Make your laptop battery last longer — 6 practical tips

It’s the middle of the day and your laptop is already down to 20%. Sound familiar? Battery complaints are among the most common issues with laptops. The good news is that a few simple settings and habits can make a significant difference.

1. Lower your screen brightness

The screen is your battery’s biggest drain. Even a small reduction — from 100% to 60% — can extend battery life by 20 to 30%. On Windows, use the action centre (bottom right of the taskbar). On Mac, go to System Settings > Displays.

Also enable automatic brightness if your laptop supports it. It adjusts the screen to your environment automatically.

2. Use battery saver mode

Windows: Click the battery icon in the taskbar and slide it towards Battery saver. Or go to Settings > System > Power & sleep and choose an energy-saving plan.

Mac: Go to System Settings > Battery and enable Low Power Mode.

3. Close tabs and background apps

A browser with thirty open tabs is a battery killer. Chrome in particular is notorious for draining power. Try these tricks:

• Install an extension like The Great Suspender or OneTab to pause inactive tabs.
• Close programs you’re not actively using, such as Spotify, Teams or Slack.
• Check Task Manager (Windows) or Activity Monitor (Mac) to see which processes are consuming the most energy.

4. Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when you don’t need them

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth constantly scan for connections, which uses power. Working offline? Turn off Wi-Fi. No wireless mouse or headphones? Turn off Bluetooth. On Windows, use the action centre; on Mac, use the menu bar.

5. Avoid extreme temperatures

Heat is the number one enemy of laptop batteries. Don’t leave your laptop in direct sunlight or on a blanket — that blocks ventilation and causes the temperature to rise. Work on a hard, flat surface whenever possible.

Cold is also harmful: a freezing cold car in winter is not a good place for your laptop.

6. Charge smart

There are a few charging myths that actually harm your battery in the long run:

• You don’t need to charge to 100%. Lithium batteries last longer when kept between 20% and 80%.
• Leaving it plugged in all the time isn’t ideal either. Many laptops have a built-in battery limit setting (e.g. capped at 80%) to reduce wear. Check this via your laptop’s software — HP, Dell, Lenovo and Asus all offer this in their companion apps.
• Calibrating is rarely necessary with modern batteries. Fully draining and recharging once a year is enough to keep the battery reading accurate.

Bonus: check your battery health

Windows: Open Command Prompt as an administrator and type powercfg /batteryreport. This generates a report showing your battery’s current capacity versus its original design capacity.

Mac: Hold Option and click the battery icon in the menu bar. You’ll see the battery condition — “Normal” is fine, “Service Recommended” means replacement is approaching.

With a few small adjustments, you can easily add an hour or more to your laptop’s daily battery life.

Is your battery due for replacement? See what a hardware upgrade costs and delivers.

Slow laptop and poor battery? It’s worth checking if an SSD or RAM upgrade makes sense.