Windows 11 is getting useful changes to give your laptop more battery life for free

Windows 11 has received some useful tweaks to enable laptop owners to get more battery life, although these changes are still in testing right now.

Microsoft implemented a couple of measures in the latest preview build (27686) in the Canary channel (the earliest testing channel).

The major change is actually under the hood here, and in its blog post for build 27686, Microsoft says that it has enacted various “optimizations to improve battery life” without going into any details of exactly what has been done.

More recently, as Tom’s Hardware spotted, Microsoft made another change with this build, as the company explains: “We’re beginning to roll out improvements to Settings > System > Power & battery including the ability to set your Power Mode for both when your PC is plugged in [and] when it’s on battery along with a few other UI improvements to the page.”

Actually, the ability to change your power preferences depending on whether your laptop is plugged in, or running on battery, has always been possible with Windows 11 – you just had to dig deeper into the settings for the OS to change these options.

Now, Microsoft is putting them in a more accessible place where Windows 11 users will be able to see and easily switch these options, right there in the Power & battery panel.

(Image credit: Shutterstock/Zamrznuti tonovi)

Analysis: On the cutting-edge of testing

Clearly, making the settings for changing your power mode in Windows 11 much easier to see and adjust is a good thing. We can’t imagine this change won’t make it through the various testing channels and on to the release version of Windows 11 before too long.

The other move here in the optimizations to extend battery life is a bit different. Microsoft sounds less sure of the impact here, as when asking for feedback on the change, the software giant notes: “Let us know what you think and if you are not seeing the battery life on your PC you are expecting, let us know via Feedback Hub.”

As we mentioned before, the Canary channel is the earliest testing avenue, and therefore the riskiest bet – this is the port of call for testers who want to be on the cutting-edge, where the dangers are higher than with other builds.

In other words, this early work on implemented power-saving changes might go awry, and your battery life could end up diminished, rather than extended. At least until any kinks are ironed out, anyway – and we expect they will be, in time, if there are major wrinkles present.

Microsoft is pretty vague about this change, but with any luck, it’ll help Windows 11 laptops eke out more battery life – and surfacing the ability to tweak power modes, making this more visible to everyday users, won’t hurt either.