Who measures this

Last updated: 22 August 2026 · this page says who is behind the numbers on this site; How we count says what the app measures and where the measuring stops

The short version

WattMate is written and measured by one person — Vitali Staradubau, trading as WattMate, a sole proprietorship in Poland (the full seller details are on the Terms page). There is no team and no agency: the code, the measurements and every page on this site come from one desk, and one person is answerable for every number on them.

That is worth saying out loud because of what this site publishes. Almost every article here answers a question the internet usually answers with adjectives — "Chrome is a battery hog", "quitting apps doesn't help" — and the answer given here is a number instead. A number is only worth the method behind it, so the method, the machine and the date are printed next to it.

The Macs the numbers come from

Most measurements are logged on one machine: a MacBook Pro (Mac15,10, M3 Max, 36 GB) — a working developer's Mac, not a lab bench, which is the point. Where a single machine would be misleading, a second Apple silicon MacBook is measured alongside it, and the pages that do this say so in the line under their title.

The second machine has already changed conclusions rather than confirming them. When two Macs were logged side by side, their averages sat three times apart — which is exactly why "how many watts does my MacBook use" has no single answer, and why this site prints distributions where other pages print one confident figure.

A cross-check has also been run on a Mac still on macOS 14 — the oldest version WattMate supports — so the bottom of the supported range is checked rather than assumed.

The instruments, by name

Nothing here is estimated from CPU percentages. The readings come from counters Apple silicon publishes, named so you can go and read them yourself:

libIOReport — the SoC's own energy counters, for the power the machine is drawing right now.
ri_energy_nj — per-process energy from the kernel, so a watt can be attributed to an app rather than guessed at.
Resource coalitions — so the energy of short-lived helper processes is credited back to the app that spawned them instead of vanishing when they exit.
pmset -g log — the power log macOS already keeps, which records every night-time wake and the service that asked for it.

What each of these can and cannot answer — including the parts that stay unmeasurable, like separating the idle floor from an app's draw — is set out in How we count.

The rules every page here follows

Every number is measured, and says where from. Each article names the machine, the date and how many measurement windows are behind the figure. If a number came from one Mac, the page says one Mac.

Where something can't be measured honestly, the page says so instead of estimating. Several pages here end with a section on what the method cannot reach.

Facts about other apps are checked against the source, with a date. Comparison pages carry a disclosure line saying WattMate is our app — and where the honest answer is a competitor, the page says that too. The AlDente page opens by explaining when you should keep using AlDente.

Dates change when facts change, not to look fresh.

When a number turns out to be wrong

It has happened, and the page it happened on says so at the top rather than quietly changing.

The night-wake study, Who wakes your Mac at night, was recounted on 19 August 2026 after a mistake was found in our own method — not by a reader, but by re-reading the log the analysis rested on. The list macOS prints is the schedule of pending wake requests, reprinted in full every time the Mac sleeps; counting every appearance as a separate wake inflated some requesters far more than others, and that changed which one came first. The correction sits at the top of the page, dated, naming what it got wrong. The command to reproduce the whole thing on your own Mac is at the bottom of that page, which is the other half of the same promise: a number you can check is worth more than a number you have to trust.

What money does and does not buy here

WattMate is sold directly from this site, and that is the whole business model: no advertising, no sponsored placements, and nothing on this site is paid for by anyone else. No page here has been written in exchange for a review, a listing or a link, and none will be.

Getting in touch

Corrections are welcome and get the same treatment as the one above — if a number on this site is wrong, say so and it gets rechecked and dated: support@wattmateapp.com.

Journalists and researchers: the raw analysis behind the night-wake study, method and limits included, is on its own page, and the guides are indexed at Mac battery guides.