar manager for macOS exists to hold the second group out of sight while keeping it one click away, and the feature that matters when comparing them is whether a hidden icon can still be opened without expanding everything.

Checking without a mouse at all

If the mouse is already dead, the figure is still reachable. The built-in trackpad on a laptop keeps working, and on a desktop Mac the keyboard alone is enough: pressing Control-F2 moves focus to the menu bar, and the arrow keys and Return then operate the status icons, including Control Center.

For a machine with no working pointer and no working keyboard shortcut, the Terminal route above run over a remote shell is the last resort that still works.

What to change first

Open Control Center, click Bluetooth, and note where the mouse actually sits today. If the figure is below a third, charge it tonight rather than discovering it tomorrow. Then decide whether Bluetooth deserves a permanent place in the strip, and if the strip is already full, Koffret will make room without deleting anything.