In this article, we'll look at what is the safest, easiest way to get the most battery life out of your Framework laptop.The instructions here will address best practices and how to set up tools like PPD to optimize your battery power consumption.

External Displays

If you're connecting to external displays, then please plug into AC power. Running from battery and using external displays is going to run your battery down faster. Your displays are connected to AC power already, it's recommended to have your Framework also connected to AC power in this scenario. 

Bluetooth, Keyboard Backlights and Display Brightness Settings

Bluetooth should be off unless it's being used anyway - that's just a good security practice. If you need it, then please do turn it on. Keyboard backlights are best turned off when in a well lit room. Simply pressing Fn and Space keys will allow you to toggle this off. And finally, the brightness settings for your backlit display. 

The general recommendation is to turn it down far enough as to not make the display difficult to read. The lower the setting, the more battery life you will get.

dGPU on Framework Laptop 16

Out of the box on Ubuntu, you will find the natural state of the dGPU is to be in a deep power save mode, until it's has been awakened for an immediate need. This means you will be running your UMA graphics and not getting power drain from the dGPU unless it's been brought out of its power saving state.

Now, there are exceptions to this behavior. Tools like NVTOP will bring the power state as active. And even Steam, will wake it for a brief moment, only to put it into a deep power saving state again. For Steam users, we have instructions how to get your games using the dGPU only when you choose to.

Have concerns when the dGPU is being brought out of the deep power save state? We recommend installing Mission Center.

Ubuntu LTS (24.04): 

Visit this page and run the command, follow the instructions.

Power profiles and stress testing

When stress testing, you need to make sure are using performance settings. TRying to stress test outside of performance is going to lead to leveled off frequencies in some instances.

If you are not totally sure this is working, something you can do to check on AMD/Intel using PPD is this:

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/energy_performance_preference

You should see "performance" across the board.

Firefox hardware acceleration 

Firefox hardware acceleration can help battery life in Linux in a few ways:

- Offloading tasks to the GPU: Hardware acceleration allows Firefox to utilize the computer's graphics processing unit (GPU) for specific tasks like rendering web pages, decoding videos, and playing animations. GPUs are often more efficient at handling these tasks than the main processor (CPU). This offloading reduces the overall workload on the CPU, which may lead to lower power consumption and improved battery life.

- Improved rendering efficiency: Modern GPUs are specifically designed to optimize graphics-intensive tasks. Hardware acceleration enables Firefox to leverage these optimizations, leading to faster and smoother rendering of web content. Efficient rendering may require less computational power from both the CPU and the GPU, potentially improving battery life.

- Dedicated video decoding: GPUs often include specialized hardware for decoding video content, which can be significantly more power-efficient than software-based decoding on the CPU. By utilizing hardware acceleration, Firefox can offload video decoding to the GPU, potentially improving battery life during video playback.

Follow this guide to set up Firefox hardware acceleration. (New versions of Ubuntu, VA-API SHOULD BE ENABLED BY DEFAULT. Scroll down to the Verify VA-API section of the link.)

PPD (power-profiles-daemon) (****AMD****)

For Framework Laptop 13/16 AMD Ryzen™ 7040 Series configurations, you will absolutely want to use power-profiles-daemon for the absolute best experience. Do NOT use TLP. Without getting too detailed, there are things happening behind the scenes that require PPD for the best experience for our Linux customers.

PPD (power-profiles-daemon) (****Intel****)

For Framework Laptop 13 laptops using Intel chips, you may absolutely use the PPD defaults. The Power Saver, Balanced and Performance settings work well. 

How much longer will your battery last?

Now the big question here is how long will your battery last throughout the day while in use? The answer is that it depends on a multitude of factors too long to list here. But here are some common factors.

- Video or video meetings - battery vampires. While PPD will help, you will see your battery drop from use here. 

- Some IDEs running on Electron. Anything on Electron is likely to draw a bit more power than you might like. But they should generally not be worse than running an additional browser instance.

- Lights, Camera, Battery Usage. Webcam usage, backlighting on your keyboard and your display backlighting were touched on previously. Just a reminder these remain factors Adjust them accordingly to best meet your needs, bur remember these do affect battery life.

- Expansion Slot Power Draw Expectations. Because which expansion cards being used where will affect battery life, we have put together a clarification guide for our AMD laptops.

Other Changes and Settings Framework users have recommended

Community members have made a number of additional recommendations ranging from hardware acceleration for your daily desktop use to  disabling Turbo Boost in the BIOS. None of these things will hurt to try, however, these things would need to be community supported on the Framework Forums. Point being, you're welcome to try suggestions from the community, but your experiences may vary.

- Hardware acceleration: Community supported, not officially supported.

- Disabling Turbo Boost in BIOS: Community supported, not officially supported.