Battery Saver

  • Article

The battery saver feature exists on Windows 11 24H1 (and earlier) and on Windows 10. It is replaced by Energy Saver on Windows 11 24H2 and later. It helps conserve power when a system is running on battery. When battery saver is on, some Windows features are disabled or behave differently.

Users can choose to enable battery saver when the battery level reaches a certain percentage. By default, battery saver will turn on automatically when your battery falls below 20%.

When battery saver is on, several Windows features behave differently:

  • Microsoft Store Mail, People, and Calendar apps do not sync.

  • Apps running in the background are blocked. Users can allow specific individual apps to run while in battery saver mode. Certain categories of apps continue to run. For example, VOIP apps are not blocked.

  • Non-critical Windows update downloads are blocked. However, Windows update scans still occur.

  • Display brightness is reduced by 30%. Users can enable or disable this setting.

  • OEMs can enable configure the display brightness value on Windows. This value is controlled in the ESBRIGHTNESS SUB_ENERGYSAVER Powercfg setting.

  • The majority of telemetry is blocked.

    • Only critical telemetry is uploaded

    • Census data, and similar telemetry is critical and will be uploaded

  • Windows task scheduler tasks trigger only if the task is:

    • Not set to Start the task only if the computer is idle... (task doesn't use IdleSettings)

    • Not set to run during automatic maintenance (task doesn't use MaintenanceSettings)

    • Is set to Run only when user is logged on (task LogonType is TASK_LOGON_INTERACTIVE_TOKEN or TASK_LOGON_GROUP)

    All other triggers are delayed until the system exits battery saver mode.

For more information about accessing battery saver status in your application, see SYSTEM_POWER_STATUS.