Power management for mobile computing devices

First principles of computer device management - there are three main areas you use power:

Background app processing - CPU usage
Screen - brighter and more screen time, means more power usage
Radio signals, cellular connection, wifi and bluetooth all use power.

The first thing to wear out in most mobile computing devices is the battery. Rechargeable batteries only support a certain number charge cycles before the battery needs replacement. So from those core principles let us begin.

And it is probably better on your eyes too.

Now some naughty vendors like iNTERFACEWARE (opps that’s me) and Confluence don’t support a dark mode. But thankfully many browsers support plugins like the dark reader for Chrome. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/dark-reader/eimadpbcbfnmbkopoojfekhnkhdbieeh?pli=1

It’s actually better on your eyes and easier to read in bright environments - so you can reduce the the overall consumption of your laptop.

Cleaning your screen means you can make your screen less bright too.

You may have to muck around with settings for individual apps.

Like the first model T - black is it!

And they distract you from your work.

Another technique I figured out was to use the Apple Shortcuts app to turn on low power mode at close to 100% power. This is how I do it:

And the detail:

You can switch this on:

Concepts

Power management for mobile computing devices

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