Tom Estelrich
John GruberWhy does the iPad not show battery health in Settings: Battery?
iPhone, Apple Watch, and even MacBooks all show battery health. Only iPads do not. Very odd!
sayrer@gruber do you care about the iPad battery? mine are all like at least 3 years old and always plugged in. I'm sure the battery panel would be unflattering, but I don't care.
Paul McGrane@sayrer @gruber If you're so confident, plug into a computer and run a utility that reports battery metrics to you, like:
Might be interesting https://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/
Deepak M@gruber I was once on a Support call with Apple and the support tech asked me to check battery health in Settings on my original iPad Air. Even he didn’t know the feature is unavailable on iPad.
Torsten Kathke@gruber Ah, so this isn’t just older iPad OS versions. Just had a battery replaced and was stumped when I couldn’t find the setting.
bravado@gruber my 2019 Intel MacBook doesn’t show health either, just “normal” or otherwise.
Kevin Karhan 
@gruber That's intentional by #Apple.
They certainly want to make the nice $$$ of people having #DangerPillow|s cracking their screens and overcharging them for a replacement.
Slade Watkins@gruber something something “has to be uniquely iPad” —Apple, probably
Josh Delman@gruber I’ve noticed that too, but I thought it was because I’m using an older model (1st gen iPad Pro)
Devon Dundee@gruber I’ve wondered this a couple of times myself while waiting for Apple support to run their remote diagnostics and tell me if there’s something wrong with my battery.
Simon Harper@gruber Also why can’t battery widgets show the battery level for all my devices? All logged into same Apple ID. Find My shows a level icon for all my devices AND my families 🤷🏼♂️
Tim Morris 🎆
Cloud Battery
Cloud Battery is the solution to a better battery management system. Cloud Battery keeps all of your Apple device battery levels in one place, available to be seen from any device that shares the same iCloud account. It's as simple as downloading Cloud Battery on all your Apple Devices, and it jus…
@TimMorris @gruber I did. Wasn’t reliable enough TBH.
Sumocat 🐈⬛@simonharper @gruber
“There’s an app for that.” 😛 I just posted about it last night.
Sumocat 🐈⬛ (@[email protected])
If you’ve got a bunch of #Apple devices and want to be able to monitor their batteries from any one of your devices, I’ve found Cloud Battery to be convenient. Supports widgets, including old-style widgets on #iPad. It’s not live updated (because that would drain the batteries it monitors), so it’s not for the %-counting crowd, but it works for my purpose of keeping an eye on things from my iPad. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cloud-battery/id1480648069
@Sumocat thx 🙏🏼 Did try this but wasn’t too keen on it TBH. Should be built in. Apple kind of only 1/2 do it.
Steve Williams@simonharper @gruber On the mac, I use Air Buddy, which gives you battery levels of phone watch, AirPods and MacBook
@blabberlicious @gruber Will take a look 👍🏼
@blabberlicious @gruber but ideally want an iOS and WatchOS app as those devices are always with me.
@simonharper @gruber yeah, I get you. It is handy on a work machine, as it makes it easy to see it your devices are juiced up before exiting.
@blabberlicious true. But should be available on all devices logged into the same Apple ID.
Glebone@gruber you can check the battery check from the Mac using coconutBattery https://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/
Jmush
Christopher White 
@gruber constant source of irritation to me. I can only think it’s becuase iPad batteries don’t wear as nicely as the iPhone’s.
Joel LeBlanc@gruber same reason FaceID on iPad never got mask support.
iPad remains a product in Apple’s lineup.
EricLawrence@gruber Does Apple no longer consider iPads to be mobile devices? They may consider battery health to be a "mobile" concern only.
Christina Warren@gruber It's such a weird/bad omission. Especially since Apple does iPad battery replacements. Funny story: I had to get my iPad replaced under AppleCare+ (I had to do a few replacements, actually) and the phone support person tried to get me to go into that area to show her the battery health. I had to explain to her that the iPad doesn't have that feature, which was unrelated to half the screen not responding to touch anyway.
Preston Neill@film_girl @gruber Do they actually do battery replacements now? For the longest time they charged for a battery, and teplaced the whole unit.
@preston_neill @gruber yeah, I think they replace the whole thing. My point is that then do the service for a few or whatever.
Justin Modugno@film_girl @preston_neill @gruber I was actually just denied battery service for my iPad at the Genius Bar, because their analytics said my iPad was at 91%. Literally, wouldn’t let me pay for it. Very frustrating experience, especially since the Apple Store isn’t close to my home.
@Modug @film_girl @gruber That’s super frustrating and could have been avoidable if the iPad had Battery Health in Settings. To Christina and John’s point, it is wild the iPad doesn’t have it and I’d bet the only reason the iPhone has it is the iPhone 6 throttling issue to keep from overloading the battery.
Josh Rivers@Modug @film_girl @preston_neill @gruber Me too. Four times. I spent a month charging mine and playing that YouTube fireplace video (for a half hour) until the battery died and charging it again until I could pass their “test”.
Steve Lhomme@film_girl @gruber can't be worse than the missing calculator
dxzdb@robUx4 @film_girl @gruber you can add PCalc pretty easily. Battery health can’t be figured out by a 3rd party app can it?
Deirdre Saoirse Moen@film_girl @gruber What’s really annoying is that many of us treat our iPad as our primary mobile device; I rarely use my iPhone outside of making calls.
LeninGood to see you around here @film_girl !.
What issues did you have with your iPads?. Kind of scary, I’ve never had to replace an iPad.
@film_girl @gruber I had the opportunity to teach this to a number of support people as well. (Apple support staff are awesome…they often have their hands duct taped behind their back, but the people rock!)
Steve Mintsioulis@gruber suspect they justify its absence by the size of the buffer available on the larger device resulting in less noticeable degradation over what Apple considers its usable lifespan. I still think it should have it, just what I suspect their thinking is (proud user of a 2017 10.5” iPad Pro with noticeable shorter battery life)
@gruber Because battery health is a proxy measurement for usability, an iPhone needs to last a whole day, whereas an iPad is charged when the battery is low, or when it is set down. So its battery health has much less of an impact on its usability.
@gruber Hmm it sure never has. It was only recently we were able to enable "Low Power Mode" on iPad, right?
Utilities on Mac like Coconut battery can get all the relevant info. Maybe people or journalists haven't complained enough about iPad batteries?
My iPad Air 3 battery was seemingly worn out but I traded it for a refurb Air 4 last Memorial Day when they were doing extra-value for trade-ins just before introducing Air 5. (and I'm pleased!)
Marc Robinson 
@gruber It's buried in the Calculator app.
@marcintosh @gruber hahhaaah! You have to hold it … *thuswise*
KDDLB@gruber different battery chemistry?
Javier Lacort@gruber I don't know, but it made it easy for me to sell my old iPad Air 4 without getting too many questions. 🤠
Wesley Faulkner
Raygan Kelly 
@gruber from what I recall Apple only added that on iPhone under duress after a controversy specifically about iPhone battery life. No such controversy on iPad, no such feature. 🤷♀️
@raygan Same feature is in WatchOS and MacOS, though.
@gruber that is very odd. Perhaps for Mac it’s there because it’s always sort of been there (in System Profiler) anyway. And the watch is on a razors edge with battery life.
I feel like it has to be a choice to exclude it on iPad, perhaps just to avoid difficult support conversations.
Adam Overholtzer
Davey Craney@gruber the cynic in me says because ignorance is bliss…
If you don’t know you’re at 80% or under… you won’t know to claim on your AppleCare…
@daveycraney @gruber Bizarrely, my iPhone 12 Pro has been at 88% nearly ever since I first looked at it. it is about 2 years old. Is it accurate? Who knows. Battery seems okay in usage; everyone wishes their battery lasted longer.
@daveycraney @gruber that is rough.
Nowadays you can extend coverage month to month. Could try to ruin the battery in a month, but that is unscrupulous and maybe unlikely to succeed.
Andy Chan@gruber My 3rd gen 12.9” iPad Pro (don’t remember what year) battery is dying for sometime. I have no easy way to confirm it unless I contact Apple Support to run remote check on my battery. I under the iPad battery is huge and it may not degrade as quick as the phone.
However, why the Macbook’s can check battery health but not the iPad!?!?!
Jiří Fiala Total Landscaping@gruber I think it's because the battery in ipads is so big, it's irrelevant. I have a first gen iPad that's STILL in active use, and the battery is okay.
Paul Davidson
Richard Diaz@gruber the easy answer is they don’t think it’s useful on the platform.