How to increase Laptop Battery life?

Many people want their laptops to perform at their best, but if we want the best performance, that will eventually dry up the battery life faster. If you want to increase the battery life, all you need to do is modify some settings to increase the usage of your laptop. There is no fun in having to search your entire house to get a convenient socket nearby to charge the laptop. Below listed are some tips and tricks to improve your battery performance. Read the full article below and learn How to increase Laptop Battery life.

Using the Windows Performance Management Tool to increase Laptop Battery life.

The Windows performance management tool is a slider tool, ranging from best battery life to best performance. We can access it from the taskbar in Windows 10, but in Windows 11 we have to manually open it. Go to the settings-> system-> power and battery-> power mode. The slider aims to group all the factors that could affect the battery performance of the system into one. The Best Performance is for people who want speed and responsiveness over battery runtime.

The Better Battery mode improves your battery life by a considerable amount. There is another option Battery Saver, only visible when the laptop is not charging, this feature reduces the brightness by almost 30%, stops the Windows updates, halts the syncing of the applications in the background, and stops the functioning of apps in the background.

For a MacBook: Managing the Battery Settings on macOS to increase Laptop Battery life

If you are using up-to-date versions of macOS, they are having an extensive battery and power settings you can change to improve your battery life. We need to click on the Battery icon in the System Preferences, to modify the battery settings. The first change you can do is to adjust the “Turn display off after”, and set a time which will turn off your screen when it is idle. Tick the “Slightly dim the display while on battery power” button, and disable the “Enable Power Nap while on battery power” button to change the battery saving options. The power nap is a feature in which when your mac is asleep, the machine wakes up and starts checking for updates.

So this has to be disabled to make your device fully asleep until you choose to wake it up. There are also other battery-saving options like “optimize video streaming while on battery” for disabling the High Definition playback. some macs got the performance management tools just like the Windows.

Managing the Workflow to increase Laptop Battery life

If you are working on your laptop without it being plugged in, you can use it in more battery-conserving ways like working on a single app and closing all the other apps. And also switch on “Airplane Mode” if your work does not need any internet connection. The Airplane Mode reduces the background app usage, halts the updates, and pushes the notifications. Such background tasks consume a significant source of battery.

Limiting the access to the apps that consumes more power

There will be multiple inbuilt and downloaded apps on your laptop, which directly or indirectly consume a part of your battery. If we can limit or stop them from using the battery, we can improve our battery life. If you are on Windows 10, search for “See which apps are affecting your battery life” in the search bar. In Windows 11, you can get this list by going to Settings-> Battery usage-> Power and Battery settings. Once you are there make sure you close those apps which you do not use very often that consume more power, they could be anything that you have opened and forgotten about.

The next such thing is to search for apps that automatically start when you start Windows, some apps get started when you switch on the computer. In the Manager app, you can find all the applications that start running as soon as the laptop is switched on. In this setting, you will see every app that runs as soon as the PC is started. Some apps like “Download Assistant” and “Helper” are usually not required frequently, so you can disable them.

To stop such apps from consuming the battery in macOS, go to Users and Groups, then click the Login Items tab, the list of apps will appear and you can restrict the unwanted apps from getting started as soon as the PC is switched on.

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Graphics and Display settings

Many people buy laptops just to play games only or some are in fields of work that require powerful graphic processors. The problem with such apps is they consume heavy batteries to give out high performance. Many apps only use simple or single processors to work smoothly, but to run such heavy apps and games the processors need a simultaneous power supply or good battery backup to run smoothly. These powerful processors might be a reason for faster battery drain.

If your system uses processors like Nvidia GeForce graphics, open the control panel of that processor in the processor’s settings and change the frequency per second and maximum range of those processors to give out a good battery performance. We can also control the range of graphics we need for every app. On macOS go to the Battery preferences and make sure to check out the “Automatic Graphics Switching” option. We cannot control the range of graphics in macOS like in the Windows GeForce panel.

Good Airflow

The new Lithium-polymer batteries, which are installed in this generation of laptops, do not require heavy maintenance like the old generation laptops, thanks to the new developments in the software and firmware of the battery. The users no longer have to worry about damaging their battery if they are completely draining their battery and they need not have to perform a full battery discharge on a regular basis to improve their performance. The overheating of the battery due to excessive usage might affect its performance, So we need to control it in order to use it over the long term.

We need to give our laptop proper ventilation to let the heat out when it is working. We should not use it on a pillow or a blanket, which obstructs the ventilation fan and restrict the heat from going out, make sure you use it on surfaces like a table or desk which won’t flex and block airflow.

Conclusion

These are some of the ways in which we can improve our battery life, there are some more ways also like taking care of your battery’s health, reviewing the battery management settings, and if possible carrying a battery back up in conditions where there is no charging points are available.