Take the power back

1 USE POWER & SLEEP SETTINGS

In Windows 10, pop up the Start menu and type “power”, and look for ‘Power & sleep’ in System Settings. Click on this, and a window will appear enabling you to alter the settings. Choose how long you’d like to leave your PC idle before it goes to sleep or turns off its screen. If you have a laptop, you can have different settings for battery power or when plugged in.

2 ADDITIONAL POWER SETTINGS

Click the ‘Additional power settings’ link to be taken to the Power Options window. Here, you can choose between Windows’ preset power plans: Balanced, High performance and Power saver. If you’re playing games or editing video, you’ll want High performance. If you’re trying to eke out every last bit of battery life, choose Power saver. Most people should choose Balanced.

3 ADVANCED POWER SETTINGS

Click ‘Change plan settings’ on any plan to be taken to a new screen, then click ‘Change advanced power settings’. An options window will appear. The most interesting items here are probably ‘Power buttons’ and ‘lid’ which changes what the PC does when its power button is pressed or its lid is closed. ‘Multimedia settings’ lets you set the level of processing power used for video playback.

4 PROCESSOR POWER MANAGEMENT

You can also tinker with the settings for your processor’s power management. Intel and AMD make a lot of their CPUs’ ability to manage their own speeds and power consumption, so only do this if you know what you’re doing. If you do, you can set the maximum processor frequency and change other settings from the ‘Advanced settings’ window. Proceed with caution.

5 IN WINDOWS 7

If you’re still using Windows 7, you’ll find it has a similar approach to power management, but the settings for it are in a different place. You’ll find the options in ‘Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options’, or you can search for “power settings”. You’ll see the same three power plans as Windows 10, and you can click through to the ‘Advanced settings’ window, too.

6 CUSTOM PLAN

If any of the three built-in plans aren’t to your taste, you can either change them or create a new one. To change existing plans, use the ‘Change plan settings’ link to the right of the plans in the Power Options window. Your choices are limited to screen timeout and how long it takes for the computer to enter sleep mode, unless you want to tinker with the Advanced settings.

7 CREATE YOUR PLAN

At the left of the Power options window in Windows 10, you’ll see a link marked ‘Create a power plan’. Click it, and you’ll be asked to select one of the three existing plans to use as a template, and to give your new plan a name. Click Next, and the display off/PC sleep time drop-downs appear, so you can choose how long your PC will stay on. Click Create to save your new plan.

8 RESTORE DEFAULTS

You can tinker with any of the power plans, and make some deep changes using the Advanced settings, but there’s always a way back, whether you’ve been fiddling with a built-in plan or a custom one. At the bottom of the Edit Plan Settings window, there’s a link marked ‘Restore default settings for this plan’. Clicking it does exactly what you’d expect.