gfxCardStatus is a menu bar application for OS X that allows users of 15” and 17” late 2008 — 2012 MacBook Pros to view which GPU is in use at a glance, and switch between them on-demand.
As shown above, gfxCardStatus also lets you choose whether to use integrated, discrete or dynamic graphics depending on the power source.
On a Retina Macbook Pro, I’m getting over eight hours of battery life using the integrated-only option (as opposed to around six when using the standard dynamic switching).
