Laptops are built for mobility, but this can come at the expense of processing power and battery life. Many apps are specifically designed for laptops, keeping their limitations and strengths in mind. These apps can help you optimize your laptop’s performance, extend battery life, and boost your productivity on the go. This list includes Windows apps that will greatly enhance your experience on a laptop.
Manage Battery: Battery Optimizer
Battery life is one of the main concerns of laptop users, so keeping a tab on battery health and performance is very important. Battery Optimizer helps do that by showing battery health and automatically applying tweaks to extend battery timing.
Its main interface shows your current battery health and potential battery life gains after optimization. Battery health mainly refers to how much charge your battery can hold. Over 90% is considered Excellent. Click on Optimize Battery Life.
Run a diagnostic scan to find optimizations for your specific device. The Optimize tab will list tweaks to apply. Of course, fixing battery drain issues is much more complicated, but these tweaks should help get a few extra minutes.
Alternatively, if you want more in-depth battery information, I recommend using BatteryInfoView. It will show the exact capacity and charge/discharge rate.
Highlights
- Track battery health.
- Automatically apply battery optimizations.
- Manage multiple profiles to quickly apply required optimizations.
- Monitor battery usage and charge over time.
- Set up alerts to notify you when battery usage increases.
Laptop Temperature Tracker: HWMonitor
Even under heavy load – like gaming – your laptop should stay below 176°F. If it’s above that, apply these fixes to cool down your laptop. Tracking the exact component temperature is very important, as the internal temperature can be very different from what you feel externally. This is where HWMonitor can help.
Launch the app, and it will show the temperature of the CPU, GPU, and storage drive in real time. See minimum and maximum values over time to make sure your laptop stays within the limits.
It also shows detailed information about components’ power and utilization so that you can see how your laptop configuration is impacting heating issues.
Highlights
- Track components’ temperature in real time.
- View current, minimum, and maximum values.
- Track components’ power utilization.
- Export data to a file for reference and sharing.
Laptop Power Controller: ThrottleStop
Whether you want to undervolt your CPU to decrease heat or disable throttling to get maximum performance, ThrottleStop is the app to manage all power control needs. This app can adjust the voltage of your CPU to increase/decrease power and disable power throttling features.
Manually adjusting power using ThrottleStop is a bit complicated. I recommend checking out our guides on how to undervolt the CPU and disable throttling for maximum performance using ThrottleStop.
Thankfully, it has built-in power plans, as well as the capacity to automatically adjust values according to your needs. Set High Performance, Balanced, and Power Saver modes to get the performance you need. Although the names are the same, these power plans work differently from built-in Windows power plans.
Highlights
- Remove power throttling features.
- View the throttling log to see if any feature is limiting power.
- Create multiple profiles and easily switch between them.
- View CPU speed and temperature in real time.
- Sets maximum and minimum power plans more effectively than Windows built-in power plans.
Wi-Fi Analyzer: NetSpot
When on the move, finding the best public Wi-Fi can be a bit tricky. For the best performance, make sure you choose a secure Wi-Fi with good signal strength and a less congested channel. NetSpot can analyze all the Wi-Fi networks within your laptop’s reach and provide valuable details to aid you in making the right decision.
You can view important information, like network signal strength/consistency, band, security type, channel, min/max signal, and much more. Double-click on a connection to view complete tracking history over time.
For a better view of signals, click on the Signal level and noise graphs button at the top. View signal strength on a graph and compare multiple networks.
The above Wi-Fi analysis features are free. The paid version is mainly for creating Wi-Fi signal heat maps to see which areas provide the best signals.
Highlights
- View vital information about Wi-Fi networks around you.
- See a network’s history and all the changes that occurred.
- Keep a history of networks detected and data analyzed, even when not in range anymore.
- Compare networks’ signal strength.
Webcam Enhancer: Debut
Greatly enhance the capabilities of your laptop’s webcam with the help of Debut. Although it’s a screen recorder, webcam enhancer, and surveillance tool, it’s listed here for the webcam enhancement features.
Debut can record your video calls, add overlays, replace call backgrounds, correct colors, apply filters, add watermarks, detect motion, and much more. Select Webcam in the main interface, then move to the Effects tab to see all the enhancements.
Once you have applied the enhancements, choose Debut as your webcam in the video calling or streaming app you want to use. I also really like how it gives complete control over video encoding and output to get the right video quality.
Highlights
- Visually enhance webcam recordings.
- Record and store videos in preferred quality for later use.
- Directly share recordings to popular streaming and storage websites.
- Built-in editing tools like audio extractor, format converter, trimmer, etc.
Hotspot Creator: Connectify Hotspot
Windows does have a feature to turn your laptop into a Wi-Fi hotspot to connect other devices, but it’s very basic. Connectify Hotspot offers additional features and more control. It lets you choose which Internet source to share, including the ability to share an Ethernet connection.
Although, the main selling feature is the built-in ad blocker. When enabled, Connectify will completely disable all ads at the network level, so all devices can browse ad-free. This also saves network bandwidth that can be wasted on loading ads.
Once connected, it keeps a record of all devices, including the Internet speed they are getting and how much they downloaded/uploaded. The app also has a paid version that lets you use your laptop as a repeater to extend your Wi-Fi signal without losing quality.
Highlights
- Block ads on the network level.
- Keep track of current and previously connected devices.
- Choose any network adaptor installed on the PC as the source.
- Allow devices to connect using a QR code.
I regularly use ThrottleStop and HWMonitor when I use my laptop for gaming, though I always keep NetSpot handy as well for network optimization on the go.
Image credit: Unsplash. All screenshots by Karrar Haider.
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