Hi there!
First: I absolutely love KDE plasma!
Idea:
In the sys tray icon of the battery, there is an option to show the remaining capacity of the battery in percent as a overlay of the tray icon.
I think it would be great to have an additional option to show the remaining battery time in stead of the percentage value.
The remaining battery time is also shown in the menu of the tray icon, so in my opinion, the value should be available.
I can’t program this, but I hope someone will please do this!
hi, welcome.
totally understandable to want to know how much time is left on the battery, however like with range estimates on an EV, any estimate for remaining usability for a laptop battery are are going to be fraught with errors, and generally unreliable unless you have a very controlled set of usage patterns.
whereas the SoC as a percent of the total capacity is an easy and reliable value calculate without having to know anything about how you use the computer.
i think it remains up to the user to gauge their time left based on their experience with % levels and their usage patterns (gaming vs browsing, etc).
that said i’m sure there are learning algorithms out there that can monitor your usage patterns and give you some kind of an estimate of your remaining time… if not there soon will be.
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Hi skyfishgoo!
Yes, you are absolutely right, that calculating the remaining runtime based on SoC (state of charge) is tough.
In my observations and on my laptop the estimated runtime (that’s “hidden” in a sub menu 
) is quite accurate.
I also think it’s more accurate than estimating the current power consumption and estimating, base on the power consumption, the runtime by my own.
So I think the user should choose between a SoC in percent or the (may not so accurate) estimated runtime.
if there is an existing estimate, then you are right it should be an option… i was not aware and estimate was already available.
you can submit a “wishlist” item for these feature at bugs.kde.org, it should be rather easy to implement if the calculations are already being done.
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