Three easy ways to make your battery last longer when needed.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

There are times when you need to extend your battery life as long as possible, such as when travelling or, Heaven forbid, you left the power adapter at home!

Reduce screen brightness

The display represents the single largest drain on the battery, so the dimmer you make your screen, the longer you can work. You may be surprised how little backlight you actually need, but your eyes need time to adjust. If you make adjustments incrementally over a few minutes, you’re more likely to be satisfied with the results rather than just ramping down to the lowest setting in one fell swoop. To adjust brightness, click the action center on the taskbar and then adjust the brightness slider. If you don’t see the brightness slider, click Expand (located just above the first row of buttons at the bottom of the action center).

Action Center brightness slider

Adjust power settings

Unless you’re encoding video or editing a photo, you likely don’t need your CPU running full tilt. In fact, if you’re just typing a document, casually surfing the web, or working on a simple PowerPoint, you’re probably not going to notice your CPU ramping down a few hundred megahertz, but you will appreciate your battery lasting longer. In your system tray, click the battery icon and drag the slider toward Best battery life.

Adjust power settings to extend battery life

Use battery saver

Battery saver kills background processes so your hard drive and CPU are doing less work, which saves power. Click the battery icon and then click Battery settings. If you want battery saver to turn on whenever the battery falls below a certain level, select (1) Turn battery saver on automatically if my battery falls below: and set it where you’d like. To turn on battery saver now and leave it on until the next time you plug in your PC, turn on (2) Battery saver status until next charge.

Use battery saver to extend battery life