Energy Saver

  • Article

Energy saver replaces battery saver and exists on Windows 11 24H2 and later versions. It significantly extends battery life and reduces energy consumption by automatically managing power usage across your system and apps for an optimal balance of PC performance and energy efficiency.

Users can choose to enable energy saver in several different ways.

  • Users can conveniently toggle on energy saver via Quick Settings in the system tray at any time. To maximize the device’s battery life, Windows recommends users to enable energy saver all the time, even if the device battery still has plenty of charge left.

  • Users can configure energy saver in Windows Settings to run automatically whenever their devices reach a certain battery percentage.

  • Users can configure their devices in Windows Settings to always run energy saver when their devices are plugged in.

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

  • Users cannot change the power mode in Windows Settings.

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

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

  • Transparency effects on window backgrounds is disabled.

When a device is unplugged and on low battery, these additional behaviors can be expected when energy saver is enabled:

  • Certain Microsoft apps, including OneNote, OneDrive, Phone Link, etc. may not sync.

  • Apps running in the background are blocked. Users can allow specific individual apps to run while in energy 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.

  • 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 energy saver mode.

The list is subject to further changes as the devices get updates from Windows Update.

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