How to disable display power savings in Windows 11

Battery life is obviously an important factor for any laptop, and because of that, many laptops come with power-saving features that help extend how long you can use them without a charger. A common way to do this is through display power savings, which adjusts the brightness and colors of your screen to save battery when needed. While these features are helpful, they can have a noticeable impact on how colors look on your screen, and they might lessen the experience. It’s especially critical if you have color-sensitive work you need to do. As such, it can sometimes be a good idea to disable display power savings.

It’s a bit more complicated than you might think because there are a couple of places you’ll need to check to make sure display power savings are disabled. There’s the Windows 11 Settings app itself, but Intel and AMD also provide similar features in their own software depending on what laptop model you have. You’ll want to disable them all to get the best color reproduction and brightness on your laptop.

How to disable adaptive brightness in Windows 11 Settings

Let’s start with the more universal method, which lives inside the Windows 11 Settings app. Pretty much any Windows 11 (and even Windows 10) laptop will have this, and it’s enabled by default when you’re on battery power. Here’s how to disable it:

1. Open the Settings app
2. In the System section (it opens by default), click Display.

   

3. Click Brightness to expand the options available (don’t click the slider, just the general area).
4. Next to Change brightness based on content, click the dropdown menu and choose Off.

   

   Up until the recently-released Moment 3 update, this was a simple checkbox. If you don’t have the dropdown menu, simply uncheck the box to disable the feature.

5. Close the app.

How to disable power savings in the Intel Graphics Command Center

Next, we have the individual power-saving measures from both Intel and AMD. These live in each company’s dedicated driver software and can be a bit harder to find. Let’s start with Intel.

1. Open the Start menu and search for Intel Graphics Command Center. Open it.
2. Click System on the left-side menu.

   

3. Choose the Power section at the top.
4. Set the Display power savings setting to Off.

   

   If you still want to try and save some power, you can use the slider to adjust the intensity of the power-saving feature.

5. Changes are applied instantly, so you can close the app.

How to disable AMD Vari-bright

AMD’s implementation of power-saving features is called Vari-bright, and it can be found inside the AMD Software app (which used to be called AMD Radeon Software). You can disable it in a somewhat similar way:

1. Open the Start menu and search for AMD Software. Open the app.
2. Click the gear icon in the top-right corner to access the settings page.

   

3. Switch to the Display section.
4. Set the Vari-bright toggle to Disabled to turn off power savings.

   

   Alternatively, you can try to adjust the slider to strike the right balance between power savings and color accuracy.

5. Changes are automatically applied, and you can close the app.

Should you disable power savings?

Power-saving features can definitely be useful, and it makes sense to have them on a laptop considering that battery life is so important when it comes to portability. Plus, these features are designed to keep the visual impact to a minimum, so there’s a good chance not everyone will have a problem when they’re enabled.

Personally, I’m often bothered by the effects of these features, so as a standard, I disable them on every laptop I use. If you’re not a color expert, and you haven’t noticed anything wrong, you don’t need to mess with these settings. If you do enable them, you can expect a big hit to battery life, which might be more of a problem than having slightly changed colors and brightness.

Looking for other ways to improve your Windows 11 experience? Consider checking out how to disable startup tasks — it can also help you save system resources and battery.