Choose your version
Liwu 1 is frozen and receives no further feature updates. Do not install it on macOS 26.7 or later.
macOS 27: Liwu 2 has not been tested on macOS 27 yet. If something does not work as expected there, please report it or write to [email protected]. Details: Compatibility.
Liwu 2 is available in English, Simplified Chinese, German, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean and Japanese. It follows your Mac's language, and you can choose one in General.
Install Liwu 2
With Homebrew:
brew install --cask urfreespace/liwu/liwu
Or download the DMG from Releases, open it, and drag Liwu to Applications.
On first launch, follow the prompts to approve Liwu's background component. Charging control needs this component. Menu bar organization separately requests Accessibility and Screen Recording permissions when you use it to read and move icons.
Releases are signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple. Updates are available inside the app.
What Liwu 2 does
| Feature | What it does | Free | Pro |
|---|
| Charging targets · 20–100% | Set the level charging stops at. Below 80% needs supported low-target control; otherwise the minimum stays at 80% | ✓ | ✓ |
| Named presets | Save your favorite targets and switch between them | ✓ | ✓ |
| Power in the battery bar | Adapter input and battery charging or discharging power, with details on demand, including the connected adapter's name, rated power, and the voltage and current in use as macOS reports them | ✓ | ✓ |
| Menu bar organization | Sort icons into Always Hidden, Hidden, and Visible; show or hide the Hidden group from arrows in the menu bar | ✓ | ✓ |
| Menu bar readouts | Time remaining, power and battery temperature beside the percentage; while charging, the time to your charge limit | ✓ | ✓ |
| Optimized Battery Charging | See when it conflicts with charging management and turn it off from Liwu | ✓ | ✓ |
| Keep Awake · Lid Open | Keep long jobs running, with a timer and a low-battery cutoff | ✓ | ✓ |
| Battery health history | One reading a day of maximum capacity and cycle count, charted over time, and a sleep report of what each recent sleep cost | ✓ | ✓ |
| Notifications | A warning at a battery level you choose, for the Mac and for accessories that report their level to macOS; also when calibration ends, a plan does not run, or charging control needs attention | ✓ | ✓ |
| Energy use by app · Now | Which apps macOS counts as using significant energy right now, in the main window and the menu bar popover; macOS's own account, in which an app counts with everything it started, from a level you choose | ✓ | ✓ |
| Low Power Mode | macOS's Low Power Mode set from Liwu: never, always, only on battery, or only on the power adapter |
The table follows the pricing table on liwu.app row for row.
Charging targets: choose 20–100% on supported Macs. Targets below 80% require a successful capability check; if support is unavailable or uncertain, new targets remain at 80–100%. On a Mac where macOS does not give apps access to the firmware limit, Liwu sets a target below 80% as macOS's own charge limit instead; if macOS has not applied it after ten minutes on power, Liwu changes the limit to 80% and says so. Lower targets may actively discharge the battery while plugged in, and the stopping level can differ from the percentage macOS displays. Liwu checks submitted targets; macOS and the battery hardware determine the actual charging behavior. For targets below 80% or Sailing, the battery bar also shows a raw capacity estimate when it differs from the macOS percentage, with an explanation button for the difference.
Top Up (Pro): requests 100% while keeping your regular target. Start it yourself, or let a plan start it at a set time. It ends when you turn it off or unplug, and charging returns to your regular target.
Sailing (Pro): keep your regular limit as the upper endpoint and choose a 5–20 percentage-point drop before recharging, with a lower endpoint of at least 20%. Firmware support must be confirmed first, even for limits of 80% or higher. The interval uses raw battery capacity, which can differ from the displayed percentage. Top Up temporarily suspends Sailing; calibration restores it when returning to the regular target.
Heat Protection (Pro): while the battery is charging at or above a temperature you choose (35–45°C, 40°C to start with), Liwu pauses charging where it is until the battery is 3°C cooler. Afterwards your limit and Sailing range apply as before, so inside a Sailing range charging starts again only once the level falls below it. While the Mac sleeps no pause begins, and a pause in force ends once the battery has cooled, the next time macOS briefly wakes the Mac in the background. It needs the same confirmed firmware support as Sailing, does not pause a calibration, and does not cool the battery.
Calibration: charge to full, discharge to 10%, recharge, hold for one hour, and return to your regular target. Start manually or from a schedule. Calibration requires connected power, supported low-target control, and Optimized Battery Charging turned off.
Plans (Pro): set a regular target, start Top Up, or start calibration at a time you choose: once, daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly. A Top Up plan starts only if power is connected at that time; otherwise that run is skipped. Preview the next plan, skip it once, or disable it from the popover. Plans run while Liwu is running and the Mac is awake; a plan that was missed can catch up within 24 hours if you turn that on.
Optimized Battery Charging: keep it off while Liwu manages charging. Liwu turns it off once at first startup; if it is turned back on later in System Settings, Liwu shows a warning and lets you turn it off again.
Keep Awake: set an auto-off timer or a low-battery threshold. Low-battery protection applies while running on battery power and also prevents starting at or below the configured threshold. Liwu explains why a session stopped; historical stop notices can be dismissed. With Pro (since 2.15.0), Keep Awake can turn itself on while apps you choose are running, while the Mac is connected to power, or while an external display is connected, and off when that ends; the popover shows what is keeping it on. If you turn it off yourself, it does not turn on by itself again until those conditions have ended. When a lid-closed session ends with the lid shut and no display connected, Liwu puts the Mac to sleep, unless another app is keeping it awake.
Battery health: Liwu records maximum capacity and cycle count once a day while it is running and charts them over time. Days when Liwu was not running are left out. Readings are stored only on your Mac, together with a hash of the battery's serial number that is used to notice a replaced battery; you can export them as CSV or clear them.
Sleep report: the same page lists each sleep of 15 minutes or longer found in the Mac's own power log, which goes back about a week: when it started, how long it lasted, the battery level before and after, and how often the Mac woke briefly and why. Liwu reads the log when you open the page and after the Mac wakes; the report is not stored or sent anywhere. When a sleep that ran on battery throughout lasted at least two hours and used at least five points of charge, at one point an hour or more, Liwu notifies you once after the wake; this is part of the Low battery notifications. If the log cannot be read, or no longer looks the way Liwu expects, the report says so instead of showing figures. The report shows what happened; it does not change how your Mac sleeps.
Notifications: off until you turn them on in General or with the switch on the Schedule, Charge Control, or Keep Awake page. Liwu can tell you when calibration finishes or ends early, when a plan does not run, when Keep Awake turns itself off, and when charging control needs attention. Notifications are created on your Mac and are sent only while Liwu is running. Since 2.7.0 Liwu can also warn at a battery level you choose: once when the Mac reaches it while running on battery, and when a connected accessory that reports its battery level to macOS runs low. Those accessories are listed with their level in the menu bar popover.
Menu bar readouts (since 2.16.0): beside the battery percentage, the menu bar can show the time remaining, the power and the battery temperature; choose them in General. On battery the time is macOS's own estimate, as Activity Monitor shows it ("–:––" for a minute or two after unplugging). While charging it is Liwu's estimate to your charge limit, shown with an up arrow; macOS's own time to full counts to 100%. Power is what the battery supplies on battery and what the adapter delivers on power. The temperature follows the unit chosen in System Settings.
Menu bar: sort icons into three groups inside Liwu. Click the arrows that Liwu adds to the menu bar to show or hide the Hidden group; right-click them for Menu Bar settings. Icons in Always Hidden stay out of the menu bar until you move them to another group. Restore an icon by dragging it back to Visible. With Pro, Menu Bar settings add three more ways under "Show and Hide": a keyboard shortcut that shows or hides the Hidden group from any app, showing it when the pointer rests on the empty part of the menu bar, and hiding it again by itself after 5 seconds to 1 minute. Liwu and fixed system controls stay visible. Quitting reveals every group; another app or system restart may require regrouping. On a crowded menu bar with a display notch, macOS may not accept a move whose drop point falls behind the notch; Liwu reports that the move was not confirmed and leaves the groups unchanged.
Energy Use: a page in the main window lists the apps macOS itself counts as using significant energy over the last two minutes, the same account as the battery menu in Control Center, where an app counts with everything it started. There are no watts: macOS's measure has no unit, and each app shows one to three bars for the level it reaches. A menu beside the list sets the level from which an app is listed (Low, Medium as macOS uses, High), and a switch adds system processes and background items. With Pro, Last Hour and Last 12 Hours show each app's share of all energy use in the period, from the record macOS keeps. In the menu bar popover the list appears only while an app is listed; a switch in General turns it off. Liwu only reads this; it does not change how apps run.
Low Power Mode: a row on the Energy Use page sets macOS's Low Power Mode to Never, Always, Only on Battery or Only on Power Adapter, the same choices as System Settings → Battery. With Pro, "On Battery at a Level" switches it on when the battery falls to a level from 10% to 50% and off again once it has charged above that level. The rule works while Liwu is running; when Liwu quits, Low Power Mode stays as it is.
Bluetooth off during sleep (Pro): when the Mac goes to sleep with the lid closed and no display connected, Liwu turns Bluetooth off, so a Mac in a bag does not connect to the headphones you are using with your phone. When you wake the Mac, Liwu turns Bluetooth back on, unless it was already off before. A Mac asleep with its lid open, or closed with an external display, is left alone. The first time you switch it on, macOS asks you to allow Liwu to use Bluetooth. It works while Liwu is running.
Schedules and calibration require Liwu to remain running. Closing its window keeps it running; quitting ends calibration and requests release of Liwu's charging control. The helper exits once cleanup is confirmed and no new session or operation needs it. Unresolved cleanup retains its recovery state.
Homebrew removal: brew uninstall --cask liwu quits Liwu and runs its controlled cleanup before removing the app, unregistering the helper and login item. Removal stops if cleanup fails. Preferences and licenses are retained. Homebrew upgrades and reinstalls run the same cleanup; re-enable Launch at login afterward if you use it.
Liwu Pro is a $9.99 one-time purchase with no subscription. Existing Liwu 1 Pro purchases also unlock Liwu 2 Pro.
About this repository
This repository distributes signed installers and hosts public issue reports. Liwu's source code is private. Download the DMG attached to a release; GitHub's automatically generated source archives do not contain the app.
Links
© 2026 Liwu. All rights reserved. "Liwu" and the Liwu icon are trademarks of their owner.
