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I bought one of these cheap no name USB-C cables that shows the current charging PD wattage on a tiny built in LCD. I have been using it for months to charge my Android phone and MacBook.

I recently bought a little used Yoga Thinkpad, I’m not really a Windows guy. On plugging just the cable into a USB port with nothing on the other end Windows made its little “device plugged in” ba-da-doop sound that Windows makes.

I didn’t see anything interesting in my quick scan of device manager but that single ba-da-doop stopped me from using my favorite cable cold turkey. I should investigate it further.



I bet it added a serial port (under Ports) that software can use to read the wattage.


That'd be wonderful and practical! Op, do you have a reference for your USB-C cable?


I use iStat Menus on macOS, and configure it such that it displays the MacBook power draw. It only works on Intel-based laptops; on the new ARM-based M1 MacBooks, that sensor no longer available. Probably a security thing (rowhammer?).

Such a cable would be very useful but your comment makes me think twice...


On Linux you can use `lsusb` to get a cleaner list of all connected USB devices.




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