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The original was posted on /r/linux_gaming by /u/blacklionpt on 2025-02-06 20:26:32+00:00.

Hi everyone! I thought I’d share a quick tip to help improve battery life under KDE Plasma + Wayland.

Having a gaming laptop usually means battery life wont last as long. I own a Legion Pro 5 with a Ryzen 9 7945HX and a 4070 and a 240hz IPS panel, and usually my battery lasts around 3 to 4 hours under light load.

I daily drive Arch Linux with the Linux-LTS kernel, and to help with battery life i use tuned and tuned-ppd to manage the system’s performance settings.

One thing i never thought of trying was change the screen refresh rate during my battery usage time. I used it three times so far, and just by changing the screen refresh rate from 240hz to 60hz made by battery last over an extra hour!

KDE being, well, KDE, has a cool option in the Power Management settings that lets you run scripts when entering AC Power and Battery Power, so, using quick script and the tool kscreen-doctor, i made it so that Plasma changes to 60Hz when i go into battery and to 240hz when plugging into AC.

It’s quite easy to use! Just run kscreen-doctor -o to find your internal screen’s name and then make a simple .sh script for each of the modes, like so:

#!/bin/bash

kscreen-doctor output.eDP-1.mode.2560x1600@60

Then go into Settings > Power Management, select "On AC Power" tab and select Run command or script > When entering "On Battery Power"

Do the same with another script for entering AC Power and you’re done!

Hope this helps some portable warriors out there get a few extra time under battery :)