1. Create and save a battery report
Before you do anything else, use the Power Settings tool to generate a detailed report showing information about your PC’s battery usage over time. This information is saved as an HTML document that you can view in any web browser. Each battery report includes both tables and charts showing recent usage, usage history, battery capacity over time, and battery life estimates. You don’t need deep technical skills to gather useful information from this report.
Start by opening a Command Prompt session. Press Windows key + R to open the Run dialog box, type cmd, and press Enter. Then, in the Command Prompt window, type the following commands, pressing Enter after each one (be sure to include the space after each command):
cd %temp%powercfg /batteryreport
That sequence generates the battery report and saves it in your Temp folder. To open the report immediately from the Command Prompt window, type the full report name, battery-report.html, and press Enter. (To save a few keystrokes, type batt, and then press Tab to autocomplete the full filename.)
2. Check your battery’s current capacity
Your laptop battery has a capacity measured in milliwatt hours (mWh). Over time, as you charge and discharge a laptop battery, that capacity degrades. After a couple of years of normal usage, your battery life might decline from an acceptable five or six hours to just two or three. Eventually, the degradation can be so severe that the laptop is essentially unusable unless it’s plugged in.
The Installed Batteries section at the top of the battery report shows the design capacity of each available battery (how much of a charge it could hold when it was brand new), as well as the current full-charge capacity. The Battery Capacity History section shows the change in both values over time.
3. Analyze your observed usage over time
For as long as I can remember, PC manufacturers and independent reviewers have struggled to come up with measurements of battery life that can be used to compare the performance of different devices. Typically, those schemes measure either video playback or some form of cycling through web pages and various apps.
Those measurements are useful in an abstract way, but what’s even more useful is knowing how much of a drain your daily activity places on your laptop battery. And, of course, that measurement varies depending on the apps you’re using, the quality of your network connection, and other variables. That’s why measuring actual observed usage is more important than any synthetic benchmark.
4. Estimate your average battery life
The Battery Life Estimates section of each battery report delivers exactly what it promises: an estimate of how much total battery life you would get in a session based on your observed activity. These estimates are generally quite accurate, and they help to see at a glance just how much of your battery is being used in each session based on the work you’re doing.
5. Identify which apps are affecting your battery life
The battery report isn’t the only useful bit of system information that Windows 11 provides. A separate report allows you to zero in on power usage on an app-by-app basis. To find this listing, go to Settings > System > Power & Battery and then click the arrow to the right of Battery Usage to show a detailed graphical display. Look under the Battery Usage Per App heading to see which apps are having the biggest effect on your energy usage.
6. Use the Windows energy-saving checklist
Windows 11 has an impressive number of options you can adjust to save energy and thus extend the life of your battery. Rather than going through those settings piecemeal, I recommend you go through the built-in Energy Recommendations checklist in Windows 11, which includes direct links to the actual settings, and in some cases even has an Apply button to make a change immediately.
7. Adjust sleep and display settings
If the defaults on the Energy Recommendations list seem too aggressive, feel free to make some adjustments. Instead of putting your system to sleep after three minutes, for example, you can choose five or 10 minutes. Using the options under the Screen and Sleep heading, you can adjust the interval after which Windows turns off the display and puts the system into sleep mode, with different intervals depending on whether the system is connected to a power source or is running on battery.
8. Learn the quick Shutdown secrets
Most often, you’ll transition between the Active and Modern Standby power states by closing the laptop’s lid, pressing the power button, or using the Power menu. But there’s another option that can be easier in some situations: the Shutdown command. You can use this tool from a Command Prompt (Cmd.exe) window, or from the Run dialog box, or even from the Search box.
9. Use the Battery Saver option for maximum power savings
Windows 11 includes a Battery Saver option (beginning with version 24H2, this feature is called Energy Saver) that instantly turns off activities that chip away at battery life, such as push notifications and background activity for some apps. Turning on Energy Saver can dramatically increase your battery life and has the bonus of reducing distractions as you work.
