Battery charge limit and a live power breakdown for laptops.
Linux · macOS · Windows — the same popover on all three.
English · 简体中文
ClearPower stops charging at 80 % (or wherever you set the limit) and shows where every watt goes: adapter or battery → system → CPU · GPU · SoC · memory · display · other. Every number is either measured by a sensor or derived by subtraction, so the parts add up to the total. Built for laptops that stay plugged in; inspired by AlDente on macOS.
- Charge limit — click to cycle 80 / 90 / 100 %, or pick any value 50–100 in settings. Top Up charges to 100 % once; Discharge drains down to the limit where the firmware allows it. Both restore the previous limit when they finish.
- Power breakdown — a live Sankey diagram fed by sensors: Intel RAPL or Apple's energy counters for the chip, the battery's own gauge for the whole machine. Nothing is modelled, and the parts add up to the total.
- Display power, measured separately — a one-time calibration (white screen and a brightness sweep) gives your panel its own curve, then scales it by what is actually on screen. On the same OLED, a full white page can cost 7 W and a dark interface 0.4 W.
- Runtime estimate from the battery's energy counter over a 10 min / 30 min / 1 h window, steadier than the OS estimate.
- Power modes, temperatures, fans and the apps drawing noticeable power, in the same popover.
- Small footprint — one small process; while the popover is closed it samples less often and stops drawing the diagram.
- English and Chinese UI, light and dark themes.
| Platform | Get it | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Windows 11 (x64) | ClearPower-Setup-<v>-x64.exe or the portable zip |
Per-user install, no admin, no runtime to download (a single 200 KB exe). Charge control on ThinkPads via the Lenovo driver. → windows/README.md |
| macOS (Apple Silicon) | ClearPower-<v>-arm64.dmg |
macOS 14+. Charge control runs in a small privileged helper; installing it prompts for an admin password once. → macos/README.md |
| Linux (GNOME 48–50) | clearpower_<v>_all.deb or ./install.sh |
Root daemon + GNOME Shell extension. → docs/linux.md |
After installing, run Settings › Calibrate once so the display gets its own number instead of being folded into "other". On Windows, unplug first: the whole machine can only be measured on battery there.
Every release ships all three packages together, with a SHA256SUMS file.
| Quantity | Linux | macOS | Windows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whole machine | battery gauge on battery, RAPL psys on AC |
battery gauge on battery, SMC PSTR on AC |
battery gauge on battery; an estimate (≈) on AC |
| CPU / GPU / memory | RAPL core / uncore / dram |
IOReport CPU Energy / GPU Energy / DRAM |
Energy Meter PP0 / PP1 / DRAM |
| SoC (fabric, NPU, media…) | package − CPU − GPU |
everything else on the die | PKG − PP0 − PP1 |
| Display | calibration curve × brightness × screen content | same | same |
| Other (SSD, Wi-Fi, USB…) | total − everything above | same | same |
| Charge thresholds | charge_control_*_threshold (sysfs) |
SMC keys, written by the helper | Lenovo Power Manager (EC) |
All watt values pass a 5 s smoother before display. Per-platform details and hardware support tables live in the platform READMEs.
| Full breakdown | Charge limit | Discharge | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linux | Intel RAPL | ThinkPad and other vendors with the kernel threshold interface | ThinkPad |
| macOS | Apple Silicon | all Apple Silicon Macs | yes |
| Windows | Intel (Windows 11 Energy Meter Interface) | ThinkPad (Lenovo Power Manager driver) | – |
AMD RAPL, other vendors' charge interfaces and Windows sensor drivers are not done yet; PRs welcome — see Contributing.
daemon/ Linux backend (Python): the reference implementation of the Snapshot contract
extension/ GNOME Shell frontend
macos/ Swift package: core logic, IOKit/SMC backend, privileged helper, SwiftUI app
windows/ C#/WPF: core logic, Energy Meter / battery / Lenovo backend, tray app, installer
docs/ per-platform notes, release notes, screenshots
packaging/ systemd unit, D-Bus policy, polkit action, desktop entries, deb scripts
All three ports produce the same Snapshot dictionary (same keys, same units, -1 = unknown) and are checked value by value against the Python daemon with golden tests (macos/scripts/gen-fixtures.py, fixtures shared by the Swift and C# ports). A new platform only needs a backend that fills that dictionary. A field is only published while it is being refreshed: a fan that is no longer being sampled reads -1, never its last value.
Issues and pull requests are welcome: RAPL on AMD, charge-threshold interfaces of other vendors (Linux and Windows), translations (one dictionary per platform, same keys), and frontends for other desktops. Two rules:
- every number shown is measured or derived from measurements — no modelling, and anything estimated is marked ≈;
- no extra sampling while the popover is closed.
Roadmap: Windows charge control beyond Lenovo and a signed sensor driver for temperatures; macOS notarization and SMAppService; AMD RAPL on Linux.