How to Set Graphics Performance Preference for Apps in Windows 10

If you have a laptop computer then you might want to make the most of the battery charge and prevent all the apps from using too much power. Still there are some apps that need more power and cannot be run in the energy saving mode. Some programs like Opera browser have already provided with options to save the battery power by reducing the GPU usage. And now Microsoft has brought a similar feature to the Windows 10 users.

In Windows 10, you can now assign a graphics performance setting for any app so that Windows can use more power to run that app in high performance mode or reduce the energy consumption in the low performance mode. For any app, three graphics performance modes are possible – system default, high performance and the power saving mode. Here is how you can configure the graphics performance preferences for various apps in Windows 10:

Method 1:

1. Press Win+I hotkey to open Windows settings.
2. In the settings, navigate to System → Display then click on Graphics settings.
3. You can add both universal apps (modern apps often installed through Microsoft Store) or classic apps (old fashioned applications). Select Classic apps or Universal apps, then select the apps and click on Add.
4. Select one of the apps from the apps from the list, click on Options and choose one of the preferences – system default, power saving or high performance.
5. Now when you launch these configured apps, they will run in the user configured GPU preference mode.

Method 2:

1. Press Win+R to open the Run dialog. Type regedit and press Enter to open Windows Registry Editor.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\DirectX\UserGpuPreferences. If this key does not exist then you will have to create it.
3. Right-click on the right-side pane, select New → String Value.
4. For the new string  name, use the full pathname of the program EXE (e.g., C:\Windows\Notepad.exe) or in case of apps use the package family name followed by !App or by ! and then the app name (for example, in the case of MSPaint it would be Microsoft.MSPaint_8wekyb3d8bbwe!Microsoft.MSPaint and in the case of Calculator it would be Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App). You can find the package family name and app names installed in your Windows PC by using the PowerShell command  Get-AppxPackage | select PackageFamilyName, Name | Sort-Object Name .
5. For the data value of this newly created string, you can use GpuPreference=0; for system default mode, GpuPreference=1; for power saving mode and GpuPreference=2; for the high performance mode.

Using these two methods, you can set the graphics performance mode for both the classic applications and the new universal apps.