SUMMARY If the "Stop charging at" option in the "Charge Limit" section is higher than 85%, an info message is shown saying that «Regularly charging the battery close to 100%, or fully discharging it, may accelerate deterioration of battery health. By limiting the maximum battery charge, you can help extend the battery lifespan.» Leaving aside the accuracy of the message, I think that the message should come together with a clear action or suggestion to the user. For example, a button that changes the "stop charging at" to 85% or a recommendation at the end of the text. Otherwise, the user has to go through a "trial and error" to remove the message. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Go to System Settings -> Energy Saving -> Advanced Power Settings 2. Info message is shown by default because charging limit is 100% by default. OBSERVED RESULT There is no clear action for the user. Only the text "by limiting the maximum battery charge". Then the user has to try to reduce this from 100% to a lower value until the message is gone. Why 85% and not 90% or 80%? EXPECTED RESULT Such a info text with a warning about hardware damage should come with a more clear and direct instruction action for the user to apply the change. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Operating System: Arch Linux KDE Plasma Version: 5.93.0 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.249.0 Qt Version: 6.7.0 Kernel Version: 6.7.4-arch1-1 (64-bit) Graphics Platform: Wayland Processors: 8 × 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz Memory: 15.3 GiB of RAM Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® Xe Graphics Manufacturer: LENOVO Product Name: 20XYCTO1WW System Version: ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6
Thanks for taking time to bring up also the little confusing things. There was some discussion around this message when we reworked that settings page: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/powerdevil/-/merge_requests/214#note_748726 Quoting myself on when we should stop nudging the user: > "Pretty high" is obviously debatable, my latest revision makes it show for a threshold between 86% and 100%. iFixit suggests keeping it between 40-80% ideally, while Battery University looks at several scenarios and still considers 25-85% a decent tradeoff. Point taken though, I can see how a clear "call to action" (button with a setting that works for most people) would improve the user experience. We may also want to consider introducing a checkbox for turning charge limits on (letting the user configure values if the system allows it) or off (always charge to 100%). The main challenge I see here is that there is no right or wrong answer about what the percentages should be, it's really the user's call how strongly they feel about using the full capability of their battery vs. slowing its degradation. We want to provide a little incentive for the user to set their charge limits to a sensible percentage. But we can't be too specific or prescriptive either, because we're not battery specialists and we'd like to avoid stuffing the dialog full of information that may eventually get superseded by new and improved research or battery tech. The current iteration of this warning tries to strike a trade-off. I'd be interested to hear specific suggestions about how to phrase the text / new button and how to tweak the hiding/showing behavior.
I like the idea of introducing a checkbox for turning charge limits on/off. That would also fix this in my opinion Bug 445965, since I could quickly disable the limits if in addition to the checkbox in the settings it is also added to the Power and Battery applet (and/or as a keyboard shortcut, exactly the same as Night Light).