In Windows 8, Windows 7 and earlier, you can choose from predefined power plans which are a group of several power-related settings. If you are running a laptop on battery, you can choose the "Power Saver" plan. If you are running a desktop PC which is on AC power, you can set the "High Performance" plan. To switch the power plan, Windows gives you only two options if you use the notification area power icon. One of them is always the "Balanced" plan. This is not ideal because you have to open the Control Panel and go to Control Panel\System and Security\Power Options to access all the available power plans. Today, we will show you how to save your time and switch the power plan directly from the command line or with a shortcut so you don't need to open Power Options Control Panel every time.
Windows Vista, 7 and 8.x come with a special command line utility, powercfg.exe. It allows you to change various power options with command line switches. It also provides appropriate switches to change the current plan directly.
To activate the "Power Saver" plan, open the command prompt and type the following command:
powercfg.exe /setactive a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a
It will switch your power plan directly.
To activate the "Balanced" power plan, you need to execute the following command:
powercfg.exe /setactive 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e
Finally, to activate the "High Performance" power plan, use this command:
powercfg.exe /setactive 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c
You can create a shortcut for each command to switch between power plans quickly. Additionally, you can assign a global hotkey for every shortcut to switch between them with the keyboard. You can also pin them to the taskbar and set nice icons for the pinned shortcuts.