Lowell
Mar 24, 20212 min
Windows 10 has a built-in laptop battery heath app, but it is not obvious and it requires running the Command Prompt app. Here’s how to check your battery health.
Click the Start button and type “cmd” without quotes. Or, if you have a Search box to the right of the Start button, type there.
When Command Prompt appears at the top of the Start menu, click it or press Enter.
A black screen will open with a prompt and blinking cursor.
At the blinking cursor, type “cd %userprofile%\desktop” without quotes, and press Enter. (That’s a space between cd and the first % sign.) This forces the battery report to be saved on your computer’s Desktop screen, where it should be easy to find.
Type “powercfg/batteryreport” without quotes, and press Enter. After a couple seconds, you'll see a message indicating the report is saved with the name battery-report.html on your computer Desktop screen.
Click the X in the upper right corner of the Command Prompt app to close it.
On your computer’s Desktop screen, look for the file named in step 5. Or, open File Manager (yellow file folder on Taskbar along bottom of computer screen), navigate to Desktop, and then find the file. Double click the file open it in your default web browser.
Scroll the report to review the information. The top section, after doing the math (full charge capacity divided by design capacity), revealed my five-year old battery has only 45% of its original capacity—not a surprise. The battery capacity section shows how battery life has declined over time.
For more information, when you finish viewing the report, click the Start button, Settings, System, Battery. You will see a listing of battery usage by app.