How To Customize Windows 10 Power Settings? – Ultimate Guide

Windows 10 has remained the most used OS on PCs for some time now. They have achieved such love from users because of the constant feature updates that make the user experience better with each year. The ability to customize the Windows 10 power settings shows this commitment.

The power settings in Windows 10 allows users to change the system and hardware settings in a way that can either conserve power or optimize the performance by consuming more power. In this article, I have discussed about the advanced power settings in Windows 10 and how you can customize it, depending on your necessity.

Different Customization Options Of Windows 10 Power Settings

There are 3 predefined power plans in Windows 10 that you can use depending on your power necessity. Here is a brief description of the advanced power settings in Windows 10:

1. Balanced: This plan, as the name suggests, provides a balance between performance and saving power. When this plan is selected, the CPU speed increases and reduces as necessary for the system. This is also the default power plan of Windows 10.
2. Power Saver: Power Saver plan is strictly set to conserve as much power as possible by lowering the CPU speed, screen brightness, and other similar settings. This setting is for those users that are power conscious.
3. High Performance: This plan runs the CPU with increased speed as much as possible. It also prevents the CPU from lowering its speed when it isn’t being used. The screen brightness is increased and remains like that. Also, power-saving modes of different apps and features may get disabled due to this plan. This is for those users that prefer high performance and don’t care about conserving power.

Other than the 3 predefined power plans, users can also create custom plans. Creating a custom power plan allows the users to modify the changes as per the need. If you are lacking the knowledge of the power plan settings, then don’t worry as below I have discussed the different settings in detail.

How To Select A Predefined Windows 10 Power Plan Settings?

All the power plans are present in the advanced power settings of Windows 10. To select a predefined power plan, follow the steps given below:

following the steps given below:

1. Type Power and Sleep settings in the Start menu and click on the top result.
2. Click on the Additional Power Settings option in the Related settings section.
3. Here you will find the power plans. If only 2 of the predefined power plans are visible, then click on the Show additional plans arrow to make the 3^rd one appear.

You can now select one of these predefined power plans. Another thing you can do is change the plan settings of the predefined power plans. This will allow you to customize the plan settings without the need to set all of them. Also, using this you can view the settings of the different plans and combine them to make an optimized power plan for your PC.

To view or change the settings of the predefined power plans, follow the steps given below:

1. Click on the Change plan settings option beside the power plan that you want to change.
2. You can change the turn off display and sleep time here. To change advanced options, click on Change advanced power settings.
3. Here you will be able to see the entire setting of the power plan.

If you mess up the settings, then don’t worry as you can simply click on the Restore plan defaults option and start over. The Windows 10 power settings may look intimidating to you at first, but after reading the brief explanation of the settings given below, you should get the grip on it.

Explaining The Advanced Power Settings On Windows 10

Here is a brief rundown of the advanced power settings on Windows 10:

Hard Disk

This setting expands into the Turn off Hard Disk After option. The Hard Disk setting is only for users with a hard disk (HDD). If you are using a Solid State Disk (SSD), then this setting shouldn’t concern you.

By changing this setting, you can change the inactivity period it requires for Windows 10 to turn off your hard disk. If you didn’t know, Windows turns off the hard disk of the computer after a period of inactivity to save power.

One downside of this setting is that it takes a long time for Windows 10 to power the hard disk back. Most users prefer to keep a longer inactivity period trigger to avoid this issue.

Internet Explorer

This setting expands into the JavaScript Timer Frequency. The JavaScript Timer Frequency can be changed to either Maximum Performance or Maximum Power Saving. Maximum Performance settings speed up the JavaScript performance on Internet Explorer. If you use browsers other than Internet Explorer (which is likely for most of you), then this setting is of no concern to you.

If you are using the Internet Explorer, then check out this article to open Internet Explorer without add ons.

Desktop Background Settings

This expands into the Slide Show option. The slideshow feature in the desktop background can be either made available or paused using this setting.

Wireless Adapter Settings

This expands into the Power Saving Mode option. By changing the Wireless Adapter power saving mode to a maximum power saving, you can save most of the PC’s battery. But remember that this will affect the connection of the Wi-Fi devices.

Sleep

This expands into Sleep After, Allow hybrid sleep, Hibernate after, Allow wake timers. Here you can customize enable/disable hybrid sleep and wake timers. You can also set the timing of sleep or hibernate after a period of inactivity. The Sleep after and Hibernate after options can be set to Never to disable them.

USB Settings

This setting expands into the USB selective suspend setting. You can turn selective suspend setting on or off. Turning it on will power off the USB devices connected to your computer when you are not using them. This feature can create issues with some USB devices when turned on.

Intel(R) Graphics Settings

This expands into Intel(R) Graphics Settings. You can change this setting to basically get either the best Intel graphics experience or sacrifice it to conserve power. There is also a balanced setting that you can set to get the best of both worlds.

PCI Express

This setting expands into Link State Power Management. This setting can be used to control the Active State Power Management protocol that’s been designed for managing the serial-based PCIe devices. By changing this setting, you can put them into a low power state when they are not active.

Processor Power Management

This setting expands into the Minimum processor state, System cooling policy, and Maximum processor state. Here you can decide the minimum processor state and the maximum processor state of the processor. Increasing the minimum processor state will increase the speed consistency of your processor. You can also change the System cooling policy to active or passive from this setting.

Display

This expands into Turn off display after option. By changing this setting, you can set the inactivity period for the display to turn off. In Windows 10, after a period of inactive the display goes black to save power. You can also set this setting to Never, which will disable the screen from turning off due to inactivity.

Multimedia Settings

This setting expands into When sharing media, Video playback quality bias, and When playing video. Here you can change the settings to prevent Windows from idling to sleep while sharing media, change the video playback quality bias to either high performance or power-saving performance, and change video quality while playing the video.

The power-saving modes in this setting can severely decrease the quality of the video.

How To Create A Custom Power Plan In Windows 10 Power Plan Settings?

Now that you have a grip on the advanced power plans, you can create your own Windows 10 power settings. To do it, follow the steps given below:

1. In the Power Options panel, select the Create a Power plan option located on the left side of the screen.
2. Name the power plan and select a predefined power plan as a base. Click on Next.
3. Select the Sleep and Turning off display periods and save the power plan.
4. Now, click on the Change power plan settings option beside your custom power plan.
5. Click on the Advanced power settings option and set the settings as you desire.

How To Delete A Power Plan In Windows 10 Power Plan Settings?

There are two ways you can delete a custom Windows 10 power settings plan. One way is to open the  Change power plan settings option and click on Delete this plan. You can also remove a power plan through PowerShell. To remove a Windows 10 power settings plan through PowerShell, follow the steps given below:

1. Right-click on the Start menu and select the Windows PowerShell (Admin) option.
2. Type powercfg.exe /L and press Enter to view all the available plans. The active plan will have (*) beside it. Note the GUID number of the power plan you want to delete.
3. If you want to delete the active plan, then type the following command to set another plan active first.
   powercfg -setactive “GUID”, replace the “GUID” with an actual GUID of one of the other plans and press Enter.
4. Now to delete the power plan, type the following command:
   powercfg -delete “GUID”, enter the GUID of the power plan you want to delete.
5. Finally, restart your computer.

Wrapping Up

So, there you have it. Now you know how to customize the Windows 10 power settings. Hopefully, now you will be able to create your custom power plan depending on your PC’s power requirements. If you have any questions regarding this article, ask them in the comment section below.