Give the notebook battery some TLC with TLP

Notebook batteries are fickle creatures. They don't like being charged to 100%. But they also not keen on being completely depleted. According to the conventional wisdom, to give your notebook's battery a long, productive, and healthy life, you should avoid charging it above 80% and discharging it below 25%.

Sounds simple, but how can you actually accomplish that without keeping your eyes peeled to the battery charge indicator? By letting the TLP worry about that. Install the tool on your system, configure battery charging thresholds, and leave it to TLP to take care of the rest. Here's how to do this on Linux Mint.

Run the commands below to install TLP, and then enable and start the TLP service:

sudo apt install tlp
sudo systemctl enable tlp.service
sudo systemctl start tlp.service

Use the sudo nano /etc/tlp.conf command to open the tlp.conf file in the nano text editor, and add the following configuration:

START_CHARGE_THRESH_BAT0=60
STOP_CHARGE_THRESH_BAT0=80

Save the changes and reload the TLP service using the sudo systemctl restart tlp.service command. From now on, the charging will kick in when the battery charge level drops below 60%, and charging will stop when the battery charge level reaches 80%.

But what if you need to fully top up the battery? Simple: use the sudo tlp fullcharge BAT0 command for that.

To get the most out of what TLP has to offer, it's worth perusing the Battery Care part of the official documentation.