How to Change the Power Plan in Windows 11

Windows 11 is designed to run on everything from low-power, thin-and-light tablets to massive, power-hungry desktop gaming rigs. To manage this massive difference in hardware, the operating system uses “Power Plans.” These are essentially master profiles that dictate exactly how much electricity your processor is allowed to consume, and how quickly your screen and hard drives are allowed to turn off to save energy.

By default, Windows uses a “Balanced” plan, which attempts to find a middle ground between performance and battery life. However, if you are doing heavy video editing and need maximum performance, or if you are on a long flight and need your laptop battery to last for twelve hours, you should manually change your Power Plan to suit your exact situation.

How to Change Your Power Plan

While some basic power settings have been moved to the modern Windows 11 Settings app, the master Power Plans are still located deep inside the classic Control Panel.

1. Press the Windows Key to open the Start menu.
2. Type Control Panel and press Enter.
3. In the top right corner of the Control Panel window, ensure the View by drop-down menu is set to Large icons or Small icons (not “Category”).
4. Find and click on Power Options (it has an icon of a green battery and a power cord).

You will now see a list of available Power Plans. The options you see here depend entirely on your specific computer manufacturer, but you will typically find three core profiles:

• Balanced (Recommended): Automatically increases processor speed when you need it, and slows it down when you do not.
• Power Saver: Heavily restricts the speed of your processor, reduces screen brightness, and aggressively turns off your Wi-Fi card when not in use to maximize battery life.
• High Performance: Forces the processor to run at maximum speed at all times, ignoring battery drain and heat generation to give you the absolute fastest computing experience possible.

5. Simply click the circular radio button next to the plan you want to use. The change takes effect immediately.

How to Customise a Power Plan

If you like the High Performance plan but find it annoying that your screen turns off after only 5 minutes of inactivity, you can tweak the specific rules within the plan.

1. On the same Power Options screen, click the blue text that says Change plan settings next to your currently active plan.
2. You will see simple drop-down menus for Turn off the display and Put the computer to sleep.
3. Change these times to your liking (e.g., changing it from 10 minutes to “Never”).
4. Click the Save changes button at the bottom.

If you are an advanced user, you can click “Change advanced power settings” on this screen to dig into the extreme technical details, controlling exactly how much power is sent to your USB ports, your hard drive, and your cooling fans.