Remember that time when you were playing a game online, and your battery suddenly died?  Or that movie was almost done and your battery was draining fast.  You may not always be near a power outlet when your battery gets low, or you may get so caught up in something on your Mac and not see the indicator light.  It’s nice that your Mac has the little warning that tells your when you’re running on “reserved battery power”, but it can sometimes be up to 20 minutes before your Mac actually reaches discharged status.  And when you’re so caught up playing Minecraft that you just click it away, there can certainly be problems.  Low Battery Power is a simple little solution to this problem.

Low Battery Saver doesn’t actually make your battery last any longer.  What it does do is give you a little more notice as you get closer to a dead battery. When your battery reaches a certain charge level, Low Batter Saver kicks in and puts your Mac to sleep.  You can adjust this to be as high or low as you want.  The app recommends that since older models may have calibration issues, it might be better to set the app a little higher than what you might initially want.  Plus if you set the time too low, Mac’s own hibernate function may just override the sleep command.  But what really helps out is that, unlike the Mac, the app gives you a bold countdown before it runs the sleep command.

Low Battery Saver defaults to a 30 second countdown, though you can edit this to be a longer or shorter countdown.  The countdown is very hard to miss.  When the countdown begins, a large red block appears at the bottom of the screen and clearly states that the countdown has started and sleep will soon begin.  Since you set the timer and app yourself, you already know how close your battery really is to dying.  The app also can be set to warn you of a low battery at a certain charge percentage, which you may or may not find repetitive.  This app also has a check box that allows you to start the program on your Mac’s startup.

The preferences are very easy to setup; there are no confusing options, and the app runs flawlessly.  It gave me the pop-ups at the times I told it to, and the sleep command ran without a hitch.  The app also has a very minimal impact on your system resources, and is very quick to turn on when your Mac starts up.  These things certainly make it all the better.  However, the app does have a few quirks.  The most noticeable of these quirks is when selecting any of the time increments and settings.  I can move the time up or down by using the arrows on the size, but I cannot type in a number value.  In order to change the value, I have to manually hit the arrow up or down.  Unless you changes are dramatically different from the default setting, this probably won’t be an issue, but this seems like a simply glaring omission.

Besides this seeming flaw in the program, Low Battery Saver does what it says it will do, with a very simple to understand interface, and something that every Mac user should have, especially those that constantly are running on battery power.  Low Battery Saver is made by Space Inch and is available in the Mac App Store at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/low-battery/id480383312?mt=12.  It runs on Mac OS 10.6 and higher.  If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about this or any other topic, leave a comment below or email me at easyosx@live.com  You can also check me out on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube by hitting the buttons on the top of your screen.  You can also check out my Google Plus Page.  Thanks!