Battery Status API

The Battery Status API, more often referred to as the Battery API, provides information about the system's battery charge level and lets you be notified by events that are sent when the battery level or charging status change. This can be used to adjust your app's resource usage to reduce battery drain when the battery is low, or to save changes before the battery runs out in order to prevent data loss.

The Battery Status API extends window.navigator with a navigator.getBattery() method returning a battery promise, which is resolved in a BatteryManager object providing also some new events you can handle to monitor the battery status.

Example

In this example, we watch for changes both to the charging status (whether or not we're plugged in and charging) and for changes to the battery level and timing. This is done by listening for the chargingchange, levelchange, chargingtimechange, dischargingtimechange events.

navigator.getBattery().then(function(battery) {
  function updateAllBatteryInfo(){
    updateChargeInfo();
    updateLevelInfo();
    updateChargingInfo();
    updateDischargingInfo();
  }
  updateAllBatteryInfo();

  battery.addEventListener('chargingchange', function(){
    updateChargeInfo();
  });
  function updateChargeInfo(){
    console.log("Battery charging? "
                + (battery.charging ? "Yes" : "No"));
  }

  battery.addEventListener('levelchange', function(){
    updateLevelInfo();
  });
  function updateLevelInfo(){
    console.log("Battery level: "
                + battery.level * 100 + "%");
  }

  battery.addEventListener('chargingtimechange', function(){
    updateChargingInfo();
  });
  function updateChargingInfo(){
    console.log("Battery charging time: "
                 + battery.chargingTime + " seconds");
  }

  battery.addEventListener('dischargingtimechange', function(){
    updateDischargingInfo();
  });
  function updateDischargingInfo(){
    console.log("Battery discharging time: "
                 + battery.dischargingTime + " seconds");
  }

});

See also the example in the specification.

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
Battery Status API	Candidate Recommendation	Initial definition

Browser compatibility

[1] Disabled by default in Firefox 10.0, but can be enabled setting the preference dom.battery.enabled to true. Starting with Firefox 11.0, mozBattery is enabled by default. The Battery API is currently supported on Android, Windows, and Linux with UPower installed. Support for MacOS is available starting with Gecko 18.0 (Firefox 18.0 / Thunderbird 18.0 / SeaMonkey 2.15). Firefox also provides support for the deprecated navigator.battery.

[2] Values for BatteryManager.chargingTime and BatteryManager.dischargingTime are always equal to Infinity.

[3] The new promise-based syntax for Navigator.getBattery() is supported from Firefox 43 onwards.

[4] From Firefox 52 onwards, the Battery Status API is only available in chrome/privileged code.

See also

• Retrieving battery status information - demo & article
• Hacks blog post - Using the Battery API