You're working on something important and out of nowhere comes the Low battery notification…Happened several times with you right ??
You speed up, and……….boy the screen goes black..You didn't finish your work and can only hope it saved the progress…Sounds like you could use some ways to make your laptop battery to last longer!
Well, here I'd be suggesting you to try these methods which should effectively boost your laptop's battery life and will also speed up your laptop…
1. Play with the power settings : This is likely what you’ll try first, so let’s get the obvious out of the way…You can enable the Energy Saver (in Mac) or Power Saver (in Windows) mode in your settings…
It will let you choose when the display will go off whenever you’re inactive.The sooner it happens, the more battery you'll save…
2. Dim the lights : Your laptop screen, or rather its back-light, is one of the hungriest energy eaters in your laptop…Dim the screen brightness to win an extra 30 minutes of productivity a day.You can usually do it easily using one of the F keys located at the top left of your laptop keyboard…You can adjust it to the dimmest you can go without straining your eyes…
3. Change the wallpaper background : Your laptop wallpaper's vibrancy comes at a cost, and that cost is your battery…Opt for something darker, it could even be a solid color screen.For the same reasons, try to get rid of the screensaver if you are using any..
4. Turn off your computer before you go to bed : Just slamming your laptop closed isn't enough…When you fully turn it off, it clears applications and any extra info it stocked up throughout the day…
5. Opt for Hibernate instead of Sleep : If you’re choosing between the two, opt for hibernation mode…When your laptop is in sleep mode, it’s still actively using its memory and draining the battery…
6. Clear the junk : When you free up your hard disk drive, you’re making the whole system much more productive…The fuller the hard drive is, the slower your laptop is and the shorter your battery life will be…
Make it a habit to get rid of the junk and caches every now and then…
7. Disable the Spotlight search : It helps you find whatever you need in seconds, but to stay that great, it’s constantly updating & refreshing its search index in the background…
If you don’t need to use it all the time, you can easily deactivate it in System Preferences to save some battery life and turn it back on whenever you want…
8. Keep your laptop cool : When it's too hot or too cold, your laptop can’t work as efficiently, so it wastes energy.It does better in cooler air than the hot air…
As for the heat, your laptop always needs access to fresh air through the vents.If you’re holding it on your lap while working in bed, you’re blocking that cooling air which your laptop needs…
And also don’t leave it in the car on a hot day, in direct sunlight in the room, or near heaters.
9. Use the incognito mode of your browser : When you're browsing the Internet as yourself, you get a lot of auto-fill suggestions so that you don't have to type in your username and password for every site…
But this function uses extra energy, so going incognito or using a private browser window can help you save up some of it…
10. Don’t keep your laptop plugged in all the time : Any laptop can handle a certain number of charge cycles in its lifetime, typically around 500…
A cycle is completed when you go from 0 to 100% charge…When you go from 50% to 100, it counts as a half cycle…The more cycles your battery will go through, the less efficient it will become….
The best you can do is, to keep it somewhere between 50 and 80%…You can, for example, charge it in the morning and then unplug it for the rest of your day…
11. Plug the laptop in before it goes off : It might sound like the opposite of the previous suggestion, but it only means you shouldn’t let the battery drain completely…
Plug your laptop in when it has at least 20% charge to avoid extra strain on the laptop battery…
By the way, if you are one of those people who mostly keep the laptop plugged in, or do you wait till the last moment to charge it?
Let me know in the comments down below, along with any other of these no-no’s you’re guilty of!
12. Unplug any unused peripherals : USB sticks, external hard drive, webcam, wireless mouse, external keyboard, and all other peripherals are all powered by your motherboard…
Even when you aren’t using them, they keep on consuming precious energy.So unplug them, and also mute the speakers when you aren’t listening to music…
And also turn off that keyboard back-light if you have it…
13. Switch off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth : These two are constantly looking for connection opportunities and this curiosity costs you a good deal of battery life.If you don't need connectivity at some moment, just deactivate both of them…
14. Shut down the bigger power-eater apps : Check which apps always run in the background and consume the most battery power, even when you aren’t using them.
You can do it in the Users Groups and Login Items tab of your Mac…
On a Windows laptop, you can type “see which apps are affecting your battery life” into the Windows search bar located right next to your Windows Start button…See if you really need them at all and if not, remove them…
15. Disable auto app updates : Change your settings to leave all the updates for when you're plugged in…Larger apps will always have heavy updates, and installing them while running on battery will eat a huge chunk of it…
16. Turn off the notifications : Your email and your social networking apps love your attention, and they use notifications to grab it…
Even when you don’t have them open, your laptop is constantly refreshing data in the background to keep you updated…You can change that in the settings and save some extra battery life for more important things…
17. Keep your Operating System up-to-date : Updates are designed to make your laptop more productive…The patches your OS makers include can fix bugs that were the real battery drainers…Whenever you’re plugged into a power outlet, try to update your system if there’s a chance…
18. Focus on one thing at a time : When you have 20 tabs and cloud storage open, you’re editing photos, listening to music,and also running some more programs simultaneously, your laptop is really struggling...
Its RAM (or random access memory) can't handle it, so it calls upon the hard disk for some help… And that’s a big power drainer…
Enable the airplane mode…It cuts off all the wireless connections as well as stops background apps and processes…
19. Upgrade HDD to an SSD : A solid-state drive runs on flash memory that takes much less battery to function than a normal hard disk drive…Plus, it also makes your laptop faster – you'll use less time and battery doing your regular things compared to a computer running on HDD…It's a Win-win!
20. Disable unwanted graphics : Make sure only games and apps that really need high graphics, like photo and video editing apps, can use a powerful graphics processor…You can disable graphics accelerators in energy-saving settings…
21. Keep the laptop clean : Remember that your laptop needs access to fresh circulating air? Well, try to keep those fans clean and dust-free…
When they’re blocked, your laptop heats up in no time, and that becomes a real problem for the battery…
22. Use the original power adapter : Even a small mismatch in wattage can overload and damage both the laptop and the battery…
So always go for the original adapter or pick the replacement carefully…Check if all the specifications are correct to avoid issues…
23. Monitor your battery’s health and replace when needed : No battery is designed to last forever, and you can check how long yours is still good for…
You can find information related to your battery in the Power tab of the System Information app on your Mac…If it shows “Replace Now” or “Service Battery” notification, then it is a call for action…
You can also do it on a Windows laptop in the Command Prompt window…Just open a Command prompt or CMD window with Admin rights & type in, “powercfg /batteryreport” without the quotes & press enter…A battery life report will be instantly saved in C:Windowssystem32battery-report.html.
24. Carry a backup battery : An external battery pack will be your guarantee that you won’t lose any important data or get stuck without a laptop when you need it…
Some laptops have removable batteries or let you add a second one…For other laptops, you can just buy a universal laptop battery with a choice of connectors…
The external battery can feed the intern alone or power up the laptop itself…
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