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16 Tips to Make Your Laptop Battery Last Longer

Battery life is the most important factor you should consider when buying a new laptop. If your laptop goes dead frequently then it will not be able to carry out all tasks that you want it to do.

The solution lies in taking care of your battery. Here are some tips which might help you get more juice out of your laptop’s battery.

1. Adjust the Power Plan

Change your power plan settings to increase battery life on Windows 10/8/7 laptops and desktops.

Follow these steps: Open Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > Change plan settings (for the selected power plan) > Change advanced power settings. Under “Battery”, set Display, Sleep, and USB settings as per your preference.

These changes save lots of juice for you by reducing screen brightness, putting hard disk drives to sleep whenever possible, limiting background activity, etc.

2. Turn down Screen Brightness

Reducing a laptop’s screen brightness is one of the best ways to save battery life. You can do this easily by going into Power Option from Control Panel or changing the setting manually in your Power Management Properties.

You can also reduce screen brightness by going to Brightness Settings under Display Settings in the Control Panel.

3. Disable USB and Bluetooth (when not in use)

If you are not using a USB or Bluetooth mouse, keyboard, or other accessories then it’s best to disable them when not in use.

You simply need to go to Device Manager from the Start menu and select View > Show Hidden Devices from the top menu bar. Now expand the Universal Serial Bus Controllers option. Right-click on all items having “USB” at the end of their name (i.e USB Root Hub, Enhanced Host Controller, etc). Click on “Disable”.

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The same applies to Bluetooth as well so if your PC doesn’t have any Bluetooth devices connected then it is best to disable Bluetooth as well.

4. Disable 3G/LTE

Did you know that you can save battery life on your PC by disabling the internet connection on your mobile phone? Well, Yes, You simply need to switch off 3G or 4G on your Mobile Phone and then connect both the devices with the same network (i.e WLAN/Wi-Fi). This way not only the laptop’s battery but also the smartphone will drain a bit slower than before.

5. Shut Down Unnecessary Apps

Some apps run in the background which results in draining of laptop’s battery. It is recommended to go to Task Manager from the Start menu and select More Details so as to shut down unnecessary apps running in the background which you think are not useful for you.

6. Synchronize PC to Network

It is recommended to synchronize your system time with the clock time of your network.

This way laptop’s battery will drain a bit slower than before because in this method, Windows does not need to go and search for accurate time and date every time the system starts (in case if there is a difference between PC and network).

You can do this by clicking on the Clock, Language, and Region option from Control Panel and then selecting “Synchronize with an Internet Time Server” under the Date & Time tab.

7. Increase Hard Disk Spin Down timeout

Hard disks have their own advantages but they are major power consumers so it is best to increase hard disk spin down timeout so as to ensure your laptop battery is working for important tasks rather than spinning up/down all the time.

To do this you simply need to go to Device Manager > Disk Drives > Right-click on your system’s primary hard disk drive (Disk 0) and click Properties. There, under “Policies”, select “Better performance” from the drop-down list next to “Turn off hard disk after”.

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8. Battery Charge Threshold

Battery Charge Threshold for Lenovo Vantage

Set Battery Charge Threshold with Lenovo Vantage | Source: UGC

This is a great tip for those who use their computer primarily with the AC adapter and infrequent battery power. Setting max charge value to 99% or less will ensure that you get more out of your batteries, which means they’ll last longer!

9. Disable Notification and Other Sounds

Notification sounds help you to stay updated but they consume a lot of power due to the sound hardware present in laptops which uses a lot of battery because, unlike desktops, there is no way for software developers to enable or disable sound hardware from their code as laptops have different sound hardware as compared to desktops.

Follow these steps: Open Start Menu > Type Sound > Select Sounds from results panel Now to right-click at the desired sound (i.e New Voicemail) and hit “Disable”.

10. Disable Auto Adjustments

Your Windows 10 laptop has a feature that automatically adjusts screen brightness, internal display resolution, etc based on the ambient light using a built-in Ambient Light Sensor present in laptops.

Follow these steps: Open Start Menu > Type Control Panel(Pc Settings) > Select Display & Brightness Now click the Additional Power Settings option from the bottom of the window to open the Advanced settings tab. There, click on “Change plan settings” next to your power plan (i.e if you are using Balanced then select Balanced).

Now under the “Display” tab uncheck “Automatic brightness” and save changes made in the above steps.

11. Use Battery Care

Battery care is a built-in feature in Windows which takes care of charging and discharging of the battery.

This feature ensures that battery life remains optimal even if you frequently plug and unplug the power cable by disabling automated charging and discharging.

Follow these steps: Open Start Menu > Type “battery care” > Click on Battery Care from search results to open it.

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Now click on the Turn On button from the left side pane to enable the battery care feature. Reboot your system so as to activate this new feature.

12. Don’t Keep Your Laptop Plugged in

man plugging in laptop

Avoid your laptop’s battery draining to Zero percent before plugging | Source: UGC

Wired says don’t keep your laptop plugged in. What they found was surprising: Laptops with batteries that were drained each day had fewer cycles than those which were kept between 20% and 80%.

13. Enough RAM!

When you have less memory available, Windows has to work harder. In simple terms, more free RAM means your files are accessed more quickly by the system, so there’s less work for your hard drive to do.

And since laptop drives don’t have as many moving parts as desktop drives, they’re faster at this kind of thing.

Having said that, if your machine does have a solid-state drive then it will actually benefit from having enough RAM installed because this means less reading and writing back and forth between the hard disk and RAM which will result in faster loading of programs!

That being said, it is recommended not to add extra RAM (if already available) with the existing one in use. This way Windows would make optimum use of available RAM.

14. Get an SSD

SSDs are faster than HDDs which means that your Windows boots faster, programs open faster, games load in seconds and anything else you do on it is snappier!

15. Shut down not Sleep Mode nor Hibernate

According to Laptop Magazine, shutting down takes up much less power than putting your laptop into sleep mode or hibernating because the entire system has to “power up” when it comes out of hibernation or sleep mode.

Another reason for this is that many laptops have a standby light beside the power button which stays lit until your computer shuts down. So if you’re wondering whether you should shut down or put your computer into sleep mode then always go for shutdown as it will take lesser time!

16. Keep your laptop from extreme temperature

To maximize the life of your laptop battery, make sure you keep it out of extreme temperatures. This will not only help with charging but also prevent damage that could shorten its useful lifespan!

So these were some tips that would help you in improving battery life on Windows 10 based laptop/desktop if you have been facing a problem.

If you have any other tips or suggestions regarding this then feel free to leave a comment below and we would be glad to help!

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