One of the biggest perks of having a laptop instead of a PC is that you don’t have to be stuck next to a wall socket. Yet I used to carry my charger everywhere because my laptop could barely last a few hours on a single charge. I used to spend more time worrying about the battery running out than the actual work.
So I decided to dive deep into Windows power settings and see if I could squeeze out more life without sacrificing performance. And sure enough, a few thoughtful tweaks made all the difference. I went from obsessively watching the battery percentage to comfortably leaving my charger at home.
Choose the right power mode and fine-tune sleep settings
Let your laptop shift into the right gear automatically
One of the simplest ways to stretch the battery life is to pick the power mode that matches what you’re doing. Windows includes power modes that let you prioritize performance, maximize battery life, or choose a balanced setting that gives you a bit of both.
What makes these modes even more useful is that Windows can automatically switch between them based on whether the device is plugged in or running on battery. Head to Settings > System > Power & battery > Power mode and set your laptop to switch to Best Power Efficiency when it is running on battery.
In the same menu, head to Screen, sleep & hibernate timeouts, and set Windows to turn the screen off and enter sleep mode sooner. Windows recommends setting these to 3 minutes to save energy. This way, your laptop will automatically turn off the display and go to sleep mode when you step away.
Set graphics preference for apps and limit background usage
Give power-hungry apps boundaries
Not every app on your PC needs access to your laptop’s full graphical muscle. Windows lets you decide exactly how much power each app is allowed to use. This is especially helpful if you have a laptop with both integrated and dedicated graphics.
Head to Settings > System > Display > Graphics, and you’ll see a list of apps. From there, you can assign your browser, note-taking app, and video player to always use the integrated GPU. Meanwhile, apps like Adobe Premiere Pro, Blender, or modern games should stay on the dedicated GPU so they can stretch their legs.
Another thing you can do to stop apps from wasting more power is to limit their background usage. Head to Settings > Apps > Installed apps, click the three-dot icon next to any app that shouldn’t be running in the background and select Advanced options. Click the Background app permissions drop-down menu and choose Never. Repeat this for every app that doesn’t have a good reason to run in the background.
If you don’t want to limit background app usage for each app, head to the battery usage menu to see which apps are consuming the most power.
Lowering the brightness and refresh rate
Trim screen power
If there’s one thing that affects the battery’s life more than anything, it’s the display. This also means even a small adjustment can do wonders for the battery life. If your laptop supports high refresh rates, for instance, it’s quite helpful for gaming or creative work. However, you don’t need that higher refresh rate for writing documents, reading emails, or taking notes.
Head to Settings > System > Display > Advanced display and select a lower refresh rate. Dropping it to 60Hz will still feel perfectly fine for browsing, writing, or watching videos, and it’ll help the battery last longer.
Brightness is another easy win. Unlike phones, most Windows laptops can’t automatically adjust screen brightness based on your surroundings, which means you need to take care of it manually. Even dialing the brightness by one or two levels can shave off a noticeable amount of power use.
Enable browser’s power saving mode
Tame your browser
I don’t know about you, but most of what I do on my laptop happens inside a browser. That makes it a prime target for optimization. The good thing is that most browsers come with built-in power-saving features that can keep things running smoothly without draining your battery dry.
For instance, you can set up Chrome to activate the Energy Saver mode when your laptop is unplugged. This limits the background activity and reduces certain visual effects. Edge offers something similar with its Efficiency Mode, which is designed to preserve as much battery life as possible.
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Use Windows’ energy recommendations
One-click solution
If you ever feel overwhelmed by all the different power settings scattered throughout Windows, there’s a shortcut that points you in the right direction. Head to Settings > System > Power & battery > Energy recommendations, and you’ll see a list of suggestions to save power.
Some of the tips here will look familiar since we’ve already covered the big ones. Still, you can go ahead and use suggestions like switching to dark mode, turning off the screen saver, or stopping USB devices when the screen is off. You can also hit the Apply all button at the top to implement every suggested change at once.
All the optimizations should surely make your laptop last longer. Of course, your laptop’s battery health also plays a big role. Mine sits at around 90%, so it should hold up for another year. If yours has degraded significantly, though, replacing it will give you by far the biggest improvement.
