Battery status in OSX?

Question

How can I read the status of the battery on my MacBookPro from my own application?

Googling has so far only revealed APIs for device drivers to handle power events - there's nothing about user-land processes accessing this information.

thanks.

Answer 1

You'll want to use IOKit for this, specifically the IOPowerSources functions. You can use IOPSCopyPowerSourcesInfo() to get a blob, and IOPSCopyPowerSourcesList() to then extract a CFArray out of that, listing the power sources. Then use IOPSGetPowerSourceDescription() to pull out a dictionary (see IOPSKeys.h for the contents of the dictionary).

Answer 2

Look at the System Management Controller. I don't have my MBP handy, but I believe you need to look at smc.h

Answer 3

If you're looking for a quick way to query it from the command line, you'll find the pmset command helpful. To query the battery status, specifically, use:

$ pmset -g batt