All-or-nothing isn't always right
Shake It On has always had a "Pause when on battery" toggle. Useful, but binary — the moment you unplug, shaking stops, even if you have 90% battery and 5 hours of work left.
The battery threshold sub-toggle gives you a middle ground. Stay awake on battery while charge is healthy; stand down when it gets low.
Set up a threshold
- Open Settings (menu bar → Settings…).
- Scroll to Paused When.
- Turn on On battery.
- An indented sub-toggle appears: Only below threshold. Turn it on.
- Use the slider to pick a percentage (5–95% in 5% steps).
Now Shake It On only pauses when the Mac is on battery AND the charge is below your threshold.
Picking a threshold
- 20% — the conservative answer. Match macOS's built-in low-power notification threshold.
- 30% — a generous "I want to land safely" buffer. Pause early so you have time to find an outlet.
- 50% — half-and-half. Stay awake for the first half of battery life, then start respecting the laptop's own power management.
- 10% — "fight to the end". Stay awake until there's almost nothing left.
How battery level is read
Shake It On reads battery state via macOS's IOKit Power Sources framework — the same source Activity Monitor and the menu-bar battery indicator use. The reported number matches whatever the system shows at the top right of your menu bar.
On Macs without a battery (Mac mini, Mac Studio, iMac), the toggle is harmless — there's nothing for it to detect, so it never triggers a pause.
When the binary toggle is better
Some scenarios where you want the basic "On battery → pause" with no threshold:
- You're traveling and explicitly want minimum battery drain.
- You only ever use Shake It On at your desk, plugged in.
- You're protecting an aging battery and want to never drain it for keep-awake purposes.
For all of those, leave the threshold sub-toggle off; the original "On battery" toggle behaves the same as before.