How to See if Apps are Power Throttling in Windows 10
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.
You may remember some of the power experiments Microsoft did back in January with Windows 10 build 15002. Power Throttling was one of those experiments, and showed to have up to 11% savings in CPU power consumption for some of the most strenuous use cases.
In Windows 10 build 16176, Microsoft 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, 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.
How does it work? To give great performance to the apps you’re using, while at the same time power throttling background work, Microsoft built a sophisticated detection system into Windows. The OS identifies work that is important to you (apps in the foreground, apps playing music, as well as other categories of important work we infer from the demands of running apps and the apps the user interacts with). While this detection works well for most apps, if you happen to notice an app that is negatively impacted by Power Throttling, we really want to know!! You can do 3 things:
1. Provide feedback. Run the Feedback Hub and file feedback under the Power and Battery > Throttled Applications category.
2. Control power throttling system-wide, using the Power Slider. Windows works hardest to keep the processor in its efficient ranges when you’ve selected “Battery Saver” or “Recommended”, and turns off completely when you’ve selected “Best Performance”.
3. Opt individual apps out from Power Throttling by turning off Let Windows decide when this app can run in the background in Battery usage by app, and unchecking Reduce work app does when in background.
For more information about Power Throttling, see: Introducing Power Throttling - Windows Experience Blog
Starting with Windows 10 build 21364, the Task Manager has a new experimental feature called “Eco mode” which provides users with an option to throttle process resources.
This tutorial will show you how to see if your running apps currently have Power Throttling enabled or disabled in Windows 10.
Power Throttling is currently available only for processors with Intel’s Speed Shift technology, available in Intel’s 6th-gen (and beyond) Core processors – Microsoft is working on expanding support to other processors as well over the next few months.
Here's How:
1 Open Task Manager in more details view.
2 Click/tap on the Details tab in Task Manager. (see screenshot below)
3 Look in the Power Throttling column to see if shows as Enabled or Disabled for each running app.
Starting with Windows 10 build 16193, the Task Manager column name has changed from Background Moderated to Power Throttling.
You will need to add the "Power Throttling" column to see it.
That's it,
Shawn
Related Tutorials
- How to Enable or Disable Power Throttling in Windows 10
- How to Enable or Disable Eco Mode for App or Process in Windows 10
- How to Change Power Mode Level in Windows 10
- How to Manage Battery Usage by App in Windows 10