How to improve your laptop’s battery life

All batteries, be they in smartphones or laptops, or even your vintage calculator, degrade over time. With age and use, the battery loses its ability to hold a charge and you start seeing lower and lower battery life. Another factor affecting battery life is usage. The more load you place on the system, intentionally or unintentionally, the higher the demand placed on the battery and the faster it drains. 

Figuring out what specifically is affecting battery life isn’t easy as you must factor in several issues. While this cannot be an all-encompassing guide, here are some pointers that might help you determine why your laptop battery is draining so quickly.

Check battery health

If battery health is fine, open Task Manager on Windows and look for programs that are continuously consuming an inordinate amount of resources. When no app is actively running, your CPU usage should be about 2-3% or lower. If any app is continuously consuming 5% or more of your resources, something is off.

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You can Google the name of the app or process to determine if it’s safe and if it’s normal for that app to consume so many resources. If it’s not safe or isn’t meant to be running continuously in the background, uninstall the app or disable it.

If it’s a malicious app, you might want to run a malware scan using Windows Defender or Malwarebytes. You can do the same on a Mac by checking Activity Manager, which is accessible by simply searching for it in Finder.

Disable startup programs

Another battery hog is startup programs that you don’t need. Background processes don’t always show up in your Task Manager and some don’t kick in till your display is off, making them hard to pin down. One way to prevent these apps from taking up too many resources is by preventing them from starting up with your PC. To do this, open Task Manager > Startup programs, and disable everything that you know is unimportant.

Switch to an older OS, or even Linux

If your PC is very old, it actually makes sense to switch to an older version of Windows or even to a lighter operating system like Linux. Modern operating systems like Windows 11 and MacOS 15 are very demanding, requiring newer processors, faster memory, and more powerful GPUs. Older hardware often can’t keep up and has to push harder just to run the OS. Using an older or lighter OS reduces this load and can thus improve battery life.

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Switch performance modes

Since most everyday tasks don’t require much power, you can change your laptop’s performance mode to ‘Balanced’. This can be done by searching for ‘Edit power plan’ in Windows search, then selecting ‘Balanced’ or ‘Low Power’ mode from the drop-down.

This way you force the OS to not demand as much from your hardware, which will, in turn, improve battery life. That said, a balanced or low power mode can affect the performance of demanding applications such as 3D rendering or video editing programs. Remember to switch back to performance mode when you need the full power of your system.

Taking these steps should mitigate battery drain issues to a large extent. More often than not, poor battery life is simply a result of a damaged or worn out battery and the only option is to get it replaced. If that’s not an option, the others in our list should help.