How To Significantly Improve Battery Life In Windows 10

Battery life is something we’ve always struggled with since computers became portable. With the release of Windows 10 Microsoft has introduced new features to help users get better battery life out of their devices. If you have upgraded recently to Windows 10 or have purchased a new device with Windows 10 installed here are some features and tips to get the most out of the battery life.

How To Significantly Improve Battery Life In Windows 10

The first thing you are going to want to go into is the “Power & sleep” settings. To do this just type in “Power & sleep” in the search bar.

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Here you can set when your screen turns off and when your PC goes to sleep. This is great for laptops and tablets because if you happen to walk away for a while your system can reserve power this way.

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At the bottom of the “Power & sleep” settings you will see “Related settings” and under that “Additional power settings” click on that.

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This will open the “Power Options” control panel. This screen may be familiar to anyone who has used Windows 7 or 8.1 in the past. Here you can set and customize a power plan. There should also be a few preset power plans, choose one that best suits your needs.

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A new feature in Windows 10 is the Battery saver. To open Battery saver just type “Battery saver” in the search box and select it. When the window comes up it will give you an overview of how much battery you have left.

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If you click on “Battery use” you can see what parts of your system and the apps that are using the most battery. If you see some random applications that you rarely use in this list they might be running in the background.

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If you click on “Change background app settings” you can choose which applications run in the background. You should turn off applications that you rarely use.

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If you go back into the “Battery use” screen and click on “Change battery saver settings” you will be able to fine tune the Battery saver, which will lower the brightness of your screen and not allow notifications from apps. You have the ability to set the battery percentage at which the battery level is at for Battery saver to turn on. It is set at 20% by default. You also have the ability to add an app that will always be able to run in the background when battery saver is on. You are going to want to make sure the first and third boxes are checked in the screen.

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The Battery saver can also be toggled on and off using the shortcut in the action center. This is something you might want to toggle when you are taking a call or plan to walk away from your PC.

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Those are the main features in Windows 10 that you can use to improve your battery life. Here are a few more tips though.

Turn off WiFi and Bluetooth: You can also toggle this in the Action Center by clicking on Airplane Mode tile.

Disconnect any devices: Have a dongle or USB device attached? It is going to need power. If you are not using these devices disconnect them until you need them.

Turn down screen brightness: We’ve gone over the different power plans, but you can always modify one with a lower screen brightness to save power. Also you can manually turn the brightness down on your device.

Only run applications you need: Do not have a bunch of applications running at once if they don’t need to be. A perfect example of this would be music and videos, why not use your smartphone for this instead?

Choose a darker wallpaper: Colors such as white and red increase the power usage of your display. The best solution would be to use an all black background, but if you don’t want something that boring just choose something darker.

We hope this guide has helped you increase your battery life when using Windows 10. Be sure to check out our guides on How To Unlock Windows 10 God Mode & How to Delete the Windows.old Folder in Windows 10.

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