Is your laptop battery draining quickly? Here is the Windows 11 battery life extension guide

Most laptops can’t go all day without being plugged in at least once a day. That’s the price we pay for the convenience of owning a portable PC, but there are a few ways to extend battery life a bit more.

Ways to extend Windows 11 battery life

If you’re using a PC with Windows 11, there are a few tips and tricks that can help conserve your PC’s battery life, like stopping programs/apps from constantly refreshing in the background or reducing the lock screen timeout. Solving the laptop charging problem is not as difficult as you think.

1. Stop programs from refreshing in the background

   Applications on your computer continue to run in the background even if you are not actively using them. Although notifications from applications are a useful feature, they cause battery consumption. It is wise to turn off the frequent refresh of apps when your battery is low. In Windows 11, you can pause certain notifications and background activity by activating the Battery option under Settings – System – Power and Battery (your computer must not be connected to power).

   You can also adjust a few settings to make better use of the battery saver feature. When battery saver is enabled, you can make adjustments such as changing the battery percentage and reducing the screen brightness in battery saver mode.

1. Lower the screen refresh rate

   Refresh rate refers to how often the image on your screen is refreshed every second. The higher the speed, the smoother the movement on your screen will be. For example; If you’re gaming, you might want to see the highest possible refresh rate. Unfortunately, higher refresh rate also means more power consumption.

   If you don’t need a high refresh rate, you can lower it. For this, go to Settings – System – Display – Advanced Display – Refresh Rate. Set a refresh rate.

   The default refresh rate value changes depending on your laptop or desktop computer. Your monitor may not offer an option to change the refresh rate. One thing to note is that lowering the refresh rate will have an impact on computer performance.

1. Use a dark background or theme

   If your Windows 11 computer has an OLED display, you can choose a dark background or theme to help improve battery life. As you know, unlike the old LCD/LED screens, each pixel is illuminated separately on the OLED screen; if this background is black it means the pixels will not reflect and it will not drain the battery.

   You can choose one of the dark themes under Settings – Personalization. If you choose the dark theme, all your windows and applications will be blacked out along with the background.

1. Reduce the lock screen timeout

The longer your screen stays on, the more energy it consumes. There is a simple setting you can make so that the screen does not remain blank when you are not at the computer. On the Settings – System – Power & Battery screen, you will find various settings that allow the screen to turn off after a certain period of inactivity. Here we recommend that you change the duration of the settings for battery power only.