Windows 11 received a minor but very useful update to the laptop battery indicator

Microsoft has made a long-awaited improvement in Windows 11 to display the current battery status in laptops. Previously, to find out the exact charge percentage, you had to hover over the battery icon in the lower right corner of the taskbar. Accessing power and sleep settings also required additional user action.

Image source: Microsoft

Now, as PCWorld reports, the preview version of Windows 11, available to members of the Windows Insider program, has an improved appearance of the indicator. The new icon displays battery percentage constantly, without the need for hovering or clicking. Once this update becomes available in the mainstream version of Windows 11, users will be able to know the charge level of their laptop “with just a flick of the eye.”

This may seem like a minor change to many, but people who often work on a laptop without being connected to a network know well how important it is to be able to constantly monitor the battery level without being distracted from their work. This is also important when watching streaming videos, for example on YouTube or Netflix, where the sudden shutdown of the device due to low battery can happen at the most inopportune moment.

For now, the update is only available to members of the Windows 11 Insider program, and to activate it you must enable the feature through the power settings.