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TUAW's Daily Mac App: UnPlugged

by Samuel Gibbs Jul 4th 2011 at 3:00PM

UnPlugged notification

The Magsafe is a fantastic innovation, but it has made it slightly easier to disconnect your Mac from the AC outlet by accident without realising it. UnPlugged is a little free utility that notifies you via Growl when the power cord is disconnected.

Now it's true that if you're running a portable Mac the screen is set to dim automatically on battery power by default, plus the power icon in the menu bar is set to change between a battery symbol to one with a AC plug. But if you happen to be running your Mac solely with an external display, it could be easy to miss the warning signs that you're now running on battery power.

UnPlugged runs in the background keeping out of your way till its called upon. It'll also display updates on charge status, notifying you on changes in power percentage intervals, which you can set with a slider from 1% to 50%.

Just like apps like DiskAlarm, UnPlugged doesn't do anything that Mac OS X doesn't do for you already, but it does make it more obvious and could be the alert you need to keep you from running out of juice when you thought you were plugged in.

If you need a simple power notifier, give UnPlugged a whirl and download it for free from the Mac App Store.



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The Magsafe is a fantastic innovation, but it has made it slightly easier to disconnect your Mac from the AC outlet by accident...
 

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11 Comments

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Joshua Jackson

Another vote for HardwareGrowler. So many more features, like notifications whenever you plug in any USB hardware.

It also shows you whether you are plugged in and charging, or just plugged in and running on AC.

July 05 2011 at 12:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Joshua Jackson's comment
JKT

I don't understand why you need to be alerted when hardware is plugged into your Mac. Didn't you just go out of your way to perform that plugging? How could you possibly NOT know that it's been plugged in?
Meanwhile, it very much is possible (and actually common) to not know your MagSafe connecter has fallen out, and that is what Unplugged is all about. So I think you're missing the point of this article.

July 07 2011 at 1:10 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jak33@mac.com

I'm pretty sure that if you are running solely on an external display, it shuts off when the power cord is unplugged.

July 05 2011 at 9:31 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
redrocklobster

Or try OmniGrowl, which also does this and much, much more: news, weather, iCal events, etc. It's one of the best apps I have.

http://www.woodenbrain.com/products/omnigrowl/omnigrowl.html

July 05 2011 at 7:52 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to redrocklobster's comment
JKT

I don't want news and weather, I want to be told my MagSafe connector has been pulled out. Why can't we have a utility that does one thing well instead of jack-of-all-trades app that do none of them well?

July 07 2011 at 1:11 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Adrian von Gegerfelt

When someone steps on my wire, the screen dims a bit, and the battery icon changes from "charing" to the battery indicator. If I unplug a USB device, it's not longer connected to the computer. I don't need anything else.

What's next, a Growl notification to tell you when the computer is turned off?

July 05 2011 at 7:13 AM Report abuse -1 rate up rate down Reply
tatonka8181

Really could have used this tool when my power brick died a couple month back and would switch off without warning. In combination with the horrendous battery (late 2007 MBP, worst battery ever) this led to more then one nasty powerout.
I solved the problem with a bash script and a cronjob at the time (well until I got around to buy a new power brick).

T.

PS: Hardwaregrowl looks good. Thanks for the tip.

July 05 2011 at 2:08 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
D R

My MacBookPro already notifies me immediately when I accidentally pull the power cord. It goes to sleep immediately because it can't power the external display hooked up to it...

July 05 2011 at 1:52 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
AngryPete718

Install Growl and HardwareGrowler is free. Its apart of all my machines. Plus is warns you about everything that is connecting and disconnecting on your mac. There is a hack to disable the dock icon which is useful also.

July 04 2011 at 4:19 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
Geoffrey Wiseman

I use HardwareGrowler for this purpose as well, and definitely recommend it.

July 04 2011 at 3:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
miguelpontes

HardwareGrowler (http://growl.info/documentation/hardwaregrowler.php) is one of the first things I install in any Mac I own. It does what UnPlugged do, plus so many more other useful hardware notifications, like network connection dropping, USB drives plugging in, etc.

To me, it's absolutely essential.

July 04 2011 at 3:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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