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What You Should (and Shouldn’t) Do to Extend Your Phone’s Battery Life

One of the biggest complaints people have about their smartphone is that the battery doesn’t last long enough. For many people, just making it through the day can be a challenge, which is why you see so many “How to make your phone’s battery last longer!” articles in your friends’ feeds. But many of the claims in those articles are specious at best, and some of the tricks they suggest could actually shorten your battery life. So which ones should you try?

We partnered with The New York Times to find the answer by testing, on both Android and iPhone smartphones, a slew of procedures that people, publications, and—in some cases—smartphone manufacturers suggest for getting more use time out of your phone. 1 The article on the NYT website includes a summary of our findings, but if you want to know more, read on for our extended recommendations.

• Big battery suckers
• The easiest solutions

• Use the screen less—or at least turn brightness down
• Use an ad blocker
• Switch from push to fetch email if you have many accounts or get lots of email
• Store music locally
• Avoid extreme temperatures
• Use airplane mode or low-power mode (if you must)

• Disable cellular or Wi-Fi when the signal is bad
• Consult your phone’s battery-usage screen to find the biggest offenders
• Disable GPS or location services—but only for power-hungry apps or apps you don’t need
• Disable unnecessary push notifications
• For iPhone: Use Bluetooth instead of AirPlay to listen wirelessly

• Battery-saving myths

• Myth: Turn off Bluetooth
• Myth: Turn off Wi-Fi
• Myth: Close (quit) unused apps
• Myth: Use a battery-saving utility or task manager on Android
• Myth: Disable location services completely
• Myth: Always choose Wi-Fi over cellular
• Myth: Disable Hey Siri or OK Google
• Myth: Calibrate your battery to extend its life
• Myth: Use only the charger that came with your phone

Big battery suckers

Before we get into the specific changes—to settings or behavior—that you can make to extend your phone’s use time, we want to point out some activities that have a big impact on your battery. The following may seem obvious to you, but many people engage in these activities regularly.

One is streaming video. Watching a movie on, say, Netflix requires your phone’s screen to be on continuously (the biggest battery drain), your phone to maintain an active Internet connection (another notable drain), and the phone’s processor and graphics processor to decode the video and audio. For example, we watched Pee-wee’s Big Adventure on Netflix with the volume and screen brightness both set at 50 percent. On an iPhone 6s Plus, streaming over Wi-Fi for an hour consumed 5 percent of a full battery; LTE streaming used 11 percent. On a Moto X Pure, Wi-Fi used 11 percent of a full battery, and LTE used 13 percent.

Similarly, when you’re using a mapping app for long navigation sessions, your phone’s screen is on and the app forces the phone’s GPS circuitry to refresh at a more frequent rate than in normal usage. It’s also making heavier use of cellular and Wi-Fi connections in order to aid in pinpointing your location. These tasks all require quite a bit of energy.

If your battery is getting low, or if you need it to last longer on a particular day, avoid video streaming and GPS navigation unless you’re connected to a power source.

The easiest solutions

Anyone can make a few simple changes to their phone’s settings, or to their own behavior, that can have a significant effect on how much power a device uses. These tasks require little effort or technical knowledge.

Use the screen less—or at least turn brightness down

The component that uses the most energy on your smartphone, by a considerable margin, is the screen: The more you use it—for checking. streaming Netflix, texting with friends, whatever—the faster your battery drains. If you’re concerned about running your battery down too quickly, limit the amount of time you’re actively using the phone (that is, with the screen on). The more your phone sits in your or bag, the longer its battery will last.

Of course, many of the things that you bought a smartphone to do require the screen. But a quick and easy change that can help extend its battery life without much fuss or annoyance is to shorten the delay until your phone automatically turns its screen off. This tweak reduces the amount of time the screen is on each day. For example, if you unlock your phone 25 times per day, and your screen-lock delay is three minutes, changing the screen-lock setting to one minute can cut the time your screen is on by up to 50 minutes. On an iPhone, go to “Settings” then “General” then “Auto-Lock”; on an Android phone, go to “Settings” then “Display” then “Sleep.” Alternatively, you can manually put the phone to sleep whenever you’re done using it.

When you are actively using the phone, you can extend the battery life by reducing screen brightness: In Wirecutter testing using the Geekbench utility’s battery-intensive routines for an hour, an iPhone 6s used 54 percent less battery—12 percent of a full charge versus 26 percent—with the screen brightness at minimum compared with maximum brightness. A Moto X Pure Edition Android phone used 30 percent less (21 percent of a full charge versus 30 percent).

Using a dim screen in bright environments is tough, however, so most phones offer an auto-brightness mode that automatically adjusts the screen’s brightness based on ambient light: In bright environments, the screen gets brighter, in dim environments, it gets dimmer. In a moderately well-lit office, our iPhone 6s test phone used only 16 percent of a full battery over an hour of the Geekbench stress test with auto-brightness on (with initial brightness set at 50 percent). With our Android test phone, a similar test resulted in the phone’s using 25 percent of a full charge. In other words, enabling auto-brightness will save most people a good amount of battery life compared with setting it to a bright level all the time, though not as much as if you kept the brightness down all the time; the advantage of auto-brightness is that the screen will remain easily readable in all environments.

Use an ad blocker

If you spend much of your smartphone-screen time on the Web, one of the easiest ways to make your battery last longer may surprise you: Install an ad blocker. Much of the debate around using this kind of software, which is designed mainly to prevent certain kinds of ads from loading while you’re browsing websites, focuses on revenue (for publishers) and annoyance (for readers). But ads, just like any other form of online content, use resources: Your phone must download the ad images and video and then display them (often running browser scripts too), and these tasks use energy.

We ran an automated Wi-Fi Web-browsing session in Safari on an iPhone 6s, cycling through a set list of websites for two hours with no ad blockers; then we ran the same test with the 1Blocker ad blocker installed. Without the ad blocker, the test used 18 percent of the phone’s battery, but with the ad blocker, it used only 9 percent—so viewing ads doubled the impact of Web browsing on the phone’s battery! We ran a similar test on a 2015 Moto X Pure using the Ghostery Privacy Browser and got results that were even more dramatic: With no ad blocker, a two-hour browsing session in Chrome used 22 percent of the phone’s battery, whereas the Ghostery ad-blocking browser (which uses the same browser engine as Chrome) consumed only 8 percent.

Switch from push to fetch email if you have many accounts or get lots of email

A feature called push automatically delivers new email, new or revised calendar events, and updates to your contacts list (such as from a Gmail or iCloud account) to your smartphone whenever such changes occur on a central server. Although push is convenient, the feature can use a goodly amount of power, as it requires your phone to always be listening for new communications from your account provider. Most phones let you configure them to use “fetch” instead, where the phone polls a server on a schedule—say, every 30 minutes—or only when you manually tell the phone to do so.

If you have a single email account and you don’t receive much email, you won’t see a real difference in battery usage between push and fetch. But the more accounts you have on your phone, and the more messages and events each of those accounts receives, the more energy your phone will use, as it has to communicate with those account servers continually. For example, to compare the effect of push versus fetch on the same email load, we tested an iPhone 6s Plus configured with three email accounts, receiving a total of 20 to 30 messages per hour. Over 24 hours with push enabled, Mail was active in the background for about 18 minutes. When we switched to a 30-minute fetch schedule, the same phone, handling roughly the same amount of email, was active in the background for only 4 minutes over 24 hours. It’s difficult to determine conclusively how much of Mail’s energy use is specifically attributable to communication with mail servers, but in these tests, having push active over the course of a day with this particular email load 2 caused Mail to account for 5 to 10 percent more of the phone’s total battery use.

Anecdotally, during January’s Consumer Electronics Show, when Wirecutter staffers were receiving hundreds of press-release emails each day, having push enabled meant having to charge our smartphones by early afternoon; switching to fetch or manual allowed the same phones to survive well into the evening before needing a charge.

The manual setting will save the most battery life, but you likely won’t see a huge benefit over fetch, and you’ll lose the convenience of being notified of new mail and events on a regular schedule.

If you switch from push to fetch or manual, and you don’t notice an improvement in battery life after a few days of use, you might want to switch back to push for the convenience it offers. Alternatively, you can enable push for only those email accounts on which you really do need to see messages immediately, using fetch or manual for the others.

Store music locally

and more people are using streaming services such as Apple Music, Pandora, and Spotify to get their tunes. However, streaming requires your phone to maintain an active wireless connection—Wi-Fi or cellular—to the service you’re using to stream music. This active connection consumes a significant amount of power in comparison with playing that same music if it were stored on your phone.

For example, in our testing, playing locally stored music over Bluetooth headphones and speakers for two hours used about 5 percent of an iPhone 6s Plus’s battery. Streaming that same music over a strong Wi-Fi connection used 10 percent of the phone’s battery—twice as much.

Some services, including the paid versions of Apple Music and Spotify, let you download individual playlists to your phone. (In Apple Music, for example, you just tap the Cloud icon at the top of a playlist.) Once you’ve downloaded a playlist, its music plays from the phone’s storage instead of streaming over the Internet. (To get the maximum battery savings, you should perform these downloads while your phone is on Wi-Fi and plugged into power.)

Avoid extreme temperatures

While battery technology continues to improve, smartphone batteries remain sensitive to temperature—they work much better when you use them in moderate temperatures. Apple notes, in its publication on maximizing battery performance, that you’ll get the best battery life when you use the phone in temperatures of 62° to 72° Fahrenheit. In cold temperatures, you’ll see much shorter battery life, though the battery will regain its normal use time when the phone warms up. Excessive heat, on the other hand, can permanently shorten your phone’s use time—you shouldn’t use or store your phone in extremely hot environments (this includes leaving your phone in the car on sweltering summer days).

Use airplane mode or low-power mode (if you must)

Both iOS and Android phones include an airplane mode that disables Wi-Fi, cellular, and Bluetooth, though not NFC. (On some models of phones or older operating system versions, it also disables GPS.) Though the mode was originally designed to prevent phones from (theoretically) interfering with airline communications, it also reduces battery usage—all that wireless circuitry requires power. Indeed, in our testing on Android and iPhone smartphones, enabling airplane mode resulted in the battery level dropping by just a few percent over four hours during normal use (or as normal as use can be when the device is in airplane mode, as we note below). Contrast that to nearly 10 percent over four hours during the same type of use with airplane mode disabled.

Similarly, both iPhones running iOS 9 and later and Android phones running Android 6.0 Marshmallow include a low-power mode (sometimes called battery-saver mode) that significantly reduces the phone’s power usage by disabling power-hogging features. For example, on an iPhone, enabling low-power mode disables email fetch, the Hey Siri feature, background application usage, automatic downloads of app updates and other data, Wi-Fi scanning, and some visual effects. Both platforms can automatically switch to low-power mode when the battery level dips below a certain threshold (to squeeze an extra hour or so out of your phone when its battery gets low), or you can make the switch manually at any time. In our tests, both iPhones and Android smartphones used significantly less battery power with battery-saver mode enabled—as much as 54 percent, depending on the phone we used.

While both airplane mode and low-power mode conserve battery life, they do so at a heavy price. With airplane mode you lose the ability to communicate with another device, be it a wireless keyboard or another phone, as well as the ability to access Internet services. If you forget to disable this mode, you might miss calls and text messages or be unreachable for loved ones. Low-power mode similarly disables many useful features, including background processes’ use of wireless communications. This limitation makes a smartphone less, well, Smart. We recommend using these modes only when you must, rather than as regular battery-saving methods.

Airplane mode is most useful when you’re in areas with bad reception and your phone starts consuming a lot of energy searching for signals—enabling airplane mode prevents your phone from expending that energy. Low-power mode is a better alternative when your phone’s battery is on its last legs and you just need to make it to the next charge, or when you know you’ll be away from power for a prolonged period and you want to stretch the phone’s full charge as long as possible.

The next steps

The easy procedures above will produce good results for many people. But if you use your phone a lot over the course of the day, if you frequently use location-related apps and services, or if you regularly find yourself in areas with bad cellular or Wi-Fi coverage, you can expend a bit more effort to improve battery life.

Disable cellular or Wi-Fi when the signal is bad

You may have noticed that when you’re in a place without good Wi-Fi or cellular coverage (say, when you’re camping in a remote area), your phone’s battery seems to drain much more quickly. Modern smartphones are designed to use the minimum amount of power to get the best connection, so when you’re in a spot with good coverage, such as in an urban area, power usage is much lower—sometimes by factors of ten—than when you’re in a rural area with poor coverage, or where you have no signal and the phone is constantly searching for one.

You can’t improve the signals in areas with sketchy or no coverage (other than by upgrading your home Wi-Fi router to get a better signal there, perhaps), but you can conserve battery life by disabling the phone’s wireless circuitry. However, rather than using airplane mode (described above), you can disable just the wireless feature that’s using lots of energy.

For example, if you have terrible wireless-carrier coverage in your office, but Wi-Fi is great, disabling cellular connectivity will keep the phone from wasting energy trying to get a cellular connection while still letting you connect to the Internet over Wi-Fi; conversely, if your phone struggles to stay connected to your home Wi-Fi network when you’re in the backyard, you should disable Wi-Fi and use cellular data instead. 3

If you’re in a location with solid Wi-Fi but poor cellular coverage, note that some smartphones on some carrier networks can use Wi-Fi calling, which routes calls over a Wi-Fi network. Some cellular carriers also offer “micro-cells,” which plug into your Internet connection to provide a strong, local cellular signal over licensed frequencies for that carrier in your area.

Consult your phone’s battery-usage screen to find the biggest offenders

Both phone platforms provide a simple way for you to see which apps are using a lot of battery power. For example, on an iPhone running iOS 9, go to “Settings” then “Battery,” and scroll down to “Battery Usage” to see a list of the apps using the most battery power, sorted by the amount consumed. By default, the list shows battery use over the past 24 hours, but you can tap “Last 7 Days” to see data from the past week, which is often more useful; be sure to tap the little clock button to reveal information about how much of your battery life each app is consuming when you’re actively using the app (“screen”) versus when you’re not (“backg. ” or background).

On Android, you can see a similar list by going to “Settings” then “Battery”; here, too, you’ll see a sorted list of the items that are using your battery power. “Screen” is just that, your backlit display, while “Google Play Services” is a catch-all label for many apps’ background actions. Tap on an app, and you’ll see detailed statistics. You’ll find the most useful information in the “CPU total” and “CPU foreground” timers. The “foreground” figure refers to how much time you had the app open; subtract “foreground” from “total,” and you’ll know how much time the app has been busy in the background.

Using this list, you can quickly see which apps are the biggest battery-use offenders. You’ll likely find that the apps with the highest battery usage also have the longest on-screen time—in other words, they’re using a lot of battery because the screen is on most of the time you’re actively using them. You won’t be able to do much about those apps other than to use them less.

Other apps, however, consume a seemingly disproportionate amount of power when you’re not actively using them, and the information on background time is especially useful here: Be on the lookout for apps that are active for extended periods in the background and are using a lot of battery power, because these apps are sucking battery juice even when you aren’t actively using them. Examples might include an email app that spends lots of time checking for new messages even when your phone is asleep, an RSS reader that updates articles in the background, or a fitness app that constantly monitors your location. (The app for iPhone was a notorious battery killer, using lots of energy in the background, though a recent update claims to have fixed the issue; the Android version recently came under criticism for the same problem.)

If you find such apps, you’ll need to decide whether this background activity is important to you. If you can do without it, you can likely disable it. For example, on an iPhone, you can go to “Settings” then “General” then “Background App Refresh” to choose, for individual apps, whether each one can refresh its content in the background; you can go to “Settings” then “Privacy” then “Location Services” to determine whether an app can track your location in the background. On Android, go to “Settings” then “Data usage,” select an app, and choose “Restrict background data” for background data usage; to disable location tracking, go to “Settings” then “Apps,” choose an app, select “Permissions,” and then tap to disable location permission. Disable these settings, and the app’s background use will likely go down considerably, if not completely.

Some apps are regularly active in the background, but you may be willing to put up with that because you find what they do useful, or because they don’t draw a huge amount of battery power. For example, on one of our test iPhones, the Moment app, which tracks location and activity throughout the day, used power in the background for nearly 94 hours over 7 days, claiming about 5 percent of overall battery use during that period. But if you value Moment’s tracking and analysis, you might consider that amount of battery usage to be acceptable.

If you disable background activity for a particular app, but it persists in using a large amount of power in the background, the app may have a bug. See Myth: Close (quit) unused apps below.

Disable GPS or location services—but only for power-hungry apps or apps you don’t need

Your phone’s GPS hardware, which it uses (along with Wi-Fi and other technologies) to determine your geographic location for mapping, run/bike-tracking, and other location-based features, consumes a lot of battery power. However, well-managed location services consume only a moderate amount of battery power.

For example, using the Maps app on an iPhone or Android phone for GPS directions for a short trip will consume minimal battery life, as these apps are designed to minimize GPS use; having the screen on during that navigation will consume significantly more. (This is, in part, why long navigation sessions use so much of your battery—you likely keep the screen on for the duration, and the screen draws a lot of power.) Similarly, step counters and activity-tracking apps that aren’t constantly monitoring your location don’t require much power while tracking in the background.

However, a run-tracking program that’s monitoring your precise location for the duration of an hour-long run will affect your battery level. You can take advantage of the previous tip (going through the battery-usage screen) to find big offenders: If a location-based app is using a lot of battery power, especially in the background, chances are good that the app is using GPS, Wi-Fi, and the phone’s sensors frequently. Depending on how much you value that app’s features, you can choose to let it continue to do its thing, or you can disable location features for it (either via your phone’s location-services settings or through the settings in the app itself).

Note that on an iPhone, some apps let you choose whether to enable location services for each app all the time, or only when you’re actually using the app—an option we wish more apps would provide. If you choose “While Using the App” (under “Settings” then “Privacy” then “Location Services” then the app’s name), the app will still be able to determine your location while you’re actively using the app—in other words, when it’s on the screen—but not when it’s in the background.

Android similarly allows you to change an app’s permission to get your location (go to “Settings” then “Apps,” choose an app, and tap “Permissions”), but your only options are to allow or prevent that access. You can, however, set a systemwide location limit: Go to “Settings” then “Location,” and choose between “High accuracy” mode, which uses GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular networks to determine your location, or “Battery saving” mode, which disables GPS to save energy at the cost of accuracy.

Disable unnecessary push notifications

In addition to push email, which automatically notifies you of new email messages as they arrive, smartphones support push notifications, which allow apps to provide new information, sound alarms, display reminders, and more, instantly. Push notifications can be very convenient—they’re part of what makes a smartphone great—but every notification uses a bit of energy, as it requires your phone to wake up for a few seconds, including turning on the screen, to show you a message and give you a chance to act on it. If you get a lot of notifications, that energy use can add up. 4

Determining exactly how much energy notifications use is difficult—in Wirecutter testing, receiving a few dozen notifications over the course of an hour didn’t noticeably affect battery usage—but both Apple and Google recommend disabling notifications as a way to conserve battery power. If a particular app or service (say, or your email client) is constantly producing notifications, consider disabling notifications for that app. On an iPhone, go to “Settings” then “Notifications,” tap the app name, and disable “Allow Notifications” (or switch to a less-intrusive form of notifications, such as a Badge App Icon). On Android, go to “Settings” then “Apps,” tap the app, choose “Notifications,” and then toggle the switch for “Block all” to prevent that app from bothering you.

As a bonus, fewer push notifications means fewer interruptions in your day and less time spent using your phone (which, of course, also helps your battery last longer).

If you get a lot of notifications but have reasons (or just a predilection) to keep them coming, consider disabling notification vibrations instead. Every time your phone vibrates, it uses energy to move a little motor in the phone; over dozens or hundreds of notifications, that power drain adds up. On an iPhone, you can disable all vibrations by going to “Settings” then “General” then “Accessibility” then “Vibration.” Alternatively, you can go to “Settings” then “Sounds” and tap individual items under “Sounds and Vibration Patterns” to disable vibrations for each. On an Android phone, you can disable the tiny vibrations that happen every time you touch the screen (if they’re enabled on your phone) by going to “Settings” then “Sound Notification” then “Other Sounds” and disabling “Vibrate on touch.” On most recent Android phones, you can temporarily turn off vibrations (and sounds) by enabling “Priority only” or “Do not disturb” mode, either from your Quick Launch settings (pulling down from the top-right side of the screen) or by clicking the volume rocker all the way down and then clicking down one more time.

For iPhone: Use Bluetooth instead of AirPlay to listen wirelessly

AirPlay is Apple’s alternative to Bluetooth for streaming music wirelessly from your phone to speakers. AirPlay claims better sound quality and longer range, thanks to its use of a higher-quality audio format and your existing Wi-Fi network, but AirPlay uses quite a bit more of your battery than Bluetooth.

We tested audio streaming via AirPlay and Bluetooth from an iPhone 6s Plus, first using locally stored music and then using tunes streamed from Apple’s Apple Music service. When playing locally stored music, AirPlay used 13 percent of the phone’s battery over two hours, while Bluetooth used only 5 percent.

Interestingly, when streaming the same music, AirPlay used barely more juice, 14 percent, because the phone was using the same Wi-Fi connection for both tasks; Bluetooth’s battery usage, however, jumped to 10 percent, because the phone had to use Wi-Fi—to stream the data from Apple Music—whereas it didn’t before. In other words, Bluetooth uses less of your battery than AirPlay, but you’ll see the biggest battery savings if you store your favorite music on your phone, as noted above, rather than stream it from the Cloud.

Battery-saving myths

You’ve probably seen lists of things you should supposedly do to extend your phone’s use time. Some of them may be described above. But other tricks don’t really help your phone use less energy—in fact, some may cause your phone to use battery energy more quickly. Here are some suggestions that you may hear about but (with a few noted exceptions) you shouldn’t bother doing.

Myth: Turn off Bluetooth

Many people recommend disabling Bluetooth on your phone to get better battery life. But Bluetooth was designed from the start to minimize battery usage, and it has only gotten better over time. In our testing, having Bluetooth on but not actively connected to a device used a negligible amount of battery power over several hours. Even when connected to a Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) device that regularly communicates with your phone, such as a recently made fitness tracker, Bluetooth uses very little of your battery. Where Bluetooth does have a noticeable impact on battery life is when you’re actively using the Bluetooth connection, such as when you’re streaming audio to a Bluetooth speaker or headphones. The lesson here is simple: If your battery is running low, you shouldn’t stream audio over Bluetooth. Use wired headphones, if you have them.

Myth: Turn off Wi-Fi

A similarly common suggestion for extending battery life is to disable Wi-Fi. However, if you’re in range of a strong Wi-Fi signal, your phone uses less energy to connect to the Internet with a Wi-Fi connection than a cellular one. In addition, if you regularly use apps that rely on your location, having Wi-Fi enabled helps your phone determine its location without relying solely on power-hungry GPS features, so it actually helps your phone’s battery last longer.

Unless you’re at the edges of a Wi-Fi network, where your phone is struggling to get a solid connection (see Disable cellular or Wi-Fi when the signal is bad, above), and you have a good cellular-data connection—in other words, your phone is keeping both Wi-Fi and cellular active, and switching between the two—you’re usually better off keeping Wi-Fi enabled.

Myth: Close (quit) unused apps

There’s a good chance you’ve seen this “tip” for extending battery life: Close (or force-quit, as it’s commonly called) apps that you aren’t currently using. (On Android, you press the task-switching button and swipe an app to the side to quit it; on an iPhone, you double-press the home button and then swipe an app’s screen upward.) The theory here is that apps running in the background are using your phone’s processor, memory, and other components, so quitting them will use less energy.

Although that may sometimes be true on a computer, smartphones are designed differently: Once an app is no longer in the foreground—meaning you aren’t actively using it—most or all of its processes are frozen. While an app may still be loaded in RAM (temporary memory), the app is unlikely to be doing stuff in the background to drain your battery. Your phone’s operating system also automatically closes apps in the background when it needs RAM for other tasks. Finally, quitting apps can actually have drawbacks: When you force-quit an app, that may purge all of its code from your phone’s RAM, which means that the next time you open the app, the phone has to reload all of that code—which, of course, requires energy.

For the most part, you can just use your phone and its apps, without having to worry about force-quitting anything or installing an app that claims to “manage” your memory. Of particular concern are apps that you’ve specifically given permission to do things in the background, such as apps that monitor your location, and apps that refresh their content in the background. You likely want them to perform those tasks—force-quitting the apps will prevent them from doing the very things you gave them permission to do.

A better approach is to use your phone’s battery-usage screen, as explained above, to find the biggest battery-usage offenders. If an app is listed there as consuming a huge amount of battery power, and it isn’t an app you’ve been actively using or one that you’ve given permission to do a lot of things in the background, the app might have a bug that’s causing it to suck up battery power. In that case, force-quitting it is a safe approach. (You can then wait for an update to the app that, with any luck, fixes the bug.) If, as is more likely, an app is using a lot of energy because of allowed background or location activity, you’ll need to decide whether you want to disable background refresh or location services, respectively, for that app.

Myth: Use a battery-saving utility or task manager on Android

Along the lines of the previous myth, many apps in Google’s Play Store for Android claim to improve your phone’s performance by serving as an always-running “memory manager” or “task killer.” As noted above, manually closing applications is a bad idea—Android can properly keep apps and processes suspended, using little to no resources, just fine on its own. What’s more, Android automatically kills older processes, or big memory hogs, as performance starts to lag. Restarting applications repeatedly will probably cost you more battery life than leaving them alone, and any automatic task manager will itself be demanding power constantly from your phone.

Myth: Disable location services completely

As we mention above, many apps that use your location do so only intermittently—with the exception of a few bad apples, or apps that really do require constant location tracking, most apps are well behaved in this respect. Even using the Maps app for short navigation sessions doesn’t consume more than a few percents’ worth of your battery’s capacity—and as we noted, having the phone’s screen continually on is a big part of why navigation draws a lot of juice.

As a result, we don’t recommend disabling all of your phone’s location-based features just to extend your battery life. In doing so, you’re unlikely to see a big jump in use time, but you may end up turning off useful features that you’ll miss having available. Instead, follow our tips above to check if any of the apps consuming the most battery life also track your location. If so, and if you don’t need that location tracking, consider disabling the function just for those apps.

Myth: Always choose Wi-Fi over cellular

Many people, and even smartphone vendors such as Apple, claim that using Wi-Fi for wireless data consumes less battery than using a cellular signal, so you should use Wi-Fi whenever you can. However, our testing found that this isn’t always the case. For example, when we tested in a location where both Wi-Fi and LTE signals were strong, on an iPhone 6s Plus an hour of browsing over Wi-Fi used roughly the same amount of battery power as an hour using LTE; on a Moto X Pure Android phone, LTE used only 2 to 3 percent more of a full charge than Wi-Fi. In other words, as long as you have a good signal, you probably won’t see a huge difference between Wi-Fi and cellular data, and switching between the two is likely not worth the hassle.

Where you will see differences is in areas where LTE coverage is poor. As we explain above, your phone uses significantly more power when trying to find and connect to a weak signal. So if you’re in a location where the Wi-Fi signal is bad, but you have a good cellular signal—so your phone is regularly switching between the two—disabling Wi-Fi and forcing your phone to use just cellular data will likely conserve battery power. Conversely, if your phone is struggling to get a good cellular signal, try finding an accessible Wi-Fi network (at a coffee shop or restaurant, for example) to use instead.

You’ll see the biggest impact of using cellular data when your phone has to switch between cellular towers in a continual search for a good signal. We found that after an hour of Web surfing, an Android phone had used roughly 4 percent of a full battery more when we were driving in a car than when we were stationary with a strong LTE signal; an iPhone used 8 percent more of a full charge. (The difference will vary by phone, carrier, and locations, of course.)

That said, in situations where you’re roaming on cellular data, you likely won’t have the option to use Wi-Fi (unless, for example, you’re on a train that offers Wi-Fi), so your only real option there is not to use cellular data at all—which might be inconvenient but will conserve a lot of battery power. 5

Myth: Disable Hey Siri or Ok Google

Both iPhones and Android phones include a hands-free feature for accessing their respective virtual assistants. With this feature enabled, you don’t have to press or hold a button to activate Siri or Ok Google, respectively—you just say, for example, “Hey Siri” and then speak your request or command. Although this feature is convenient, it requires your phone to constantly listen for that special phrase, which uses some power.

However, contrary to tips you might see online, if you have a phone that supports this feature, disabling it won’t conserve much battery life. In our testing with an iPhone 6s Plus and a Nexus 6P, we saw a negligible difference in battery usage between having the always-on virtual assistant enabled or disabled over a two-hour period.

There’s a good reason for this: On the iPhone side, only the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus allow you to enable always-on Hey Siri while the device is on battery power, because these models use newer components (specifically, Apple’s M9 motion coprocessor) that allow Hey Siri to function on minimal power; older iPhones can use Hey Siri only when charging. Similarly, only some Android phones with certain energy-efficient components provide the option for always-on Ok Google; on other models, Ok Google works only when the the screen is on, when you’re already using the phone.

Actually using Siri or Ok Google uses some energy, so if your phone’s battery is getting low, you should probably stop asking the phone question after question during your commute. But just having the feature enabled isn’t worth worrying about—and the feature can be quite convenient.

Myth: Calibrate your battery to extend its life

For many years, devices that used rechargeable batteries required “conditioning” or “calibrating,” a procedure that prevented the battery from forgetting how much capacity it actually had if you didn’t fully drain the battery between charges (a phenomenon called the memory effect). Today’s smartphone batteries no longer suffer from this issue.

However, every battery does gradually lose capacity over time as you use and recharge it, and the phone’s software isn’t always good at accounting for this capacity change. If you periodically (once every couple months) charge the phone fully and then use it until it dies, your phone’s software will determine the battery’s current capacity and thus allow the phone to better estimate how long it will last on a charge. The battery won’t last any longer as a result, but the phone’s battery meter will be more accurate. If you find that your phone claims it has 80 percent of a charge left but dies a few hours later, try this procedure.

Myth: Use only the charger that came with your phone

A common warning around the Internet is that you should use only the charger that came with your phone. This idea isn’t so much about extending your battery life on a daily basis but rather a warning that using a different charger could damage your phone’s battery—either by being poorly made or by supplying too much power.

Several warnings are woven into this claim. The first is that only your phone’s own charger is safe. In reality, the phone itself contains all the circuitry responsible for charging its battery. The AC adapter (as it’s more accurately known) simply converts the AC current from a wall outlet into low-voltage, low-amperage DC current that it provides via a USB port. This is why you can charge your phone using the USB port on a computer, a USB battery pack, or a charger in your car—the phone is designed to charge from a variety of power sources that can produce a wide range of current.

For example, the charger that ships with an iPhone supplies about 1 amp of current, but the phone can also charge from a 0.5-A USB port on a computer, or even from the 2.4-A chargers that are becoming increasingly common. And some flagship Android phones come equipped with Qualcomm’s Quick Charge technology, which allows faster charging—with a compatible charger—by bumping the voltage rather than the current.

Similarly, some people worry that using a higher-current charger with your smartphone—say, by using Apple’s iPad charger with an iPhone, which charges the phone much faster—will damage the phone’s battery. You do have some theoretical risk here, as charging a battery with too much current can shorten the battery’s life cycle (how long it will maintain good capacity) over long periods.

However, current smartphones are designed to work with a wide range of charging currents—Apple specifically lists all iPhones as being compatible with the company’s iPad chargers—and the phones themselves limit the maximum current used to charge the battery. For example, if you use a recent iPhone with a charger that can provide up to 2.4 A, the phone draws a maximum of 2.1 A when charging. And even if using a higher-current charger on a daily basis does affect the battery’s life cycle, you likely won’t see a difference unless you keep the phone for longer than a couple of years—at which point you’ll be seeing shorter battery life anyway (just possibly not as short) due to age of the battery.

Finally, you may read warnings that a cheap third-party charger could damage your phone. There’s some truth in this claim: Many chargers you can buy, especially budget models you’ll find online or at your local shopping-mall kiosk, are poorly made or constructed with low-quality components. Some of these chargers are counterfeit, sold as believable-looking versions of phone makers’ own chargers. (Engineer Ken Shirriff has a great examination of what’s inside Apple’s iPhone charger in comparison with budget models.) A poorly made charger can not only damage your phone but could also hurt you by exposing you to dangerous currents. So if you’re replacing your phone’s AC adapter or buying an extra, stick with a reputable vendor that sells UL-listed models.

All of this is to say that as long as you’re using a well-made charger, it’s okay to use one that charges your phone more quickly than the charger it came with, or one that can charge even faster than your phone allows.

If you still need more juice: Battery packs

If, after following these tips, you find that your phone still can’t survive through the day, the battery may be defective; you should take your iPhone to an Apple Store, or contact your Android phone’s vendor, to rule that possibility out. (Some extended warranties for smartphones, including AppleCare, cover replacing a battery that has declined below a certain amount within the warranty period.)

If the battery is fine, and the phone is less than two or three years old—so you don’t plan on buying a new one with better battery life soon—you might consider purchasing an external battery. These accessories, which can take the form of a bulky case with a built-in battery, or a separate battery that connects to your phone with a cable, provide the power you need to last an additional few hours at the end of the day, or even to fully charge your phone’s battery.

Battery cases are popular for iPhones. If you own a current-generation iPhone, we’ve collected picks for the iPhone 6 and 6s, as well as the 6 Plus and 6s Plus; if you’re still using a last-generation model, we’ve assembled recommendations for you in our guide to cases for the iPhone 5 and 5s.

If you have another type of phone, if you don’t want a bulky battery case, or if you want the flexibility to charge multiple devices, a USB battery pack is a better option. Our guide to the best USB battery packs covers models ranging from able packs that will get you through a meeting or an evening out all the way up to large batteries designed to support you through a week off the grid.

Screenshots by Dan Frakes, Nick Guy, and Kevin Purdy.

Footnotes:

Although we ran tests that were as controlled as we could make them, it isn’t possible to completely control all factors and still actually use a phone. Similarly, although we performed multiple tests for each procedure, we conducted the tests on particular combinations of phone configurations and software, so our specific results may differ to some degree from what you’ll experience on your own phone. However, we expect the general trends to be true for most people based on our testing methods. Finally, note that when we mention tests on specific Android and iPhone devices, or even different models on the same platform, those results aren’t directly comparable, because different phones have different battery capacities, different software, and different hardware. Jump back.

With a heavier email load, the difference would likely be even greater, because push would require the phone to retrieve new messages more frequently, whereas fetch would retrieve new mail on the same 30-minute schedule. Jump back.

Weak or nonexistent Wi-Fi signals make your phone consume more power than a strong Wi-Fi connection, but with the modern Wi-Fi chips present in smartphones, it’s a very small difference compared with the energy your phone will burn with a weak cellular connection. Constantly switching between Wi-Fi and cellular, however, uses significant energy. We’re conducting additional tests on Wi-Fi battery usage, and we’ll update this guide with those results. Jump back.

On an iPhone 5s or later, the screen doesn’t turn on if the phone is face-down on a table, in a bag, or otherwise blocking the phone’s light sensor, but the phone still wakes up. On some phones with Android 5.0 or later, you can prevent the screen from turning on when you get a notification by searching for Ambient Display in the settings menu and toggling it off. Jump back.

If you’re traveling with others, or if you have multiple devices, you can conserve battery power on most of the devices by using a single device to connect to the cellular network and act as a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth hotspot for the others. (The hotspot device could plug in or use a battery pack.) This arrangement not only maximizes the battery life for the other devices but also maximizes the cellular signal by reducing the number of devices on the cell network. Jump back.

Battery life extender Samsung

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Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro comes with bigger batteries for longer life, but improper settings can cause issues like faster battery drain. Today, we will provide you some advanced tips and guides to solve these problems and extend your watch’s battery life.

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Ah, the good old smartwatch battery life. If it dies too quickly, you’re stuck with a useless wrist ornament. But if it lasts longer, oh baby! The possibilities are endless! First of all, you won’t have to charge it as often, which means less time spent tethered to a wall socket like a sap. And let’s not forget about the peace of mind you’ll have knowing your watch won’t die on your mid-run or mid-calls-with-the-boss.

Plus, with an extended battery life, you’ll have more time to explore all the nifty features your watch has to offer, like tracking your steps, checking the weather, and even ordering a pizza (yes, some smartwatches can do that). So, don’t settle for a short-lived smartwatch. Extend that battery life and unlock a whole new world of wrist-related possibilities!

Easy changes that help to extend the Samsung Galaxy Watch battery life

In our Galaxy Watch 5 Pro review, we highlight the lineup’s useful features, including 24/7 health monitoring and customizable watch faces. Notably, the Pro version offers optimized battery life compared to its predecessor. However, some default features may cause battery issues, as they’re not intended for constant use. To maximize your watch’s battery life, adjust or turn off these settings with our helpful guide.

#1. Turn off the always-on display and opt for raise to wake

OLED screens on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 series allow for AOD (Always-On Display) feature. However, by enabling this all the time can greatly hurt your battery run time. And since you will always not be looking at your screen, it’s best practice to disable this and instead opt for the raise-to-wake gesture.

To check if the always-on display is enabled or disabled, you can use your watch’s settings or alternatively use the Galaxy Watch mobile app on your Android or Samsung phone.

• Swipe down from your watch’s screen and open the Settings.
• Scroll down to find the Display and then tap on Always-On.
• Turn off the AOD.
• Look for Raise to Wake below the Always-On toggle.
• Enable Raise-to-Wake.

#2. Shorter screen timeout

Another tip related to display is screen timeout. Limiting how long your screen is on can impact the endurance of your watch. You can save battery life by setting up the screen timeout to its minimum value available, which is 15 seconds. This can be found under the same settings as display, just below the raise-to-wake toggle.

#3. Choose darker watch faces

in line with customization is using black or dark watch faces. Because the watches ship with OLED screens, black pixels don’t require light when projected into the display compared to other colors that consume power.

Choosing watch faces with darker layout will save a lot of device’s battery life. At the same time, you need to avoid designs with bright colors, especially those covering most of the screen area.

#4. Set vibration level to low

Every time your watch receives notifications it uses vibration to notify you on top of sound. The vibration motor inside the watch typically eats a considerable amount of battery juice, so it is recommended that you set the vibration on the lower side. This toggle is accessible from the main settings, here’s how to adjust the vibration level on the Galaxy Watch 5.

• Go to the Watch’s Settings and look for Sound Vibration.
• Select Vibration.
• Choose Short in vibration duration option.
• Choose Light vibration intensity.

#5. Turn off NFC

If you’re not using NFC for payments or instead have your phone do the job for most of the time, turning off the NFC on your Galaxy Watch 5 or Watch 5 Pro may stretch your wearable’s battery. To access NFC settings, just go to your watch’s main settings and pick connections and turn off NFC from there.

• Swipe down to access the Watch’s Settings.
• Select Connections.
• Choose NFC option.
• Turn it off.

#6. Turn off location

Turning off the location tracker on the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro can help to save battery because the location tracker constantly uses the watch’s GPS sensor to track your location, which can consume a lot of battery power. By turning off this feature, you prevent the watch from using its GPS sensor unnecessarily and therefore extend its battery life.

• Swipe down to access the Watch’s Quick Settings.
• Browse the quick setting until you find the Location icon.
• Turn it off.

#7. Close background and recent apps

Like in smartphones, your watch uses memory and processor resources as well. While Wear OS 3 has evolved to become an efficient and fast operating system, running numerous apps in the background can still affect the day-to-day battery life of your watch. There will be two options to do this on your Galaxy Watch 5.

Clearing background apps via on-screen gesture

• Swipe from the bottom to the top to open the App menu of your Watch.
• Select the Overlapping circles icon at the top center to open recent apps.
• Select the option Close All.

Using the physical key of your smartwatch to close all apps

• Go to your Watch’s settings and scroll down until you see Advanced features.
• Select this and choose Customize keys.
• At the bottom, set short press to Show recent apps.
• Press this back key every time you open recent apps.
• Tap Close All button to close all apps at once.

#8. Filter notification settings (via phone set up)

Narrowing the list of which apps can send notifications to your watch will also be helpful in giving you extra screen time. Allow only the important notifications since most since you will still be switching back and forth to your mobile. This is adjustable using the Galaxy Watch app on your Galaxy or Android phone.

• Go to your Watch’s Dashboard on your Galaxy phone.
• Choose Watch Settings.
• Tap notifications and select App notifications.
• Filter which apps are essential and are allowed on watch.

#9. Charging and battery tips that may fix your Galaxy Watch 5’s battery problems

In addition to tweaking the settings to save battery life, using the safe and standard practice when taking care of your watch may also alleviate some battery issues. Of course, it is still recommended to have your Galaxy Watch 5 checked by an official Samsung service center if any problems persist. But below are some basic steps to follow.

Don’t overcharge your Galaxy Watch 5

Similar to other electronic devices, overcharging your Galaxy Watch 5 or Watch 5 Pro may degrade its battery life. In turn, this will translate to shorter battery endurance for the watch. It is suggested to have a frequent charging that fills the battery between 80 to 90% than to always fill it to 100%.

Clean the charging contacts on your charger or Galaxy Watch

Maintaining the charging contacts in the watch and charger can ensure that you’re charging the device efficiently. A quick wipe using a clean cloth can keep debris and dirt from getting stuck in the contacts.

#10. Golden tip: Get extra days of battery with Power saving and Watch-only modes

If you’re already on low battery life, enabling the Power Saving or Watch-only Mode can give you additional days to weeks of usage. However, these will limit several features of your Galaxy Watch 5 (Pro) ranging from connectivity and notifications to processor for power saving mode and all features except on the time for the Watch-only mode. This last feature can give you up to 30 days with the watch functionality.

• Swipe up on your Watch to open the App Menu.
• Go to the Settings and scroll down and tap Battery.
• Toggle on Power saving or Watch-only mode.

Please be advised that to turn off the Watch only mode, you can either press and hold the Home key or charge your watch.

Join the conversation and share your favorite battery-saving tips for the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro! Don’t see your top tip mentioned? Let us know and help fellow smartwatch enthusiasts get the most out of their devices.

How to extend laptop battery life on Windows 11

Is your laptop’s battery not lasting as much as it should? Here are several tips to fix battery life problems on Windows 11.

• Battery saver
• Display timeout
• Configure sleep timer
• Change power mode
• Change lid action
• Change video settings
• Disable startup apps
• Disable Wi-Fi
• Disable Bluetooth
• Enable Airplane mode
• Dark theme
• Control indexing power
• Disable animations
• Lower brightness
• Enable DRR
• Choose GPU
• Enable hibernation
• Control app power
• Fix power issues
• Remove malware

On Windows 11, running low on battery when you are actively using the device can be a frustrating situation, even more, if there’s not a power outlet nearby, but there are many ways to make the most of a single charge, and in this guide, we’ll show you how.

For example, you can enable battery savers to disable features and visual effects that can negatively affect battery life. You can tweak the power settings to shorten when the screen should turn off and when the computer should enter sleep mode to preserve energy. You can enable hibernation to save the current session with your running applications onto the hard drive to shut down the system and extend the device’s battery life. It’s also possible to troubleshoot and fix common battery drain problems automatically and control many other features.

This guide will walk you through the best tips to extend the battery life on your Windows 11 laptop as much as possible.

How to enable battery saver on Windows 11

To enable battery saver to extend your laptop battery life on Windows 11, use these steps:

• Open Settings.
• Click on System.
• Click the Power battery page on the right side.

• Under the Battery section, click the Turn on now button.

• (Optional) Choose the battery percentage before automatically turning the battery saver feature.
• (Optional) Turn on the Lower screen brightness when using battery saver toggle switch.

Once you complete the steps, the battery saver feature will turn off features that may use a lot of power, such as background activity, file and email syncing, and fancy visual effects. In addition, the screen brightness will dim to improve battery life on Windows 11.

How to set when inactive display turns off on Windows 11

To reduce the time when a display should turn off automatically, use these steps:

• Open Settings.
• Click on System.
• Click the Power battery page on the right side.

• Under the Power section, click the Screen and sleep setting.
• Reduce the number of minutes before turning off the display while on battery power using the On battery power, turn off my screen after setting.

After you complete the steps, the display will automatically turn off when you specify to save power.

How to set when computer should sleep on Windows 11

To reduce the time when a computer should enter in sleep mode to save battery, use these steps:

• Open Settings.
• Click on System.
• Click the Power battery page on the right side.

• Under the Power section, click the Screen and sleep setting.
• Reduce the number of minutes before turning off the display while on battery power using the On battery power, put my device to sleep after setting.

Once you complete the steps, the laptop will enter into sleep mode after the time of inactivity you specified to conserve battery life.

How to change power mode on Windows 11

To change the power mode to favor battery life, use these steps:

• Open Settings.
• Click on System.
• Click the Power battery page on the right side.

• Under the Power section, choose the Best power efficiency option using the Power mode setting.

After you complete the steps, the system will implement policies to favor battery life rather than performance.

How to sleep laptop when the lid closes on Windows 11

Although you can always use the power options from the Start menu, you can also customize the system to Sleep or Hibernate as you close the laptop’s lid to help you conserve battery.

To change what closing the lid does on Windows 11, use these steps:

• Open Control Panel.
• Click on Hardware and Sound.
• Click on Power Options.

• Click the Choose what closing the lid does option in the left pane.

• Under the On battery section, use the When I close the lid setting and choose the Sleep or Hibernate (recommended) option.
• (Optional) Under the Plugged in section, use the When I close the lid setting and choose the Sleep or Hibernate (recommended) option.
• Click the Save changes button.

After you complete the steps, the next time you close the lid, the laptop will go into the sleep mode you selected to extend battery life.

This page also allows you to control the action of the power button. Depending on your preferences, you can set it to sleep or hibernate (recommended) the computer.

The Hibernate option will only be available if you have previously enabled the feature on Windows 11.

How to change video playback settings on Windows 11

To optimize battery life for video playback, use these steps:

• Open Settings.
• Click on Apps.
• Click the Video playback page on the right side.

• Select the Optimize for battery life option using the Battery options setting.

• Check the Play video at a lower resolution when on battery option.

Once you complete the steps, the video playback settings will be optimized to preserve battery life on the computer.

How to disable apps at startup on Windows 11

To prevent apps from running a startup to minimize battery drain, use these steps:

• Open Settings.
• Click on Apps.
• Click the Startup page on the right side.

• Turn off all the unnecessary apps (leave enabled only the essential apps).

• Restart the computer

After you complete the steps, the computer will no longer launch additional programs at startup that could waste system resources that can negatively affect the battery experience.

How to turn off wireless adapter on Windows 11

If a task doesn’t require an internet connection, you could disable the wireless communication to extend the laptop’s battery life further.

To disable Wi-Fi communication to extend battery life on Windows 11, use these steps:

Once you complete the steps, the computer will disable the wireless communication to reduce battery drainage.

Alternatively, you can use the Windows key A keyboard shortcut and click the Wi-Fi button to disable wireless communication.

How to disable Bluetooth on Windows 11

Like mobile phones, Bluetooth can also help drain the battery faster. If you disable the adapter, you can help improve the computer’s battery life.

To disable Bluetooth to preserve battery life, use these steps:

• Open Settings.
• Click on Bluetooth devices.
• Turn off the Bluetooth toggle switch.

After you complete the steps, the device will pause Bluetooth connections to improve battery life.

Alternatively, you can use the Windows key A keyboard shortcut and click the Bluetooth button to disable wireless communication.

How to turn on Airplane mode on Windows 11

Although you can manually disable Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and other wireless communications individually, you can turn off all these signals automatically by turning on Airplane mode.

To turn on Airplane mode to save battery life on Windows 11, use these steps:

• Open Settings.
• Click on Network internet.
• Turn on the Airplane mode toggle switch.

Alternatively, you can click the network icon in the Taskbar System Tray (Windows key A shortcut) and click the Airplane mode button.

When Airplane mode is enabled, all wireless communications will be disabled, resulting in less power being utilized, expanding the battery life of the device.

How to switch to dark theme on Windows 11

When you use dark color mode and dark wallpaper on Windows 11, the display won’t use as much energy to drive the pixels on the screen. As a result, using this color mode can help save battery life.

To set the dark theme on Windows 11, use these steps:

• Open Settings
• Click on Personalization.
• Click the Themes page on the right side.

• Select the Windows (dark) theme.

Once you complete the steps, the desktop will include the dark version of Bloom wallpaper for Windows 11, and the Taskbar, Start menu, and supported apps will switch to the dark color mode.

How to enable power usage during indexing on Windows 11

To minimize Windows Search battery usage, use these steps:

• Open Settings.
• Click on Privacy security.
• Click the Searching Windows page on the right side.

• Turn on the Respect power settings when indexing toggle switch.

Once you complete the steps, Windows 11 will temporarily throttle or pause search and updates to the index database to extend battery life while on battery power.

How to disable animation effects on Windows 11

Windows 11 has visual effects, such as minimizing, opening, closing, and maximizing Windows, actions in the Taskbar, and more, to make the experience smoother. The only problem is that these effects require additional computing resources that can drain the laptop’s battery. However, you can disable these effects to save some battery and make the experience feel a little faster in the process.

To disable the Windows 11 animation effects, use these steps:

• Open Settings.
• Click on Accessibility.
• Click the Visual effects page on the right side.

• Turn off the Animation effects toggle switch.

• Turn off the Transparency effects toggle switch.

Once you complete the steps, the system won’t need to use additional resources to play visual effects, improving battery life.

How to lower brightness on Windows 11

To lower the brightness settings to save battery life, use these steps:

• Open Settings.
• Click on System.
• Turn on the Display toggle switch.

• Under the Brightness color section, click the Brightness setting.
• Use the slider to control the light intensity of the display.

• Check the Help improve battery by optimizing the content shown and brightness option to let the system manage image quality in favor of battery life.

After completing the steps, the display will lower its brightness to reduce power consumption and battery usage.

How to enable Dynamic Refresh Rate on Windows 11

Dynamic Refresh Rate (DRR) is a feature that automatically lowers the device’s refresh rate to save battery life. When using this feature, you will be trading off-screen quality, but it’ll help to preserve battery life.

The feature is only available on displays with 120Hz or higher refresh rates.

To enable Dynamic Refresh Rate on Windows 11, use these steps:

• Open Settings.
• Click on System.
• Click the Display page on the right side.

• Under the Related settings section, click the Advanced display setting.

• Select the Dynamic option using the Choose a refresh rate setting.

• (Optional) Use Select the 60 Hz option using the Choose a refresh rate setting on displays of 120Hz or higher refresh rates.

Once you complete the steps, the device will automatically lower the display refresh rate when a higher rate isn’t necessary to save power.

How to choose graphics card per application on Windows 11

If you want to preserve battery life as much as possible, you can change the system settings so that the applications use the less powerful graphics card. Of course, this only works on a system with two or more graphics cards.

To configure an app to use the less powerful GPU on Windows 11, use these steps:

• Open Settings.
• Click on System.
• Click the Display page on the right side.

• Under the Related settings section, click the Graphics settings.

• Select the app and click the Options button.

• Quick tip: If the app isn’t on the list, use the Add an app settings to add it.

• Choose the Power saving graphics card.
• Click the Save button.

Once you complete the steps, the application will use the less powerful graphics card to preserve battery life.

How to enable hibernation on Windows 11

On Windows 11, hibernation is a feature that saves the contents loaded into memory onto the hard drive, allowing you to turn off the computer to preserve the battery without losing your session. The next time you turn off the computer, the previous session will load, allowing you to pick up where you left off.

To enable hibernation on Windows 11, use these steps:

• Open Start.
• Search for Command Prompt, right-click the top result, and select the Run as administrator option.
• Type the following command to confirm the hibernation status and press Enter: powercfg /availablesleepstates

• Confirm whether Hibernate appears disabled.
• Type the following command to enable Windows 11 Hibernate feature and press Enter: powercfg /hibernate on

Once you complete the steps, hibernation will be enabled on the computer.

The feature isn’t supported on all system configurations. If you can’t enable hibernation, there could be several reasons. For example, the graphics card driver does not support the power state, and you need to update the video driver to fix the problem.

If the computer uses hybrid sleep on Windows 11, you must disable the feature before turning on hibernation.

In the case that hibernation is supported but not enabled on the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), you may need to access the motherboard firmware to update the settings.

If the feature isn’t supported because of the hardware configuration, you won’t be able to enable the feature.

How to control app battery usage on Windows 11

If you suspect that one or more apps are draining the battery fast, you can use the power settings to identify the apps using the most battery and change their settings to prevent them from running in the background to conserve power.

View apps battery usage

To view the battery usage history on Windows 11, use these steps:

• Open Settings.
• Click on System.
• Click the Power battery page on the right side.

• Under the Battery section, click on Battery usage to open the settings.

While in this view, you can see the device’s battery usage to find out the apps using the most energy.

Manage apps background activities

To change apps background activities to improve battery life, use these steps:

• Open Settings.
• Click on System.
• Click the Power battery page on the right side.

• Under the Battery usage section, select the app, click the menu (three-dotted) button, and select the Manage background activity option.

• Quick note: You can only change the power settings for apps you acquired from the Microsoft Store. If you have a traditional desktop app, you will need to edit the power settings from the application (if applicable).

• Under the Background apps permissions setting, choose the Never option. Or select the Power optimized (if applicable).

Alternatively, you can go to Settings Apps features, select the app, click the menu (three-dotted) button, click on Advanced options, and then change the Background apps permissions setting.

How to fix power problems to improve battery life on Windows 11

To fix power-related issues to extend battery life on Windows 11, use these steps:

• Open Settings.
• Click on System.
• Click the Troubleshoot page on the right side.

• Click the Other troubleshooters setting.

• Under the Other section, click the Run button for the Power troubleshooter.

• Continue with the on-screen directions (if applicable).

• Click the Close button.

Once you complete the steps, the troubleshooter will scan and apply common fixes to improve battery life on Windows 11 (as necessary).

How to remove viruses affecting battery life on Windows 11

A virus or any other type of malware can also decrease battery life. If you think that your computer is infected, you may be able to resolve this problem by doing a virus scan with Microsoft Defender Antivirus.

If you have a third-party antivirus, you will need to refer to the software documentation for the steps to perform a full malware scan.

To perform a full virus scan on Windows 11, use these steps:

• Open Start.
• Search for Windows Security.
• Click on Virus threat protection.
• Under the Current threats section, click on Scan options.

• Select the Full scan option.

• Click the Scan now button.

After you complete the steps, the antivirus will scan and remove any virus that may negatively affect the experience and battery life.

When nothing seems to improve the device’s battery life, and this is a software-related problem, you may want to consider resetting the device to its factory default settings or performing a clean installation of Windows 11.

resources

For more helpful articles, coverage, and answers to common questions about Windows 10 and Windows 11, visit the following resources:

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Mauro Huculak is technical writer for WindowsCentral.com. His primary FOCUS is to write comprehensive how-tos to help users get the most out of Windows 10 and its many related technologies. He has an IT background with professional certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, and CompTIA, and he’s a recognized member of the Microsoft MVP community.

How to Extend Laptop Battery Life

This article was co-authored by Ken Colburn. Ken Colburn is a Consumer Electronics Expert and the Founder CEO of Data Doctors Computer Services. With more than 34 years of experience, he specializes in computer checkups and repairs, data recovery, and teaching others about technology. Ken also provides one-minute tech tips through his broadcast, Data Doctors Tech Tips.

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Is your notebook computer’s battery dying too quickly? This tutorial will teach you how to get more life of each battery charge by making simple tweaks to the way you work.

Reducing Open Tasks

• Use only what you need at any given time. If your laptop has plenty of memory, then keep necessary applications open to avoid loading repeatedly from the hard drive.
• Close all the applications that run in the background, like your syncing or backup software.
• Quit Cloud storage services or video players that you aren’t using.
• Run simple applications that don’t use much RAM, disk drive, or processing power.
• Close unnecessary tabs you open in your browser.
• Use a basic text editor rather than the processor and RAM heavy Microsoft Word. Heavy applications like games or movie watching are especially hard on the battery.
• Aim to keep at least 20% of your hard drive free at all times, so your laptop can function at its highest level and retain battery power.

Using Power Management

• Click Power Options in your control panel on Windows XP / Vista / 7.
• Click Settings System Power sleep on Windows 8 / 8.1 / 10.
• Click on Energy Saver in System Preferences, on a Mac.
• Turn off the wireless card if you do not plan to access your network or Internet connection. For Mac laptops, there is a button for powering on and off your wireless device is found on the toolbar at the top.
• Disable Bluetooth. If you don’t use this feature, you can safely disable it to avoid draining your laptop battery.

Shut down or hibernate the laptop rather than using standby, if you plan on not using it for a while. Standby continues to drain energy to keep your laptop ready to go when you open the cover.

• Disable unused ports and components, such as VGA, Ethernet, PCMCIA, USB, and, your wireless, too.
• Use the Device Manager or configure a separate hardware profile (see next step).
• Configure your laptop for the various scenarios (on a plane, at the coffee shop, the office, etc.).
• Use Hardware Profiles menu by right-clicking on My Computer and selecting Preferences or by using a freeware utility such as SparkleXP.
• You do not need to do this on a Mac Windows 8 / 8.1 / 10, as they do this automatically by themselves when needed. Also, do not do this if your computer uses a solid-state drive, as it will slow and lower your hard drive’s life!

Adjusting the Display

Reduce the LCD’s brightness level. If you use your laptop in a well lit area or outdoors on a sunny day, try setting it at two or three bars.

Avoid displaying white images, if your laptop has an OLED based display. OLED screens consume a lot less power displaying blank.

Upgrading Your Hardware

• Replace mechanical hard disks if you can. They require higher power to work. An SSD uses less power as it has no moving parts.
• Set up your settings to use the powerful graphics chip only for playing games or running demanding applications, but you should check whether it can be done.

Adjusting the Environment

Avoid extreme temperatures. Batteries rely on basic chemistry and will die faster at extreme temperatures. Try to charge and use the battery at room temperatures. [1] X Research source

Use a cooling pad when using a notebook computer on your lap. But if it’s a USB pad then don’t use it as it will most likely use up more battery rather than to conserve it.

Optimizing Peripherals

• Store a copy of data you need to your laptop hard drive or a thumb drive before traveling. Optical drives consume large amounts of power to spin up CDs and DVDs.
• Don’t leave a disc in your DVD drive, as it might spin up whenever you launch Windows Explorer or access the Save option in an application. Avoid applications that keep your hard drive or optical drive spinning.
• Use your phone or a handheld MP3 player, rather than playing songs on your computer. They will keep the hard drive working which uses energy.
• Turn off the autosave feature on MS Word or Excel. Constant saving will keep your hard drive turning and using energy.

Maintaining the Battery

Clean the battery contacts. Clean the battery’s metal contacts with rubbing alcohol on a damp cloth. Clean contacts increase energy efficiency.

Keep the battery fresh. Batteries leak power if they aren’t used fairly soon after charging. If you use your full battery 2 weeks after you last charged it, you may discover it is empty.

Do not charge all of the way. Instead of charging the battery to 100% each time, fix the maximum charge limit to 80-85%. This will help in the long run by reducing battery degradation with time. Sony VAIO has a built-in option to set this.

• Lithium-ion batteries can’t be overcharged, but in the long-term, your battery will develop problems if you keep it plugged in all the time.
• Avoid letting it discharge below 20%.

Community QA

You can charge it whenever you like. You could wait until you get a warning that the battery’s getting low (usually around 10% or so), or you could charge it earlier than that. This has no effect on the life of the battery, unless you’re using the computer while charging it, which will shorten it a little bit.

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Thanks! We’re glad this was helpful. Thank you for your feedback. As a small thank you, we’d like to offer you a 30 gift card (valid at GoNift.com). Use it to try out great new products and services nationwide without paying full price—wine, food delivery, clothing and more. Enjoy! Claim Your Gift If wikiHow has helped you, please consider a small contribution to support us in helping more readers like you. We’re committed to providing the world with free how-to resources, and even 1 helps us in our mission. Support wikiHow

My laptop’s battery was working fine until I reinstalled Windows. Now it drains after 30 minutes. What happened?

How to save battery on your Samsung Galaxy S10 in 4 simple ways

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• There are various ways to save battery on the Samsung Galaxy S10, although a healthy battery should get you through an entire day on a single charge.
• Be sure to turn on your Galaxy S10’s Power Save mode, which you can customize to suit your needs.
• There are a number of other ways to save battery on your Galaxy S10, including turning off the Always-On Display and uninstalling power-hungry apps.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 has substantially better battery life than phones from just a few years ago — the Galaxy S10 Plus, for example, with its beefy 4,100 mAh battery, can last for as long as 12 hours of routine use.

Even so, your mileage may vary depending upon how you use your Galaxy S10. Here are some tips for getting the most out of your battery.

How to save battery on a Samsung Galaxy S10

Turn on Power Save mode

The Galaxy S10’s Power Saving mode can be optimized to match how you use your phone, so you should definitely turn it on and choose the setting that works best for you.

Start the Settings app.

Tap Device care and then tap Battery in the lower-left corner.

Tap Power mode.

Choose the mode you want to use. Depending upon how aggressively you want to limit battery usage, tap High performance, Optimized, medium power saving, or Maximum power saving.

Disable the Always-On Display

The display is one of the biggest drains on your battery, and while the always-on display is pretty energy efficient, you can get more mileage out of each charge by turning it off.

Start the Settings app.

Tap Lock screen.

Turn off Always On Display by swiping its button to the left.

Uninstall power-hungry apps

You can check which apps are using the most power, and choose to either use them less frequently, or uninstall them.

Start the Settings app.

Tap Device care and then tap Battery in the lower left corner.

To the right of usage by app, choose Today or 1 week to see how much battery usage each of your apps consumes over that time period.

For information on how to uninstall apps that are taking too much space, check out our article, How to delete apps on your Samsung Galaxy, or disable apps that can’t be removed.

Turn off features you don’t use

The Galaxy S10 comes with a slew of features that you rarely use and might not even be aware exist. Many of these run perpetually in the background, meaning you’re potentially wasting battery life on things you probably don’t use.

Features like these are scattered all around the Settings app, but a great place to start is in the advanced features section.

Start the Settings app.

Tap Advanced features.

Explore the list of advanced features and turn off items you don’t recognize or don’t use. You can always turn features back on again later, and continue to experiment with settings that can save you valuable battery life.