AlDente review

Updated 23 August 2026 · quoted from their own pages, checked on that date. We have not measured their app. Disclosure: WattMate is our app, and it does not do the thing AlDente is for. Who measures this.

The best known charge limiter on the Mac: hold the battery at a percentage you choose instead of 100. It has a free tier, a paid Pro on top, and a longer supported-OS range than most of this category.

Price

Tier	Their wording
Free	A free download with the charge limiter
Pro, yearly	"11,49 €" — "Paid annually. Cancel anytime. Auto renews."
Pro, lifetime	"Lifetime Licence 23,99 €"
Setapp	"via SetApp Subscription 9,99 € Paid monthly"

Those figures are in euros and are inserted by a script on their page, so what you see may depend on where you are. Treat them as the shape of the pricing rather than a quote for your country.

Which macOS versions

From their FAQ: "macOS 11 Big Sur is supported up to AlDente 1.37.3 (download on GitHub). Starting from AlDente 1.38, only macOS 12 Monterey through macOS 26 Tahoe are supported."

Keeping an older build downloadable for people on Big Sur is a decent thing to do and worth noting, since the usual practice is to let old versions disappear.

The thing that changed under it

Since macOS 26.4, Apple silicon Macs cap charging natively. That does not make AlDente pointless — the paid tier has controls Apple's switch does not, and the free tier still covers Macs and versions Apple's feature does not reach — but it does move the question. If all you wanted was "stop at 80", your Mac may already do it.

This is also why we do not build a limiter: putting a second switch next to Apple's own would be a feature for a feature list rather than for you.

Where it is better than ours

It acts on the machine. We only measure. If the job is holding the charge somewhere, we are not a substitute at any price.

There is a free tier, and it includes the limiter rather than gating it.

It reaches back to macOS 12, and to Big Sur through an archived build. We require macOS 14.

Where we do something different

Charge limiting slows how fast the battery ages. It does nothing about where today's charge is going, which is the question we answer: watts per app, minutes back for quitting one, and a re-measurement afterwards to check whether that promise held.

Nothing stops you running both. AlDente writes charge settings, we only read.

Questions people ask

Is AlDente still needed on macOS 26.4?

For a plain 80% cap on Apple silicon, macOS now does it. The remaining case is the extra control in Pro, and older Macs or older macOS versions Apple's feature does not cover.

Is AlDente free?

There is a free download with the charge limiter in it. Pro is separate, sold as a yearly subscription or a lifetime licence, with Setapp as a third route.

Does it work on Intel Macs?

Their supported range is stated by macOS version rather than by chip: Monterey through Tahoe from version 1.38, and Big Sur on the archived 1.37.3.

Does AlDente show which app is draining the battery?

That is not what the product is for, and it is not claimed on the pages we checked. For that question see what apps actually cost.