tl;dr: I’m looking for something like AccuBattery, but for Linux

What do you use to measure laptop battery life in Linux?

I can easily get a momentary estimate of battery life. But this fluctuates based on load, screen backlight etc.

I’m looking for something that will collect my usage patterns over time - load, #processes, screen backlight, … - and allow me to predict remaining runtime more accurately.

I’d love for the data to be parsable, so that I can analyze it myself and e.g. find the “worst offenders” - processes affecting battery runtime the most.

Thank you for any tips!

  • Atemu
    101·
    1 year ago

    Well, no program can accurately predict how you are going to use your laptop in the next hours. The best you can do is sample a given reference period and assume it’ll be the same but you have already noted the problem with that.

    I’d recommend you monitor total power draw while using your laptop. It’s inversely proportiaonal to battery life: If you could reach 10h at 5W, you’d only reach 5h at 10W, 2.5h at 20W and so on; you can think of it as a metric for battery drain.

    • czakOP
      2·
      1 year ago

      Agreed, that sounds like the way to go. I was hoping there was already something to do the monitoring for me :)