How to use hibernation to extend battery life on Windows 10
If you want to improve your laptop’s battery life, you should use hibernation on Windows 10.
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OnWindows 10, hibernation is a power-saving feature that saves the content in memory onto the hard drive (inside the “Hiberfil.sys” hidden system file), allowing a complete shutdown of the device to extend battery life without losing your current work. The next time you resume, the previous session will load into memory, allowing you to pick up where you left off.
Although hibernation doesn’t resume as fast as sleep on Windows 10, the feature will come in handy when you aren’t using the device for an extended period when running out of battery, the laptop has a battery drain issue, or when you have to swap the battery (if you still have one of those devices).
Thisguidewill walk you through the steps to enable and configure hibernation to extend battery life on your laptop or completely shut down your computer, preserving your current session upon resuming.
How to enable hibernation on Windows 10
To enable hibernation using Command Prompt, use these steps:
Once you complete the steps, Windows 10 will enable hibernation on your computer. However, it’s not a feature available on all system configurations. If you’re unable to use hibernation on Windows 10, it could be for one of these reasons:
How to add hibernation option to Power menu on Windows 10
To add the hibernation option to the Power menu on Start, use these steps:
After you complete the steps, the “Hibernate” option will be available in the Power menu in the Start menu, Lock screen, and Power-user menu (Windows key + Xkeyboard shortcut).
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Customize power button to hibernate
To put your device into hibernation when pressing one of the power buttons or closing the lid, use these steps:
Once you complete the steps, your computer will enter into hibernation depending on your configuration.
How to configure hibernation settings on Windows 10
If you want to prolong battery as much as possible, you can adjust the power settings to allow your computer to hibernate automatically.
To change the hibernation timers on your computer, use these steps:
After you complete the steps, your device should go into hibernation automatically after the specified time you configured.
Similar to previous versions, hibernation offers a reliable method to save battery life while preserving your session. However, it’s the option that takes the most time to process a shutdown and resume because it requires writing the content in memory to the hard drive to hibernate and writing the information back to memory upon resume.
If you want to save battery with the fastest resume time, perhaps the sleep option is the recommended method. However, you may lose unsaved work if your device loses power during sleep.
More resources
For more helpful articles, coverage, and answers to common questions about Windows 10 and Windows 11, visit the following resources:
Mauro Huculak has been a Windows How-To Expert contributor for WindowsCentral.com for nearly a decade and has over 15 years of experience writing comprehensive guides. He also has an IT background and has achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and CompTIA. He has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years.
