Windows 10 Quick Tips – Power Usage

The Task Manager in Windows 10 has evolved into a very useful utility. Over the years, Microsoft has added new features that improve upon its available feature list. Sometimes, Microsoft gets it right. One of the new additions, since the October 2018 update, offers the ability to keep track of which programs are using the most power on your Windows 10 computer. This Quick Tips article will show you how.

Task Manager

1. Use the Windows key + X to open the WinX menu
2. From this menu, choose Task Manager

That should bring you here:

Note: You can click on any of the images in this article to enlarge them for easier reading.

In the above example, you can see the two columns labeled Power usage and Power usage trend.

Note: If Task Manager is not showing you columns, then click on More details in the lower-left corner of the window.

If you are not seeing those two Power columns, then right-click on any heading, and in the Context menu that opens, check the boxes next to those headings:

You will note that you can add/remove any of the columns displayed in Task Manager by using this method.

Clicking on any of the headers (ie, Name, CPU, Memory, etc) will sort alphabetically based on the chosen column. Click it again to reverse the sort order.

What You Should See

The Task Manager only displays a generalized view of the Power usage. Very low is a good thing, especially where background processes are concerned. The Power usage column shows you what the current status is. The Power usage trend is more enlightening in that it shows you an overall trend for a particular program and/or process. For example, if you see that a background process is trending toward Moderate, you might not want it running at all if you aren’t using it. This would be particularly true on a laptop computer where everyone is justifiably focused on battery life.

As always, if you have any helpful suggestions, comments or questions, please share them with us,

Richard
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