Windows laptops are one of the most versatile breed of machines out there that have many use cases. Whatever the use case may be, one thing which every single user requires is a decent amount of battery life with their Windows laptop so that he/she can get his/her work done without always needing to plug in. If you are not having an ideal experience with the battery life of your laptop, we are here to help.
How to check apps consuming most battery in background?
Now, first of all, you need to check which apps are consuming the most battery on your Windows laptop. Some of the apps you install may be a battery hogger and can drain the battery quite quickly. To solve this issue, we first need to keep a check on which apps are draining the battery and then maybe even uninstall them. So here’s how you can do that:
- Head over to Settings > System > Battery Saver to see the overview of current battery life and other options. Under the Overview section, click the “See which apps are affecting your battery life” option.
- On this screen, you will be shown a list of apps which are draining the battery and the one at the top is your culprit.
- Tap on the apps one by one, so you can see how much battery power an App is using while running in the background. The more power an app uses in the background, the quicker your battery will drain. If you find apps that are wasting too much power, you can uncheck the option to let Windows choose when the app runs in the background.
- If you want to completely disable apps from running in the background, you can go to Settings > Privacy > Background Apps and turn off the toggle at the top.
Reduce Screen Brightness
Screen brightness plays an important role in power consumption as the higher the screen brightness, the more the power is consumed. So you can try to reduce the screen brightness of your laptop which will consume less battery. Here’s how to do it:
Click on the notification icon at the bottom right corner on the Windows Task Bar. Then use the brightness slider to reduce screen brightness.
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Change Sleep and Power settings
Sleep and Power settings can also affect the battery life of a Windows laptop as these settings determine when your laptop screen or its power state turns off automatically when not in use. The lesser the amount of time you keep them ON, the more battery life you save. Change these settings by following the steps below:
- Go to Settings > System and then Power & Sleep menu.
- On the right pane, you can use the drop-down menus to specify the Display Timeout and Sleep Timeout to improve battery life. Setting a value very low (such as 1 or 2 minutes) may hamper the experience so you the idea is to keep it between 5 to 10 minutes and definitely below the ‘hours’ timeframe.
Disabling Startup apps
Disabling some of the startup apps that you don’t use much can also save the battery life on your Windows laptop. These are the apps which boot up the same time when you turn on the laptop and can continue to run in the background, thereby draining battery. Here’s how to do that:
- Open the Windows Task Manager (you can do so by searching for it in the task bar)
- Now, click on the ‘Startup’ tab and then disable every app or service that you think is starting up unnecessarily on bootup. Click on the desired app and then tap the ‘Disable’ button at the bottom-right corner.
Change the Power mode
Changing the power mode of the Windows laptop can help the machine optimise the battery usage and use less power overall. To change the power mode, follow these steps:
- Click on the battery icon in the task bar
- Here you’ll find a slider to adjust between four options. One can go for ‘better performance’, ‘best performance’, ‘better battery life’ and ‘best battery life’.
Disable Keyboard backlight
Some of the laptops come with backlit keyboard and if you keep the light of the keyboard turned on at all times or keep it at high brightness, the backlighting of the keyboard can drain battery. These laptops are likely to have a ‘Function’ key to enable/disable the lights. One can also turn them off using the Windows Mobility Centre.
These were some of the improtant tips using which you can increase and optimise the battery life of your Windows laptop. While not every user would want to enable or disable these features, these tips are for those whose laptops are struggling to keep up with the workload their users are putting on them.