Better Battery Monitoring with the Battery Status Applet

Productivity Sauce

The default battery applet in Gnome is fine for basic use, but if you are looking for something more powerful, try the Battery Status applet. Once installed, the applet provides more detailed information about the battery, and you can specify what additional data the applet's icon should display. For example, you can display the estimated remaining time, so you can save yourself a couple of mouse clicks. In addition to that, the Battery Status applet offers other useful features such as the ability to switch between different power modes. By enabling the session actions (Show | Session Actions), you can also use the applet to shut down and restart your machine, and you can put it into the suspend or hibernate mode if you enable the sleep actions (Show | Sleep Actions).

On Ubuntu, installing the Battery Status applet requires only three commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:iaz/battery-status
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install battery-status

Once the applet is installed, you need to add it to the Gnome panel. To do this, right-click on the panel, and select Add to Panel. Select Battery Applet and press Add. When prompted, press Replace to replace the default battery applet, and you are done.