On a portable PC running on battery, you’ll likely see some applications with power throttling “Enabled” and some applications with it “Disabled”. If Power Throttling is disabled on your system-for example, if you’re on a desktop PC or laptop that’s plugged in-you’ll just see “Disabled” in this column for every application. You can drag it around to reposition it, if you like. You’ll now see a Power Throttling column here, which will give you information about each process’s power throttling state. Scroll down through the list and enable the “Power Throttling” column. In the Details pane, right-click the headings and click “Select Columns”.

If you don’t see the tabs, click the “More details” option first. Click the “Details” tab to view a detailed list of the processes running on your system. To open it, press Ctrl+Shift+Esc or right-click the taskbar and select “Task Manager”. Use the Task Manager to check which processes are power throttled on your system. How to Check Which Processes Are Power Throttled It’s only used when a PC is running on battery power.

This feature is designed to boost battery life on portable PCs, so it’s not used on desktops or on laptops when they’re plugged in. This detection process may not always work perfectly, so you can check which applications are marked for Power Throttling and tell Windows they’re important if you don’t want the operating system slowing them down. Windows now has a way to tell which are important. On previous versions of Windows, the operating system wouldn’t be able to transition to that low power state because it treated those background processes the same as foreground processes. When only these less important processes need to use the CPU, Windows puts it in a low power state. If an application doesn’t seem to be important to the user, Windows marks it as available for power throttling. The operating system identifies applications in the foreground, applications playing music, and other categories of important apps, ensuring they won’t be throttled. To ensure maximum performance for the applications you’re actually using, Microsoft has “built a sophisticated detection system into Windows”. That background work will still get done, but it will happen a bit slower and the computer will use less power to do the work, increasing your battery life. However, when applications are just running in the background, Windows would like to put the CPU in its low power state. When you’re using an application like your web browser, Windows would like to get maximum performance out of your CPU so the application works as fast as possible. Modern CPUs have a variety of power states, and can use a low-power mode that is much more energy efficient.

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