How to Control Battery Usage in Windows 10

Authored by: Support.com Tech Pro Team

1. Introduction

Here's how to adjust certain settings in Windows to coax a few extra minutes (or even hours) of battery life from your PC in Windows 10

2. How to Control

Manage Battery Usage in Windows 10

In Windows 10, click the battery icon on the System Tray. The pop-up notification shows your current battery charge. To reduce the remaining drain on the battery, move the slider on the bar to the left until it snaps to the setting for Best battery life.

Depending on your current charge and the capacity of your battery, that could buy you an extra hour or two before the charge is depleted. Click the Battery settings link (or go to Settings > System > Battery) to dive into additional settings.

Enable the battery saver feature so your computer can automatically limit certain activities to preserve your battery charge. Click the drop-down menu and select when the battery saver should automatically turn on. Your best bet is to set it to 10% or 20%, but you can also have it set to Always. Check the box for Lower screen brightness while in battery saver. The next time the battery saver kicks in, your screen will dim.

Scroll down the page to see which applications chew up the most battery power during a typical day or week. By default, the list displays apps for the past 24 hours. Click the time period to change it to one week. You can then limit their use or tweak their settings. 

Click an app to see the percentage of battery usage that occurred in the foreground versus the background. If you see a higher percentage for the background, then the app is one you may want to close when you’re not actively using it and open it only when you need it.

To further control your battery usage, go to Settings > System > Power & sleep. Here, you set how long before your screen goes blank or your computer goes to sleep, both under battery power and when plugged in. The options range from one minute to never.

You’ll want your screen to turn off and your PC to go to sleep sooner when on battery power than when plugged in. Play around with the settings to see which ones work best during a typical day. If you want to preserve your battery charge, keep the settings for battery power on the low side, maybe an hour or two before your screen dims and two hours before your PC goes to sleep.