How to Improve Battery Life in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Last updated: June 16, 2020

Want to get better battery life for your Ubuntu laptop? Besides struggling with various settings or config files, try the power management tool TLP and Slimbook Battery.

TLP is a feature-rich command line utility for Linux, saving laptop battery power without the need to delve deeper into technical details.

TLP’s default settings are already optimized for battery life and implement Powertop’s recommendations out of the box. So you may just install and forget it.

1.) How to Install TLP in Ubuntu 20.04:

Simply open terminal either from application menu or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When terminal opens, run command:

sudo apt install tlp

Once installed, you’re done as it runs silently in background with a default configuration already optimized for battery life.

To fulfil your specific requirements, you can install the GTK user interface TLPUI via this PPA.

2.) Install Slimbook Battery:

Slimbook Battery is a graphical tool based on TLP, it offers an indicator menu that includes Energy Saving, Balanced, and Maximum Performance modes.

Advanced mode provides options to change CPU limit, graphics saving, screen brightess, disable animation, bluetooth, auto-suspend USB ports, etc.

To install Slimbook Battery from its official PPA, run following commands in terminal one by one in terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:slimbook/slimbook

sudo apt update

sudo apt install slimbookbattery

Once installed, launch it from ‘Show Applications’ menu and enjoy!

(Optional) To remove Slimbook Battery as well as its PPA, run following commands one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:slimbook/slimbook

sudo apt remove --autoremove slimbookbattery

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I'm a freelance blogger who started using Ubuntu in 2007 and wishes to share my experiences and some useful tips with Ubuntu beginners and lovers. Please comment to let me know if the tutorial is outdated! And, notify me if you find any typo/grammar/language mistakes. English is not my native language. Contact me via ubuntuhandbook1@gmail.com Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/ubuntuhandbook1

12 responses to How to Improve Battery Life in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

  1. hello

    you can make a guide to configure the battery and make it consume at minimum values, as in windows 10 that consumes as 6watts

  2. thanks !

  3. Very useless info. Thank you.

  4. Slimbook TEAM June 18, 2020 at 7:37 am

    Oh thanks! we really like your tips and tutorials :)

  5. Thinking about trying 20.04 looks like a good release. Was concerned about battery life which I know is hard to match what drivers and tweaking Windows has. But TLP was good last time I tried Ubuntu couple years back.

  6. Doesent work for me on ubuntu 20.04 i get the following error;

    via command line:

    slimbookbattery
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File “/usr/share/slimbookbattery/slimbookbattery”, line 5, in
    ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘gi’

    If i try to load it via apps icon it never loads.

    • simply google that error, this is what I found sudo apt-get install python3-gi – give it a try and install the dependency which is missing on your system

  7. You have to figure Linux isn’t going to get the tweaks on the hardware and software like for Windows and even more so with Mac’s. Apple controls everything and even Windows on a Mac is much worse for battery life. I guess if your concerned about every minute of battery life stick with the native OS like Windows which will probably have better tweaked drivers and apps like browsers are most likely a bit more focused on Windows then in Linux. Although I will say from my experience Ubuntu 20.04 is far better then say back with 16.04 which was the last time I used Ubuntu. I remember back then my battery life was halved compared to running Windows.

    • “every minute of battery” seriously? 6 hours on Windows 10 vs 1 hour 45 minutes on Ubuntu 20.04! I would not call it “every minute concerns”, with this difference I would call it “a vital feature request”

      • using tools like cpufreq and tlp, I actually doubled my battery from 3 hours to 6 hours on ubuntu, one of the reasons I switched, after trying a live usb.

  8. it’s work for me, on hp 14s cf00062tu, thank you

  9. Slimbook Battery it wor before but now, when I run it’s not working I’m on ubuntu 20.10.

    please help