Get the battery percentage back after a macOS update

You updated macOS, and now the battery number that used to sit in your menu bar is gone — just the plain icon remains. Nothing is broken; a past update reorganised where the setting lives, and the toggle simply switched off in the move. To bring it back, open System Settings → Control Center → Battery and turn Show Percentage back on.

Where the toggle went

The battery percentage option has moved around over the years, which is why it can vanish after an upgrade. On older macOS it lived in System Preferences → Dock & Menu Bar → Battery — and for a stretch of macOS Monterey the option disappeared entirely before Apple restored it. When Ventura replaced System Preferences with System Settings, that whole pane was reorganised, and the battery controls landed under Control Center. If your percentage went missing across an update, the setting didn't break; it relocated, and the checkbox came out of the migration turned off.

The good news is that the current home is stable. On macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia the toggle is in the same place, so once you switch it back on it stays on.

Restore it in Control Center settings

1. Open System Settings from the Apple menu.
2. Click Control Center in the sidebar — this is where the old Dock & Menu Bar options moved to.
3. Scroll to the Battery section.
4. Turn on Show Percentage.

The number reappears immediately, printed inside the battery icon at the right of the menu bar. No restart, no logout — the change takes effect as soon as you flip the switch.

If a script or profile keeps turning it off

Should the percentage refuse to stick — turning itself off again after each restart — the underlying preference may be getting overwritten. You can set it explicitly from the Terminal, which writes the exact value the toggle does:

# Restore the percentage, then relaunch Control Center
defaults write com.apple.controlcenter BatteryShowPercentage -bool true
killall ControlCenter

# Undo — hide it again
defaults write com.apple.controlcenter BatteryShowPercentage -bool false
killall ControlCenter

For nearly everyone the System Settings toggle is all you need; reach for the command only if the graphical switch isn't holding, which usually points to a management profile on work-managed Macs.

Other things updates like to reset

The battery percentage isn't the only preference an upgrade can quietly flip. If Control Center itself looks rearranged, our guide to customizing Control Center on Mac shows how to add, remove, and pin the modules you rely on.