WinPowerTray

Switch Windows 11 power modes from the system tray — no Settings app, no clicks through menus, no admin rights needed.

Features

• Three power modes accessible from the tray menu:
  • 🍃 Best power efficiency — maximise battery life
  • ⚖️ Balanced — the Windows default
  • ⚡ Best performance — maximum CPU/GPU throughput
• Left- and right-click both open the menu — no need to remember which one
• Two label styles to match what Windows Settings shows on your machine:
  • Best power efficiency / Balanced / Best performance (most desktops)
  • Recommended / Better Performance / Best Performance (some laptops, e.g. Intel Evo)
• Colour-coded tray icon — green / blue / red at a glance
• Toast notification on every mode change (can be disabled in Settings)
• Stays in sync with external changes made via Settings or powercfg
• Settings persisted in %AppData%\WinPowerTray\settings.json
• Single-instance guard — safe to add to startup
• No elevation required — uses the official Windows power overlay API

Requirements

• Windows 11 (or Windows 10 version 2004 / build 19041 or later)
• The installer is self-contained — no .NET runtime download needed

Installation

1. Download WinPowerTray-x.y.z-Setup.exe from the latest release.
2. Run the installer. No administrator rights are required.
3. Tick "Start WinPowerTray automatically with Windows" if you want it in the startup.
4. The app launches in the system tray immediately after installation.

Usage

Click the tray icon (left or right) to open the menu:

Menu item	Action
🍃 Best power efficiency	Activates efficiency mode
⚖️ Balanced	Activates balanced mode (default)
⚡ Best performance	Activates performance mode
Settings ▸ Label style	Choose which label set matches your Windows version
Settings ▸ Show power mode change notification	Toggle the toast shown on every mode change
Go to project page	Opens this page in your browser
Exit	Quits WinPowerTray

A checkmark shows the currently active mode. By default a toast confirms every switch (including changes made from Windows Settings or powercfg).

Label style

Windows Settings uses different names for the same three overlays depending on the machine. If the labels in WinPowerTray don't match what your Settings app shows — or if switching to the middle/leaf mode doesn't seem to work — open Settings ▸ Label style and pick the set that matches your system. The mapping (label and underlying overlay GUID) updates immediately and is persisted for next launch.

Building from source

Prerequisites: .NET 8 SDK

git clone https://github.com/hello-world-dot-c/WinPowerTray.git
cd WinPowerTray
dotnet build WinPowerTray/WinPowerTray.csproj --configuration Release

The executable is in WinPowerTray/bin/Release/net8.0-windows/WinPowerTray.exe.

Building the installer locally

Additional prerequisite: Inno Setup 6

# 1. Publish a self-contained single-file binary
dotnet publish WinPowerTray/WinPowerTray.csproj `
  --configuration Release --runtime win-x64 --self-contained true `
  -p:PublishSingleFile=true -p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true `
  --output publish

# 2. Build the installer (output goes to installer/output/)
iscc /DAppVersion=1.0.0 installer\WinPowerTray.iss

Releasing a new version

The release process is fully automated:

1. Go to Actions → Version bump and choose patch, minor, or major.
2. The workflow bumps the version in the .csproj, commits, and pushes a vX.Y.Z tag.
3. The Release workflow fires automatically on that tag: it builds the self-contained binary, packages the installer with Inno Setup, and publishes a GitHub release with the installer attached.

CI / CD overview

Workflow	Trigger	What it does
ci.yml	Push / PR to main	Builds and publishes (self-contained) to verify the project compiles
release.yml	Push of a vX.Y.Z tag	Builds installer, creates GitHub release
version-bump.yml	Manual (workflow dispatch)	Bumps csproj version, commits, tags

License

MIT