Laptops: Battery & Power Saving

Stock AcreetionOS is already reasonable on power; these steps make it excellent.

Choose a daemon

Pick ONE of the two popular managers (they conflict):

Option A — TLP (set-and-forget)

sudo pacman -S tlp tlp-rdw
sudo systemctl enable --now tlp.service NetworkManager-dispatcher.service
tlp-stat -s -b          # status summary

Option B — auto-cpufreq (performance-aware governor control)

yay -S auto-cpufreq
sudo auto-cpufreq --install
auto-cpufreq --stats

Either typically adds 30–90 minutes on typical hardware.

Swap strategy: zram over disk swap

zram compresses RAM instead of writing to SSD — faster AND battery-friendlier:

zramctl                      # active?
# If not configured yet:
sudo pacman -S zram-generator
printf '[zram0]\nzram-size = min(ram, 8192)\n' | sudo tee /etc/systemd/zram-generator.conf
sudo daemon-reload && sudo systemctl start [email protected]

Full background: Performance Tuning.

Suspend & hibernate

  • Lid close behavior: System Settings → Power Management.

  • Hibernate needs swap ≥ RAM (or zstd-compressed resume config): see Administration → Swap & Zram for resume= kernel parameters.

Small wins

Change Effect

Darker screen (biggest consumer!)

Minutes per percentage point

powertop --auto-tune experimentally

USB/PCI runtime PM; persist what helps via TLP instead

Disable unused radios (bt/WiFi) when idle

rfkill block bluetooth

NVMe APST left at default

Already optimal; don’t fight it

Diagnostics

upower -i $(upower -e | grep BAT)   # capacity & wear
inxi -Fxxxz | grep -A6 Battery

Capacity far below design value = aging cell, not software.