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Spass

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2016-12-07

Posts: 133

Is it possible to have "plugged-in, not charging" state on a laptop?

My laptop - Dell Latitude E6410 - has a pretty useful feature under Fn+F2 that disables battery charging when on AC adapter. That helps to elongate the battery life. That feature generally works fine, but the xfce4-power-manager (power-manager-plugin etc.) still says "Charging" under the panel icon. So it's confusing, I don't know when the feature is on or off.

Is it possible to somehow force it to show something like "Plugged-in, not charging"? It would make my life a little bit easier. Any hints? Or maybe there is some kind of a terminal command that can show me that?

I'm on Xubuntu 18.04, xfce4-power-manager 1.6.1

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,492

Re: Is it possible to have "plugged-in, not charging" state on a laptop?

The power manager will report what upower generates. For example, on my system I get a "Fully Charged" notification/icon/tooltip and "upower -d" reports:

Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0
  native-path:          BAT0
  vendor:               innotek
  model:                1
  serial:               0
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              Thu 21 Jun 2018 10:02:53 AM EDT (88 seconds ago)
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       yes
  battery
    present:             yes
    rechargeable:        yes
    state:               fully-charged
    warning-level:       none
    energy:              50 Wh
    energy-empty:        0 Wh
    energy-full:         50 Wh
    energy-full-design:  50 Wh
    energy-rate:         0 W
    voltage:             10 V
    percentage:          100%
    capacity:            100%
    icon-name:          'battery-full-charged-symbolic'

So if upower isn't showing a "fully charged" status, xfce4-power-manager won't display it.

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Spass

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2016-12-07

Posts: 133

Re: Is it possible to have "plugged-in, not charging" state on a laptop?

ToZ, thanks for a reply, upower returns "state: charging" in both cases, so I guess it doesn't support that particular feature (plugged-in with a battery present, but not charging). But... I've just noticed that I was blind before - I have a battery LED on my laptop, and it's not on when I enable that Fn+F2 option, and it lights up again when I disable it (showing that the battery is charging now), so that's what I wanted.

Too bad I can't get that read out on my panel icon too (always "Charging"). Do you think it's worth mentioning somewhere on the "bugzilla" as a feature enhancement? If yes, where should I submit it?

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,492

Re: Is it possible to have "plugged-in, not charging" state on a laptop?

If upower always returns charging, then the problem is either with upower or your system/battery. I would look closer at the system first (bios options) to see why it is always in a charging state. Otherwise, I think a bug report with upower may be the way to go.

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