Set Graphics Preferences for Different Apps on Windows 11

All computers come with some sort of graphics card or an on-motherboard GPU chip. If you invest in a high end gaming computer, then you get a really powerful graphics card. But these graphics cards also consume a lot of energy and produce more heat than the ordinary graphics cards.

On a Windows 11 computer, you can control if an app is going to use your graphics card and to what level. By controlling these graphics preferences, we can reduce the unnecessary power consumption by some smaller apps. By default, Windows 11 automatically controls the graphics card usage by all apps. But we can also change the graphics preferences for any app in the following manner:

  1. Launch Windows Settings by pressing the hotkey Win+I.
  2. From Windows settings, select System and then Display and then select Graphics. from “Related settings”.
  3. Under the section Custom options for apps, select whether it is a desktop app or a Microsoft Store app. Click on the Browse button to select the app and add it to the list.Windows 11 Graphics Optimization for Apps
  4. Once the app has been added to the list, you can click on the Options button next to it to choose its graphics preferences
  5. There are three options available – Let Windows decide, power saving and high performance. For most of the apps, you can choose Let Windows decide. If you do not want the app to use too much power, then you can choose Power saving. If it is a graphics editing, animation, video or gaming app, then you can choose the High performance option.Windows 11 Graphics Optimization for Apps
  6. Click on the Save button to save the graphics preferences. You can repeat the same steps for more apps.

On the graphics preferences screen, you can choose to bypass these settings in the case of the windowed games. These games include card games, chess and pinball machine.