Adjust energy mode in Windows 11? This is how!

All recent versions of Windows have power mode settings that allow you to control your computer's power consumption. Windows 11 is no exception. That means that, like its predecessors, you can also assign different settings in Windows 11 to balance performance with energy consumption.

By default, Windows 11 uses a “balanced” power mode that improves performance with power consumption. However, you can change that to either save power at the expense of performance or get the best performance with higher battery consumption.

Windows 10 offers at least three ways to adjust the settings Windows 10 power mode of your computer, including the option to quickly switch between power modes, right from the battery icon in the notification area on the taskbar. In Windows 11 you can do this through the settings.

In this article, I'll walk you through settings to adjust the power mode on your Windows 11 computer to improve battery life.

Adjust power mode in Windows 11

Right-click on the Windows start button. Click on Settings in the menu.

Click on System in the left menu. Then click on the “On/off & battery” settings.

power mode

Click on Energy Mode to choose from three different energy modes.

• Best energy efficiency
• Balanced (standard)
• Best performance

Best Power Efficiency tries to save energy by lowering the CPU speed all the time and lowering the screen brightness, among other similar settings.

Balanced automatically increases the CPU's speed when the computer needs it, and decreases it when it isn't needed. This is the default setting.

Best Performance mode does not slow down the CPU's speed when not in use, and allows the CPU to run at higher speeds most of the time. It also increases the brightness of the screen. Other components, such as Wi-Fi or disk drive(s), may also not enter power saving mode.

If you have selected an energy mode, this energy mode is immediately active. No restart of the computer is required.

Screen and sleep settings

To save more energy in Windows, you can also adjust the screen and sleep settings in Windows 11. This allows you to determine when the screen should be turned off or when the computer goes into sleep mode or not.

Click on Screen & Sleep. There are some settings that you can adjust to your liking.

• When using battery power, turn off the screen after.
• When connected to AC power, turn off the screen after.
• When using battery power, put the device into sleep mode after.
• When connected to AC power, put the device into sleep mode after.

These settings are different for everyone. By default, all these screen and sleep settings are set to Never.

Battery saving

Windows 11 also has a battery saving function. In Windows 11 you can indicate when and/or you want battery saving to be activated.

Click the “Enable Now” button to enable battery saving immediately. This only works if your computer is not connected to AC power. In addition, you can also select a percentage when the battery saving mode should be enabled. If you wish, you can also indicate in these battery saving settings whether the screen should be dimmed when the battery percentage is low.

Battery consumption

Click on Battery consumption to gain insight into the battery consumption for a fixed period. You will then immediately see how long the screen was on or off and the sleep times of the computer.

At the bottom you can see the battery consumption per app.

I hope this helped you. Thanks for reading!