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WINDOWS 11

By Lance Whitney • Comment about this article

Frustrated because your Windows laptop runs out of juice at the worst possible times? There are ways to better sustain your battery charge.

One of the best laptops I ever owned was a Lenovo ThinkPad T460 back in 2016. One major reason why I liked this machine was its dual-battery setup. Packed with both an internal battery and an external swappable battery, this unit easily delivered a solid 12 hours of life on a single charge.

Sadly, those days are gone. With Lenovo and most other laptop makers obsessed with making machines as thin and light as possible, battery life has suffered dramatically. With my current laptop, I’m lucky to get five hours of life on a single charge. That’s fine if I’m at home or in a place where I can plug the computer into AC. But if I’m in one spot for hours, with no handy electrical outlet, then my battery charge can easily run out.

To keep my laptop revved up, I turn to a variety of tools and tricks. In Windows 11, I can set up a specific power mode when on battery power. I can determine when the screen should turn off and when my PC should go to sleep. I can also take advantage of a battery saver and see which apps are chewing up the most power.

Here are a few ways to preserve the battery charge on a Windows 11 laptop so you don’t run out of juice at the worst possible time. If you want to play along, unplug your laptop from the AC and follow my steps.

To view your current battery status, hover over the battery icon in the Windows 11 System Tray. You should see both the percentage and the number of hours and minutes remaining on the current charge. Here, there are a couple of things you can do to preserve the charge.

Click the battery icon to display the pop-up menu. Move the slider on the brightness level to the left, to lower the brightness and thereby chew up less of a charge. The trick here is to reduce the brightness enough to make a difference, but not so much that you have trouble seeing the screen.

Alternatively, click the Battery saver icon to activate Battery saver mode. This automatically lowers the brightness to a specific level, disables certain background tasks, and takes other actions to preserve the charge.

Figure 1: From the battery System Tray menu, decrease the brightness or turn on Battery saver.

You can do a lot more through the settings screen for Power & battery. To get there quickly, right-click on the battery System Tray icon and select Power and sleep settings. Otherwise, go to Settings | System | Power & battery.

The Power & battery screen displays the percentage of the current charge for your battery, the estimated amount of time left before the charge is depleted, and the levels from each hour over the past 24 hours. The Battery levels graph can be helpful in identifying the peaks and valleys of your battery charge, based on when it’s plugged in and when it’s not.

Figure 2: The Power & battery screen will indicate your current charge, time remaining, and a 24-hour history of your charges.

Next, Windows 11 serves up some energy recommendations (Figure 3). These are designed to lower the carbon footprint of your laptop. But in so doing, they can help keep your battery charge alive. Click the setting for Energy recommendations. The next screen displays each suggestion — such as setting the screen brightness for best efficiency, putting your device to sleep after a certain number of minutes, and turning off the screen after a set number of minutes.

Figure 3: You can apply any or all of the recommendations for energy efficiency and battery charge.

If you want to put all the recommendations into play, click the Apply all button at the top. Otherwise, click the Apply button next to each recommendation that you want to try.

In choosing which ones to apply, measure how much of your battery charge you want to preserve versus how easily you need to use your laptop. Setting the brightness too low would make it difficult to see the screen. Putting your laptop to sleep or turning off the screen too frequently could interfere with your current work. You may have to go through some trial and error to find the right balance.

Scroll down to the Power section and click the option for Screen and sleep. Here, you can more precisely control when to turn off the screen and put your laptop to sleep, whether on battery or when plugged in. Again, you’ll want to balance energy use with convenience.

By clicking the drop-down menu for each of the four options, you can choose anywhere from 1 minute to Never. On my laptop, I typically set the screen to turn off after 1 hour on battery and 4 hours on AC, and to go to sleep after 2 hours on battery and 5 hours on AC.

Figure 4: Determine when to turn off the screen and put your laptop to sleep — on battery or when plugging in.

You can also select certain preset modes to control your power usage more quickly. Click the drop-down menu next to Power mode and choose between Best power efficiency, Balanced, and Best performance. For example, if you’re running low on battery charge, you’ll want to choose Best power efficiency. If you’re using AC, then you can try Balanced or Best Performance.

Figure 5: Choose among Best power efficiency, Balanced, and Best performance to control your energy use.

Scroll down to the Battery section (Figure 6) and select the option for Battery saver. Click the Turn on now button to activate Battery saver immediately. Click the drop-down menu for Turn battery saver on automatically, and set the interval for when it should automatically kick in. Usually, 20% is a good choice.

Figure 6: Control and customize the battery saver option, based on your preferences.

Next, turn the switch for Lower screen brightness when using battery saver to on or off. If you have trouble seeing the screen when it’s too dim, turn this switch off. Battery saver will then use other methods to preserve the charge, such as reducing or disabling certain background processes. This isn’t as effective as dimming the screen but should prove easier on the eyes.

To see additional details, click the option for Battery usage (Figure 7). The graph shows the battery levels for each hour of the last 24 hours. Click the drop-down box, and you can change the results to the last seven days. These graphs can be helpful in revealing a history of your charge levels.

Figure 7: View the charge levels for the last 24 hours or last 7 days.

Scroll further down the screen to see which apps have been chewing up your battery charge. By default, the list displays the worst offenders at the top. Click the Sort by box and sort the view to see apps in use, apps as they run in the background, or apps by name. You can also search for a specific app to see its battery use. Pay attention to the apps listed at the top for overall usage, as those are ones you might want to avoid or shut down when your charge is getting low.

Figure 8: Check out the list of battery usage by app to see which ones chew up the most power.

Beyond extending your current battery charge, you also want to try to preserve your battery’s overall capacity and life. Toward that end, here’s a way to see how your battery is faring over time. Open a command prompt by typing cmd at in the Search field. At the command prompt, type the following:

The report is placed in an HTML file (usually battery-report.html), and the response from the command gives you the path to that file. Open the report with your browser and scroll down through the details. The sections on Recent usage, Usage history, and Battery life estimates can show you how your battery capacity is holding up and whether it’s diminishing more rapidly than usual.

Figure 9: The battery report provides details on your battery charges and capacity.

Windows 11 still includes the old Control Panel applet for Power Options, giving you additional settings to customize. Open Control Panel in icon view and click the icon for Power Options. Click the first link on the left for Choose what the power buttons do. Here, you can choose which buttons to press on your laptop to put the PC to sleep or turn off the display. When done, click Save changes. Note that which buttons are displayed here depends upon your physical hardware — if you don’t have a sleep button, it won’t be mentioned.

Figure 10: Choose what pressing certain buttons on your laptop will do.

You’re also able to create and set up your own power plan. Click the link for Create a power plan in the Power Options control panel.

Figure 11: Create a custom power plan with your own settings.

Select one of the three choices — Balanced, Power saver, or High performance — then click Next. Set the minutes or hours at which to turn off the display and put the computer to sleep on battery and when plugged in. When finished, click Create to save your new plan. Your new plan is then available to activate whenever you need it.

If you’ve tweaked all or most of the battery-saving features in Windows 11 and still often run out of power, one other option is to use an external power bank. Such chargers can give your battery just enough juice to keep it running for at least a couple more hours.

The only downsides are that you have to periodically charge the charger itself, and you have to lug it around with you when you’re out and about. But I use a charger with my current laptop, and it does come in handy. To find a good charger, run a search at Amazon for “external power bank” or “external power charger.” Look for ones from vendors such as Anker, Baseus, and Mophie that have earned a solid four or five stars in customer ratings.

Preventing today’s breed of laptops from running out of battery power too quickly can be a challenge. I do get frustrated if I’m using my laptop for just a few hours and see the charge level getting lower and lower. But by turning to certain battery-saving settings in Windows 11, at least you can delay the inevitable and keep your laptop alive just that extra bit longer.

Contribute your thoughts in this article’s forum!

Lance Whitney is a freelance technology reporter and former IT professional. He’s written for CNET, TechRepublic, PC Magazine, and other publications. He’s authored a book on Windows and another about LinkedIn.

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