How to Control Battery Usage in Windows 11

Authored by: Support.com Tech Pro Team

1. Clone of 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 11.

2. Clone of How to Control

Manage Battery Usage in Windows 11

 If you’re using Windows 11, click the battery icon on the System Tray. The number in the bottom-left corner displays the current battery charge. Reducing the screen brightness goes a long way toward preserving your charge. Move the slider on the bar to the left to a level that dims the screen but still allows you to see and use it clearly enough.

Click the Battery saver button to turn on battery saver mode. You can further manage battery and power settings if you right-click on Battery saver and choose Go to Settings (or open Settings > System > Power & battery)

The Power & battery screen shows the current charge for your battery, the estimated amount of time left before the charge is depleted, and the level over the past 24 hours. Click Screen and sleep and choose how long before the screen turns off and the computer goes to sleep, on both battery power and when plugged in. Click the drop-down menu next to Power mode and choose between power efficiency, performance, or balanced.

Under the Battery section, click Battery saver to customize the feature. You can click Turn on now to activate it immediately. Otherwise, use the drop-down menu to set a specific value for when the Battery saver should be used. This can be set to Never or Always, but consider a percentage of 10% or 20%. Enable the switch next to Lower screen brightness when using battery saver to dim the screen when battery saver mode goes into effect.

Click Battery usage to view the battery levels for the past 24 hours or 7 days. You can also see which apps have chewed up the most battery power when running in the foreground and background. By default, the list displays apps for the past 24 hours. Use the drop-down menu in the top-right corner to change the time period to 7 days. You can then limit their use or tweak their settings. 

For each app, check the percentage of battery usage that occurred in the foreground versus the background. If you see a higher percentage for the background, then you can probably close that app when it’s not actively in use.