How to improve the autonomy of your PC

Optimizing the autonomy of your laptop is far from an exact science. Depending on your usage, the configuration of your machine and the software installed on it, the battery performance may be very different.

If the use of the energy manager integrated in Windows will be enough most of the time to limit the damage when you are far from an outlet, certain habits and some good reflexes will allow you to significantly improve the autonomy of your machine.

1. Decrease screen (and keyboard) brightness

It might make sense, but the screen is one of the most power-hungry things on a laptop. To hope to grab a few extra minutes of autonomy, it is better to manage the brightness of the panel sparingly.

So reduce the brightness as much as possible without reducing your reading comfort. You will usually find the key to decrease the brightness among the function keys, on the top row of keys of your keyboard. These functions may only be accessible by holding down the Fn key on the keyboard, which provides access to the secondary functions of certain keys on the keyboard. It is also possible to operate from Windows Settings, by going to the System section, then accessing the Display options.

In addition, if your PC is equipped with a backlit keyboard, consider reducing or even completely cutting off the brightness of the latter. Again, dedicated keys should be available on the first row of keys on your keyboard.

2. Customize the energy settings

Windows 10 natively integrates an energy management system. You will find it by clicking directly on the battery icon from the taskbar and by acting directly on the dedicated slider.

Three power management modes are available: Optimal Battery Life, Best Performance, and Best Performance. Then enter Battery Settings.

In the window that appears, you can configure the battery saver, if you wish. Once activated, it allows you to extend the autonomy of your machine by limiting the applications running in the background and temporarily deactivating Push notifications.

Check the box Automatically activate battery saver, and move the slider to set the battery percentage below which the battery saver will be automatically activated.

If it hasn’t already been checked, also select the Lower screen brightness when battery saver is on check box.

3. Limit energy-intensive applications

If you want to improve the autonomy of your machine, try as much as possible to limit the use of energy-intensive applications. In the Battery Settings panel, click View apps that impact battery life.

Windows should load a page showing the most power-consuming apps in the last 24 hours of use.
Unsurprisingly, your web browser should rank high there. You can, however, limit the impact that your browser has on the autonomy of your machine by avoiding, when possible, to increase the number of tabs open if you are not using them.

You can also try alternative browsers, known for their lower power consumption, such as Opera (which incorporates a power saving mode), or Brave which uses less resources.

Download Opera for Windows (Free)
Download Brave for Windows (Free)

4. Prefer hibernation to the day before

When you’re not using your computer, chances are you won’t turn it off, just put it to sleep by pressing the power button, or just close the cover without trying to find out. what happens next.

However, Windows offers different types of standby that do not have the same impact on battery life. The classic standby, configured natively and which is activated by pressing the power button or by closing the cover of your machine, consumes little energy, but still needs to power the hard disk, the processor and memory so you can quickly pick up where you left off when you wake up your computer.

There is also a deep standby, or hibernation, specially designed for portable machines and which is less energy consuming than traditional standby. When the machine is reactivated, you can, as for the classic standby, resume your activity where you left off, with however a little less speed, the saved data being written in a dedicated file (hyberfile.sys) stored directly on the hard drive and can occupy several gigabytes.

To change your machine’s sleep settings, open Windows Settings, then in System, go to the Power and sleep section. If you want to keep the classic standby mode, you can adjust the standby activation times here when your PC is plugged in or on battery.

To access hibernation, click Additional power settings and then click Choose what to do after closing the cover.

For the actions When I press the power button and When I close the hood, pull down the menus under On battery, and select Hibernate.
You can also choose to add this option in Shutdown Settings (when you click the Start button to put your PC to sleep or shut down) by checking the Hibernate box at the bottom of the window. Don’t forget to Save the changes.

Now, when you close the cover of your machine, or when you press the Power button, your PC will go into hibernation.

5. Automatically turn off the screen when inactivity

If too much brightness weighs heavily on the autonomy of your machine, you can also make some significant energy savings by automatically turning off your PC screen when not in use.

Open Windows Settings, enter System, go to Power & Sleep menu and cClick on Additional Power Settings.

In the left column, go to the Choose when to turn off the screen menu.

Here you can define a period of inactivity after which the screen of your computer on battery will be automatically turned off.

6. Switch to SSD

While more and more recent portable machines have abandoned mechanical hard drives in favor of SSDs, this is not necessarily the case on older PCs. Mechanical hard drives require more power to operate than SSDs.

Read our guide to installing an SSD in your laptop PC.

By installing an SSD instead of a hard drive, you’ll not only cut down on power consumption, but you’ll also give your computer a hell of a boost.

7. Use the integrated graphics chipset

Laptops that have a dedicated graphics card most often have a graphics controller integrated into the main processor. If it is much less efficient than the dedicated graphics chip, it is generally sufficient to manage the display of basic tasks, and above all turns out to be much less energy intensive.

While it is in operation, the 3D card – it – is in hibernation. But when there is a need for 3D power, she wakes up. The best-known technology is Nvidia’s Optimus, but AMD also offers its solution.

In principle, switching between these two graphics processors is done automatically, especially when you use your computer on battery power. But sometimes this change does not work properly. It is then possible to force the use of the integrated graphics chipset for certain applications by going to the settings of your graphics card.

8. Disconnect USB devices

Devices connected by USB to your computer consume energy. The motherboard of your PC indeed sends current to these ports to allow you, for example, to recharge your smartphone, or to power an external hard drive. If you are not using the USB devices connected to your machine (smartphones, tablets, hard disks, etc.), disconnect them.

9. Turn off any unused wireless connections.

Do you really need to keep all of your machine’s wireless connections turned on? If you have the ability to connect to the Internet via an Ethernet cable and you don’t need Bluetooth, turn off these two modules.

To turn off Wi-Fi, click the connections icon in the taskbar, then click the Wi-Fi button.

For Bluetooth, open Windows Settings and enter Devices to turn off Bluetooth.

10. Disable background apps

Even if you don’t see them and you don’t use them, there are plenty of apps that Windows run in the background and are unnecessarily draining your machine’s battery. To do this, open Windows Settings and enter the Privacy menu.

Scroll down the side column options and go to Background Apps.

Uncheck any apps running in the background that you don’t need. You can also take the opportunity to disable applications that run automatically when Windows starts up and that you don’t always use.

To do this, open the Windows Task Manager (using the shortcut Ctrl + Alt + Del, or by searching for Task Manager directly from the Start menu) and go to the Startup tab. All the applications launched automatically when Windows are opened are listed there.

Click on the programs you don’t need to select them, and choose to Disable them by clicking on the appropriate button.

Disabling programs that start when Windows starts will not only save energy, but also speed up your Windows session startup.