How to improve laptop battery life

Many modern laptops have enough battery power to last all day, but if you're reading this, clearly your laptop doesn't last long enough for you. And plenty of laptops don’t even have removable batteries, so swapping the empty one out for a fully charged spare isn’t an option.

1. Dim the screen
Dimming the screen brightness can add 30 minutes or more to your battery life. . Typically, you’ll hold the Fn key and press one of the function keys like F1, F2 ,F3 ....., in the top row, or one of the cursor keys labelled with a sun symbol.
If not, hold the Windows key and press X. This will open up the Mobility Center where you can change the brightness, and this works in all versions of Windows.

2. Change the power settings

By default, your laptop might be set to Windows’ ‘Balanced’ setting rather than Power Saver. In the Control Panel search for Power Options and check which Power Plan is selected. Don't forget that Windows uses different power and performance settings depending on whether it is running on mains or battery power.
You should find a battery saver option, and it's simply a case of selecting it and closing the window. If not, click on 'Show additional plans'. If there's still nothing, you can customize a power plan by clicking Change plan settings next to a profile.

You should set the screen to turn off after little minutes, and set the laptop to sleep if nothing appears to be happening after five or 10 minutes.
If you delve into the advanced power settings, you can tweak things to your liking, setting when the system hibernates and which components should use their maximum power saving profiles (including, on some laptops, the graphics card and Wi-Fi adapter).

Either click the battery icon to find it, or click the icon in the bottom right corner of the screen to bring up Action Center: you'll see the Battery Saver tile near the bottom. It will be greyed out if your laptop charger is connected. To find out which apps are draining the most power, click the battery icon near the clock, then click Power & sleep settings. From the left-hand pane click Battery and then on the Battery usage by app link. You can also make this mode turn on automatically by ticking the box and adjusting the slider.