While most manufacturers proudly boast of giving you a battery life of 10+ hours for laptops, the reality is often different. So unless you carry a charger wherever you take your computer, you need clever ways to extend the battery life.
Luckily, when it comes to Windows, your options are seemingly endless. So, let’s look at them one by one.
1. Disable Bluetooth, Wi-Fi & Location
If you have to make do with a low Windows battery, reducing the amount of scanning and data sending your laptop performs will be in your best interest, even if it’s only temporarily.
While Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS location service are essential for most modern users, it’s no secret they also eat up tons of resources. Whenever enabled, they use transmitting and receiving devices critical for communication.
Therefore, disabling these features might be a good idea if you’re working with a weak battery. So,turn off your Bluetoothand Wi-Fi. And while you are at it, alsodisable the location services. You will notice a drop, however small, in your power consumption almost instantly.
2. Bring Down the Screen Brightness
A bright screen is fantastic for reading text, watching some great movies, and more. But it can also be hugely problematic on laptops, because the higher the brightness, the higher your PC’s power or battery consumption will be.
It’s similar to how using a powerful light or bulb in your home will leave you with a higher electricity bill.
Therefore, when you are in a squeeze for battery or power, your best for the time being will be to cut down the laptop screen brightness until you’re able to charge it again.
3. Stop Multitasking
Apart from being an absolute ruin for your attention, mental health, and work performance, multitasking isn’t beneficial for your laptop’s resources either—this becomes doubly true when you are stuck with low battery resources.
So, while there’s still no charger or appropriate power source in sight, close off all your behind-the-screen tasks, and work on one thing at a time. You will save yourself a lot of extra battery life this way.
4. Disable Any Unwanted or Unneeded Background Processes
If you have stopped multitasking, that’s great. However, it’s not enough.
Besides regular multitasking, Windows has many background processes that occupy your system resources. Like every other app or program, all of them eat up some of your computer’s battery or power.
While some of these processes might be necessary, we recommend you disable as many as you safely can until you plug a charger into your computer. If you’re not sure how to do that, check outhow to fix too many background processes running on a Windows PCfor more information.
Except for critical system processes, close as many third-party apps as possible. To identify a system process, follow the simple rough rule: if it looks complex, it’s a critical process and, therefore, should be avoided.
When you turn off pointless background processes, you will save yourself tons of battery life.
4. Use Windows' Battery Saver Mode
You don’t have to hack up all the solutions on your Windows. Microsoft provides its own in-built utility to help you save your battery, unsurprisingly called the battery saver mode.
Simply put, the battery saver is a mode of running Windows where your laptop disables programs that eat up excessive memory—it covers things such as live updates, inactive apps, etc.
There are multiple ways toenable a battery saver on your Windows. So give the linked guide a look and pick the method that suits you best.
5. Change the Power Plan to Balanced
Depending on what you want—a blazing performance, a longer battery life, or something totally unrelated—you can tweak the power plan on your Windows and get the desired result.
Since you are stuck with a low battery, we recommend you tweak your power plan to get the most out of this situation. Here’s how you can get started:
Follow the above steps, and your Windows will immediately be put into the balanced power mode. Do this, and you will get a long battery life.
In most cases, when you leave your laptop on for an extended period, Windows goes into sleep mode automatically. However, it would help if you had something a cut above when juggling things on a low battery. Hibernate mode is perfect for this.
While the Sleep mode saves your files and documents into RAM, Hibernate mode works differently by moving things straight to your hard disk. And so, the power consumption during hibernate mode is comparatively less.
Make sure you haveenabled the Hibernate feature on your Windows. Otherwise, you won’t be able to use it properly.
7. Tweak the Display or Graphics Settings
The better the display or graphics on your computer, the more you will enjoy using it. This intense display, however, comes with a trade-off: higher power consumption.
Since you’re in a pinch for battery life, we recommend toning down your display settings as another possible hack. Here’s how you can get started:
Bring Down the Refresh Rate
A high refresh rate improves your laptop’s display by lowering the flickering—at the cost of increased power consumption.
We recommend a lower refresh rate while you are stuck with a low battery. Here’s how:
The refresh rate will change as soon as you finish the above steps.
As we said above, while you will see an instant drop in the display quality, you can expect a boost in your battery life.
Reduce Video Playback Quality
If you are working on videos on a low battery, stop and do something else. But if you cannot do that for whatever reason, we recommend you cut down the video playback quality as much as possible.
Here’s how:
There will be a visible drop in the video quality. But, in exchange, you will have bought considerable battery life for your Windows.
Some Clever Tips to Run Your Laptop on a Weaker Battery
Running your Windows on a low battery is certainly not for the faint-hearted. Some resource mismanagement here, some missed battery life there, and you can quickly lose your work to a sudden shutdown.
Though nothing beats a full battery charge-up for best performance, the tips above are good enough to give you more uptime.
