Battery Guardian is a forensic tool for macOS that detects counterfeit, reprogrammed, and spoofed MacBook batteries — instantly — no waiting.
macOS 10.14 Mojave or later · No installation required · MIT License
Aftermarket MacBook batteries often contain reprogrammed Texas Instruments gas gauge chips that lie about health, cycle count, and age. Your Mac has no way to know.
Battery Guardian reads raw data directly from the TI SBS gas gauge chip and runs eight independent forensic checks grounded in chip physics.
Real lithium cells always have slightly different capacities due to manufacturing variation. If every cell reports identical Qmax values, the data is hard-coded.
Catches hard-coded capacityTwo independent chip timers (TemperatureSamples and TotalOperatingTime) measure elapsed time through completely separate mechanisms. A discrepancy ≥20% means one counter was reset to hide the battery's real age.
Catches hidden ageThe chip records which cycle its last calibration ran on. If that cycle number exceeds the current cycle count, a calibration happened in the future — physically impossible without tampering.
Catches cycle counter resetsA genuine 3-cell MacBook pack can never drop below 9,000mV (3,000mV × 3 cells). A lower lifetime peak voltage means the chip originally lived inside a 2-cell phone or tablet battery.
Catches transplanted chipsTotalOperatingTime must increment continuously on any powered-on Mac. If this counter hasn't changed in 30+ hours between two scans, the firmware timer is disabled or spoofed.
Catches frozen firmwareThe most common firmware hack: setting Qmax[0] equal to the design capacity exactly. No genuine battery ever holds factory-spec capacity after more than a few cycles.
Catches lazy firmware hacksDepth of Discharge at zero equals Design Capacity. This combination is impossible in genuine Texas Instruments firmware and flags deliberate tampering.
Catches calibration tamperingAs real batteries age, chemical capacity (Qmax) diverges from usable capacity (FCC) due to impedance. Zero divergence at high cycle counts is physically impossible.
Catches missing impedance agingNo installation, no account, no data leaves your Mac.
Double-click to launch. Battery Guardian runs a local web server and opens in a native window. Nothing is installed system-wide.
The moment Battery Guardian opens, it reads your chip data via ioreg and runs all 8 forensic checks instantly. No buttons, no waiting.
Receive a GENUINE, SUSPICIOUS, or SPOOFED verdict with a detailed breakdown of every check and a 0–100 health score.
A single file. No installer. Unzip and double-click to run.
Works on any MacBook with macOS 10.14 Mojave or later.