Windows 10 to Get 'Power Throttling' Feature Aimed at Extending Laptop Battery Life

Microsoft is looking to address one of the biggest pain points in laptops - that of battery life draining due to multiple apps running in the background. Now, the company has announced that in the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview build, Microsoft is testing a Power Throttling feature that will save overall battery usage.

The Microsoft Windows 10 Preview Build 16176 is testing this feature, and it is claimed to provide up to 11 percent savings in CPU power consumption. The only prerequisite for this feature to work is that your machine has to be running on Intel sixth generation and above Core processors - which means only Skylake and Kaby Lake processors can take advantage of this feature for now.

"Most people running Windows like having multiple apps running at the same time - and often, what's running in the background can drain your battery. In this latest Insider Preview build (Build 16176), we leveraged modern silicon capabilities to run background work in a power-efficient manner, thereby enhancing battery life significantly while still giving users access to powerful multitasking capabilities of Windows. With "Power Throttling"~CHECK~, when background work is running, Windows places the CPU in its most energy efficient operating modes - work gets done, but the minimal possible battery is spent on that work," the company notes on its blog.

There's also the power slider that allows you to manually control system-wide throttling, and it can be found by clicking the battery icon on the taskbar. You can also manually opt-out specific apps from power-throttling by going to Battery Settings in Settings > System > Battery > Battery Usage by App. Select the app you want to switch off power throttling and toggle Manage by Windows to off. Also uncheck the Reduce work app does when in background checkbox. Microsoft also notes that Power Throttling is the testing name, and when the feature releases commercially, it may be called something else.