How To Change Windows Sleep Settings

Managing your Sleep settings can be important to reduce energy costs and is also helpful to increase you PC performance since every new modern hardware regulates their output based on the choosed power plan profile.

Windows 10 let’s you quickly manage when your device should go into sleep.

Changing the Power Plan according to your needs

All Windows PC’s no matter if Windows 7, 8 or 10. offering by default three power plans, and they each have different settings for when the computer sleeps. The three plans are Power Saver, Balanced, and High Performance. One way to quickly change Sleep settings it to choose one of these plans.

The Power Saver plan will take your PC much faster into a sleep state since the timer for it is set to , which is a great option for laptop users who want to get the most out of their battery or those simply trying to save electricity.

Balanced is the default and is often the best option for general users, as it is neither too restrictive or too limiting.

High Performance leaves the computer active the longest before it goes to sleep. This setting will result in the battery draining more quickly if left as the default.

To select a new Power Plan and apply its default Sleep settings:

• Open the Control Panel.
• Select Power Options like you see in the screeshots.
• In the resulting window, click the arrow by Show Additional Plans to see the High Performance option. This profile is designed for Gaming and in case you like all available PC resources for eg. crypto mining.
• To see the default settings for any plan, click Change Plan Settings next to the Power Plan you are considering. Then, click Cancel to return to the Power Options window. Repeat as desired.
• Select your Power Plan and then apply the changes. All changes are immediately done so you won’t need to restart your PC.

On a Laptop you might only see one plan, then click ‘Windows Mobility Center’ and change the mode there.

This method works on Windows 7 up to Windows 10 the same way.

Windows 10 (only)

To change sleep settings on a Windows 10 machine, try this:

• Click the Start button in the bottom left corner of the screen.
• Type Sleep and select Power & Sleep Settings, which will likely be the first option.
• Click the arrow by the drop-down lists to configure the settings exactly as you want.
• Click the X in the top right corner of this window to close it.

Default sleep settings in Windows 10.

Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 (only)

• Type Sleep in the Search.
• In the results select Power and sleep settings.
• Select the desired options from the resulting lists to apply them.

Windows 7 (only)

Windows 7 doesn’t offer an UWP Settings Menu like in Windows 8/8.1 or 10 so you have to go trough this via the Control Panel.

• Click the Power Options icon or alternative navigate to the control panel.
• Select the desired Power Plan and then click Change Plan Settings.
• Use the ​lists to apply the desired settings and click Save Changes.
• Close Control Panel by clicking the X in the top right corner of the window.

Closing Words

Controlling the Power Plan is important and you should not underestimate it, energy costs are climbing higher and higher and there is no need to waste energy if you’re PC is in a IDLE state (the time the PC is on but nothing happens).

Working with the giving options is really easy and advance users can checkout additional options by clicking the ‘Change plan settings’ button but since those is optional and for each user a different decision I not explicit mentioned it but it’s worth to be checked.