One of the greatest things about having a laptop is being able to bring it anywhere. However, it's not so great when your laptop is running out of battery and there's no outlet in sight. To keep this from happening, here are some things you can do to extend your laptop's battery life:
1. Use Battery Saver Mode
The easiest way to make your battery life longer is by using Windows' Battery Saver Mode. This mode lowers the system resources to increase battery life. It automatically activates when your laptop reaches a low enough level (around 20%), which you could always customize if you want!
To enable Battery Saver Mode, click the battery icon in the notifications area on your task bar. You should see a slider to adjust the battery mode. Slide the bar all the way to left for Battery Saver Mode.
2. Reduce Screen Brightness
The higher your brightness is, the faster you'll drain your laptop's battery. The easiest way to reduce your screen's brightness is either by using your keyboard's shortcuts or by using the Windows Action Center. Click the notification icon on your task bar and the Action Center should appear. You'll find a slider at the bottom to control the brightness.
3. Use Hibernate Instead Of Sleep Mode
By default, your laptop goes into Sleep mode when you close its lid or leave it on standby for awhile. This lets you resume your system easily but it will also drain your battery eventually. What you can do is use Hibernation mode instead.
Hibernation saves a snapshot of your current Windows session to the hard drive so you can turn the laptop off. It's a little bit slower than Sleep but it will save up on battery usage. The easy way to switch from Sleep to Hibernation mode is to press Start + R and then type in "powerfcg.cpl" to open the Windows Power Options menu. In the sidebar, click "Choose What the Power Buttons Do." Click on "Change Settings That Are Currently Unavailable" at the top if you see it. Click each drop-down menu and select "Hibernate". Hit Save Changes and you're done!
4. Find and Disable Battery Draining Apps
Some programs are too greedy and therefore drain too much battery too fast. Windows 10 logs the CPU usage of all the programs you have installed. To see the list, right-click on the Start menu and click on "Settings". Go to System > Battery. Under the battery percentage, there's an option to see which apps are affecting your battery life.
This is an easy way to see if there's any software that's hogging your laptop's browser. You can then choose to disable or uninstall the software.
5. Turn Off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
Unless you absolutely need functionalities like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, turn them off to save more power. You can use the Windows Action Center to do this. To quickly disable or enable Bluetooth, tap the Notifications icon in the bottom-right corner of the task bar, then tap the Bluetooth tile. If you don't see the quick tile, you may have to click on "Expand".
And there you go! Hopefully these tips save you enough battery life till you can plug in your laptop. Good luck!