How to check your AirPods battery on a Mac

The quick answer

With your AirPods connected, click the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar (or open Control Center and click Bluetooth). Your AirPods appear with a battery level next to them. Hover or expand the entry to see left, right and case separately when the Mac has them.

No Bluetooth icon in your menu bar? Add it: System Settings › Control Center › Bluetooth › Show in Menu Bar.

Three more places to look

System Settings. While your AirPods are connected, they get their own entry in the System Settings sidebar, under your name. Click it and the battery levels for each bud and the case sit at the top of the pane.

The Batteries widget. Right-click the desktop (or open Notification Center), choose Edit Widgets, search for Batteries and add it. It shows your Mac, AirPods and other Apple accessories at a glance, without clicking anything.

Terminal. system_profiler prints what the Bluetooth stack knows about every connected device:

system_profiler SPBluetoothDataType | grep -E "Battery Level|:$"

      Connected:
          AirPods Pro:
              Case Battery Level: 40%
              Left Battery Level: 80%
              Right Battery Level: 76%
          Magic Mouse:
              Battery Level: 64%

The grep keeps section headers, device names and battery lines and drops the rest (address, firmware, services). Run it without the grep to see everything. It takes a second or two, because system_profiler asks bluetoothd for a full report.

For Apple mice, keyboards and trackpads there is also a faster IORegistry read:

ioreg -r -l -k BatteryPercent | grep -E '"(Product|BatteryPercent)" ='

When the numbers look wrong

• Case shows nothing: put one bud in the case, open the lid near the Mac, and check again. The case has no radio of its own to keep reporting from inside your bag.
• Levels lag behind your iPhone: macOS only updates when the AirPods send a new reading. Taking one out and putting it back usually forces one.
• AirPods connected to iPhone, not the Mac: the Mac won’t show their battery. Automatic switching hands them between devices; pick the Mac in the Bluetooth menu to connect.
• Bluetooth menu is empty or slow: bluetoothd may be stuck. Toggling Bluetooth off and on in Control Center restarts the connection. If you’re curious what that process does, see bluetoothd.

Check the battery from your iPhone or Watch instead

If your AirPods are paired to the same Apple Account, the Batteries widget on your iPhone shows them too, and it often has a fresher case reading because the iPhone sees the case lid open. On Apple Watch, swipe up for Control Center and tap the battery percentage; connected AirPods appear below the watch’s own level. Neither needs the AirPods to be connected to your Mac at that moment, which makes them a quick sanity check when the Mac’s numbers look stale.

Make the battery last

AirPods Pro and recent AirPods have Optimized Battery Charging, which delays charging past 80% when it learns your routine. It’s on by default and set from the AirPods settings on your iPhone. Active Noise Cancellation and Spatial Audio with head tracking also cost runtime; switching to Transparency or off on a long call helps.

Seeing it in your menu bar

Stat Space has a Devices tab that lists every connected Bluetooth device with its battery, including AirPods left, right and case, plus signal strength. You can pin a Bluetooth device to Home, and turn on connect and disconnect notifications that post even with the popover closed. Opening the tab never triggers a prompt. The full paired list and connect/disconnect buttons appear once you allow Bluetooth access from the tab.

It shows what macOS reports, so the case-level caveat above applies there too.