With each consecutive update, Microsoft is looking to provide you with more processing power, smaller downloads, and an enhanced user experience. What you may have noticed is that the Redmond giant has added new settings to improve your battery life as well. It has today announced that a new ‘power throttling’ test feature has been added to the latest Windows 10 preview build #16176 released last week.
As for how power throttling works, the feature gives Windows 10 users access to powerful multitasking capabilities while significantly enhancing their battery life. The Redmond giant has leveraged the power of modern silicon chips to make applications running in the background perform in a power-efficient manner.
Power Throttling, which is a temporary moniker for this feature, is currently accessible only to users running Windows 10 on Intel’s 6th generation and beyond processors. This means your latest desktop or laptop powered by 7th-gen Kaby Lake processors should be able to employ this capability. The feature is available on Intel chips with Speed Shift technology, but Redmond is planning to expand support to other processors over the next few months — via upcoming ‘Redstone 3’ Insider preview builds.
The said feature works by throttling background apps, recognized using a sophisticated detection system built into Windows 10. The power throttling provides you the best performance by identifying:
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 the detection system is pretty strong, you have been provided with an option to opt individual apps out from power throttling. You can find the settings for the same under System>Battery, where you’d need to navigate to ‘Battery Usage by App’ and toggle the option to let Windows manage throttling. Then, you can uncheck the apps you want to keep running in the background.
Microsoft has been conducting experiments to improve on Windows 10’s power features since January, through the preview builds released earlier this year. The feature was removed in preparation for the official release of the Windows 10 Creators Update earlier this month. But, the power throttling slider has made a return to the operating system with the latest build and you can again select any one of the efficient battery settings — battery saver, recommended and best performance.
