How to Improve Battery Life on Windows 11 by Disabling This Feature: A Step-by-Step Guide

Windows 11 offers various performance improvements and features not available on previous versions of Microsoft's operating system, but poor battery life has remained a common complaint since the company rolled out the update in 2021. There are several steps you can take, such as lowering the brightness of your laptop's screen, uninstalling unnecessary or unused apps, and switching to a more conservative power plan. But what if there was a simple trick that allows you to extend your battery life? Read on to learn how you can improve your laptop's battery by modifying a couple of Windows 11 settings.

While we've focused on Windows 11 here, keep in mind that these steps will also work on Windows 10 computers. However, Microsoft is set to drop support for Windows 10 in a couple of months, so you might want to upgrade to Windows 11.

In order to prevent excessive resource usage and improve battery life on Windows 11, you can disable the built-in Windows Search Indexer service. It runs in the background and builds a massive "index database" that can include less than 30,000 for a regular user, or well over 4,00,000 entries for more active users with several files, according to Microsoft's support document.

As it grows beyond this point, Microsoft says that you might see performance related issues. You can choose to disable this indexing service, if you find that it has a negative impact on your laptop's battery life. You can also monitor the value of items indexed by your laptop running on Windows 11 with a few clicks.

How to Check and Optimise Windows 11 Search Index Database 

1. Open the Settings app via the Start Menu.
2. Select Privacy and Security > Searching Windows., then check the figure next to Indexed.
3. Navigate to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows
4. Right click Windows.db and select Properties, then note the file size.
5. Open the Settings app again, then click Privacy & security > Searching Windows > Add an excluded folder, which tells Windows not to index files specified locations.
6. Finally, navigate to Searching Windows > Advanced indexing options > Advanced > Rebuild.

You'll need to wait for around 24 hours, which is how long it takes for Windows 11 to rebuild your search index database. Indexing is performed in the background, as long as you have the service enabled. You can also manually enable and disable the service, especially when you are on the go and want to avoid excessive battery drain on your laptop.