A laptop battery alert you set at your own levels
Windows tells you about the battery when it is nearly empty, and by then you are already hunting for a charger. It says nothing at all when you could stop charging. This laptop battery alert widget covers both ends with levels you choose.
Getting low at sets the bottom line anywhere from 5% to 50%, starting at 20%. When the laptop is running on battery and hits it, a band across the widget reads "Down to 20%. Time to plug in." Charged enough at sets the top line from 50% to 100%, starting at 80%, and while charging the widget shows "Charged to 80%. Safe to unplug." once you reach it. Both levels are drawn on the charge bar, so you can watch yourself approach them.
The warnings appear on the widget itself rather than as a sound or a Windows notification, which keeps them visible without interrupting a call or a presentation.
Should you unplug your laptop at 80 percent?
Lithium-ion cells wear faster when they spend long hours held at a full charge, especially when warm. Keeping a laptop that lives on a desk between roughly 20% and 80% is common advice for slowing that wear. The catch is that many laptops offer no way to cap the charge, and where a limit exists it usually sits in the manufacturer's own utility rather than in Windows settings.
A reminder is the practical middle ground. Set Charged enough at to 80%, keep working, and pull the cable when the widget says so. When you know you need every minute for a flight, ignore it and charge to full.
See battery drain in watts, not a guess
The widget reads the charge or drain rate the battery reports, in watts, every 5 seconds. Start an export or a game and the number climbs straight away; close it and it falls. The time shown, left or to full, is calculated from that same live rate, so it reacts to what you are doing now instead of an average built up over the last stretch of light use.
Turn on Show the last hour for a trace of the charge with one point a minute, scaled to the range it actually moved through, with your low level marked when it falls inside.
Battery wear level at a glance
The Health section compares Holds now, what the pack stores when full, with Held new, its design capacity, and rates the result Good, Fair, Poor or Replace. Next to it are Cycles, Chemistry, Voltage and Power, which shows Charger or Battery. The status line reads Charging, Not charging or Discharging, so it is obvious when a dock or a weak adapter is only holding the charge level.
