Checking the battery status through GUI is easy. Hovering the mouse cursor over the battery indicator given in the Laptop task bar simply shows the battery level. But, did you know you can find the battery status through the Linux command line as well?
Yes, there are some utilities in Linux that can be of help in this regard.
This article explains 4 different methods of checking laptop battery status using the Linux command line. So,
Why Do You Need to Check Battery Status?
So, why do you need to check the battery status? Knowing laptop battery health on a monthly basis is a good practice. It’ll inform you about any issues your computer might have related to charging or battery life. You can get alerted earlier and take the measures required, such as charging or altering batteries.
When your PC is not active, the power management feature levels down its components to a low-power state. And also turns off the power.
Similarly, knowing the power source, battery model name, the technology used, vendors, etc helps operate your devices better and keep work going without any hassles.
How to Check Battery Status Using Linux Command Line
Follow the methods mentioned below to check battery status using the Linux command line. Check Battery Status with “upower” CommandThe command produces output
Check Battery Status with upower Command
The upower command-line tool helps extract information related to the power source (batteries). It provides an interface to list down all the power sources of your PC or laptop.
Options Used with the upower Command
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–monitor: You can print a line each time a battery or power source is added by connecting –monitor to upower. It also produces outputs while the power sources are removed or changed.
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–monitor-detail: This option prints the full power source detail whenever an event occurs.
Syntax
upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0 upower -i `upower -e | grep 'BAT'` upower -i $(upower -e | grep BAT) | grep --color=never -E "state|to full|to empty|percentage"
The above are three different ways of using acpi command to find power source information.
Use cat and find
The “cat” and “find” commands also help find details about your battery and power source.
Syntax
For the battery capacity, the syntax would be:
cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/capacity
For more detailed battery information use the find command.
