If you use Ubuntu on a laptop or tablet and you want to be able to see your remaining battery percentage in the top panel, you can — in this guide I show you how.
Ubuntu only shows a battery icon in the top bar. The icon provides an indication of current battery level based on its colour and how ‘full’ it is, but it’s far from specific (the icon only changes at set intervals — so an half-filled battery could mean anything from 50% to 26% left).
If you’re not near a power point, the difference between 50% left and 25% left can affect your plans. Next thing you know: battery about to die alert!
There is a way to see battery percentage in Ubuntu without doing anything special: just open the Quick Settings menu. At the top, the battery icon is with a percentage reading. But it’s hidden: useful for the occasional check but not great for passive monitoring.
I think anyone who runs Ubuntu on a laptop should show battery percentage in the top panel. It’s simply more convenient: you can look at the top of your screen at any time to see how much battery is left (well, not if an app is running fullscreen).
Nothing to ‘remember’ to click or open; always visible in the top bar.
On Ubuntu, you can show battery percentage very easily: it’s a toggle in the Settings app:
To show battery percentage in Ubuntu:
- Open Settings
- Select “Power” from the sidebar
- Under ‘Power Saving Options’ slide ‘Show Battery Percentage’ to on
When enabled a battery level appears in the top bar right next to the battery icon:
Nice and easy — though it wasn’t always so: prior to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS one would need to install a separate app to show battery percentage.
Alas, Ubuntu doesn’t provide an option to show time remaining only battery charge level as a percentage.
You can open Power Statistics (type Power in the app launcher and click the matching shortcut) to see an approximate “time to empty” value (at bottom of the Details tab when viewing your laptop’s battery) which gives you an indication of how long you’ve got left based on current usage:
Anyway, that’s that.
You now know how to show remaining battery percentage in Ubuntu’s top panel.
I just hope you’re close to a charging point if you turn this setting on only to discover you’re almost out of juice… ;)