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How do you get a proper on screen warning that your laptop is about to shut down? - not a tiny little charging symbol in the bottom right hand corner of the screen - better still how do you get an audible warning?
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I don't know how to get a better visual notification but you can get an audible one. Go to your Sound Settings. Under the Sounds tab is a list of events you can trigger a sound for. Within that list is Critical Battery Alarm and Low Battery Alarm. Set either or both of these events to trigger a sound and you'll get it when the event occurs.
Hi there thanks for your prompt reply. Sadly the menu shown on screen is not the one I get in Windows 11. Do you know how I get back to this older style menu? Thanks Stephen
The screenshot was taken from Win11. You are most likely not in the right section as it is buried. Try this path.
sound settingsSystem > SoundMore Sound Settings sounds tab.
Brilliant tried it got there - so many things we have lost in 11. e.g. I much prefered the tool bar on the left not the bottom. Anyway thanks for your help. I'm awaiting an alarm!!
Thank you for your thoughts on this problem. I have now trialed the audible warning you suggested. There are two problems I have found with this.
Firstly it is very quiet and I have been unable to find a way of making it louder. If I am playing any videos or other media with sound I don't hear it.
Secondly when not using my computer I usually switch it to 'sleep' mode. In this mode it continues to consume energy. When it reaches the low battery levels I have set it probably beeps (obviously I'm not there to hear it).
When I switch on again I rarely remember to check the battery indicator which, if it were a decent size I might - remember the little leaf that indicates the laptop is in energy saving mode because the battery is running out is literally the size of 2 pin heads and therefore not easily spotted.
I just want a reminder when I switch back on in the middle of the screen that says BATTERY RUNNING LOW. Surely this is possible?
Thanks for your help Stephen.
Out of the box Windows can alert you to low battery using the system tray icon, the audio alert (as you originally asked for) and when the battery gets too low a popup notification. If Windows isn't giving you what you need then your only recourse is to use a third party product. I don't use a laptop so I cannot recommend any products that might give you this information.
The alternative is to create a Powershell script that runs via the Task Scheduler and periodically checks the power and then does whatever you want (e.g. play a sound, display a message, etc). Here's a link to an article that provides a sample script.
Of course the more frequent it runs the more power it'll draw. You won't see anything while the machine is off and you'd probably want it to run at login and periodically as you're using your machine so that would be multiple triggers.