This free, ancient Windows app will watch over your laptop battery
One thing that always annoys me about Windows is that I never really feel like I know how long my laptop battery has before it runs out — and, conversely, how long it will be before it’s fully charged. An ancient utility holds both secrets.
When a group of PCWorld editors were brainstorming new article ideas, I suddenly remembered NirSoft’s BatteryInfoView, a freeware utility I hadn’t honestly thought about since before the pandemic. A few years of working at home, plugged in, meant that I hadn’t any need for a battery utility.
BatteryInfoView is about as basic as it comes. It was developed, according to the developer’s web page, in 2011, and hasn’t really been updated in the last three years. It’s an alternative — and some might argue a better one — to the Battery Report feature within Windows 10 and 11 that most people use to check their laptop’s battery. I use Battery Report regularly for battery rundown tests where I can set a task and walk away, discovering later how long the battery lasted.
BatteryInfoView will tell you right up front, however, how long you have before you need to plug in. As I said, it’s a utilitarian interface, and some of the most useful features are tossed in among the rest: battery health, for example, will tell you the relative health of your battery. Over time, as you use your laptop and then plug in — over and over — your battery will wear down and it simply won’t recharge back to its original state. BatteryInfoView will tell you this, as well as the number of charge and discharge cycles.