How do I know how much battery life my notebook has left?

Posted by
May 20, 2017

It’s important to keep a close eye on your battery status when using laptops and netbooks. Depending on your operating system, this can be done in several different ways.

Windows 10

In Windows 10, you can find out how much battery power you have by clicking on the Hp probook 4710s laptop battery meter icon located in the Windows Notification Area in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen.

Windows 8

In Windows 8, you’ll need to access the Desktop Environment by pressing the Windows button on your tablet or the Windows key on your notebook. When you get to the desktop, click on the battery icon in the Windows Notification Area in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen.

Windows 7, Vista, and XP

In Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP, click on the battery icon in the Windows Notification Area in the lower right-hand corner of your screen.

macOS

In macOS, click the battery icon in the menu bar at the top of your screen.

The icon displays the condition of the battery, tells you if the battery is being charged or drained, lets you know how much time is left to fully charge or drain the battery, and provides a list of any programs that are consuming a lot of power.

To configure the power consumption of your laptop, select Open Energy Saver Preferences… from this menu to bring up the Energy Saver options (which are also accessible from your System Preferences).

These options give you fine-grained control over how your laptop uses power. You can use the Battery / Apple Macbook Air A1369 AC Adapter buttons to create separate configurations for when the laptop is plugged in and using battery power.

Linux GUI

Operating systems that use the Linux kernelcan have many different types of GUI. Every Linux GUI is a little different, but most of them have a system tray and a menu bar with a battery icon.

For instance, the GUI of the Ubuntu operating system (pictured) has an icon very similar to the icon in macOS X. Clicking on the icon will provide you with specific information about the battery’s status, and access to various Energy Saver options.

If your OS has a different GUI and you cannot locate the battery meter or power management options, consult your documentation, or the official website of your OS.

Linux Command Line

From the Linux command line, you can use the acpi utility to display information about your battery provided by the ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) daemon. The acpi utility is a quick and easy way to check how much charge your battery has left.

It is usually not installed by default, but it can be installed using most Linux packagemanagers. For instance, on Ubuntu or Debian systems, the acpi utility can be installed with APT, using the command:

sudo apt-get install acpi

Once installed, you can run the command without any options to display how much power your battery has left:

acpi
Battery 0: Unknown, 96%

For more options, you can view the acpi manual using the command:

man acpi

Viewing battery life on the battery itself

Some laptops have a power indicator on the physical battery itself. In the example shown above, pressing the button marked with the finger symbol would illuminate the lights to indicate the amount of battery charge remaining.

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