How to make your battery last longer 3 BATTERY USE
1 OPEN BATTERY SAVER
Battery Saver extends battery life by enabling you to limit background activity, and offers further access to different system settings and useful battery usage reports so you can identify your system’s energy hogs. To access the feature, select ‘Settings’ from the Start menu, choose ‘System’ and then ‘Battery’ from the side column.
2 BATTERY SAVER OPTIONS
The Battery window is split into two — ‘Overview’ shows your current battery level and whether it’s charging or draining, while ‘Battery Saver’ shows whether the feature is on or off, at what level the battery should be allowed to fall to before it is activated. Now, go ahead and select the ‘Battery usage by app’ option in the ‘Overview’ section.
This window offers a breakdown of battery usage across recently-run apps, giving you an idea of what apps you should avoid using when you’re not within easy reach of a power outlet. You can break the list down into Store apps or all installed apps, select a time period, or click individual apps to get a precise look at how much battery they’ve consumed.
4 BACKGROUND APPS
Click the top-left arrow twice to return to the main Settings screen, then head to ‘Privacy > Background apps’. From here, you can choose which apps can receive information, send notifications and stay up-to-date in the background when you’re not using them. Turn off any non-essential items to conserve power.
5 CUSTOMISE BATTERY SAVER
Head back to ‘Settings > System > Battery’. From here, enable ‘Battery Saver’ and choose the battery level that triggers the feature. You can also choose whether to allow the screen brightness to be dimmed. Users of pre-Anniversary Edition Windows 10 can also click the plus button to ’Add an app’ and exempt it from these settings and run as normal.
6 POWER & SLEEP
Now select ‘Power & sleep’ from the side column. Here you can quickly reduce the amount of time that your laptop sits idle before the screen automatically switches off — select the number of minutes from the dropdown menu under ‘Screen’. The quicker it turns off, the more battery you’ll save. Under ‘Sleep’, choose how long it takes before your PC naps.
7 ADDITIONAL POWER SETTINGS
At the bottom of the ‘Power & sleep’ screen, under ‘Related settings’, you’ll see a link to ‘Additional power settings’. This opens the ‘Power Options’ panel which offers you more control over energy usage. A collection of defined hardware and system settings is called a ‘power plan’. Select a pre-defined plan, tweak its settings, or create your own from scratch.
8 PICK A POWER PLAN
Choose the pre-defined Power saver plan to eke out as much time from your battery as possible. To make the plan even more unforgiving, click ‘Change plan settings’ and under ‘On battery’, further reduce the time it takes before the display turns off and your PC goes to sleep. For more control, click ‘Change advanced battery settings’ to adjust other system behaviours.
9 ADVANCED SETTINGS
Click the plus symbols to adjust options in the Advanced settings window. Choose ‘Maximum Power Saving’ mode in the dropdown menu, and set your hard disk to sleep when it’s not in use. Pause the ‘Slide show’ in Desktop background settings and enable adaptive brightness. Finally, choose what Windows should do when power is all but depleted, under ‘Critical battery action’.
10 FINAL STEPS
Once you’ve applied power plan settings, you’re all set. To activate power-saving mode, click the battery icon in Windows’ desktop notifications bar and hit the ‘Battery saving’ tile. If you have more than one plan for different usage scenarios and want to switch between them from the desktop on the fly, download and install Power Scheme Switcher from goo.gl/4rf4ZX.