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  • Why do I only have a Balanced power plan?
New Battery Icon Slider on the Microsoft Surface

Why do I only have a Balanced power plan?

FAQ: I only see ‘overlays’ and no Bitsum Highest Performance. Why? If only you see ‘overlays’, aka Power Modes, and no Bitsum Highest Performance (BHP) Power Plan, that means your system is using Power Modes in lieu of traditional Power Plans. In this case, the BHP Power Plan is not necessary and ‘Maximum Performance’ should be used instead. If you want to tweak that power mode, you can use our free ParkControl app. However, you can install BHP by using menu actions in either Process Lasso or ParkControl.

About Power Modes

Many Windows-based computers now have only a singular power plan: Balanced. On these systems, beginning with Windows 10 build 1709, Microsoft restructured its approach to power management. Rather than offering multiple full power plans such as Power Saver, Balanced, and High Performance, Microsoft extended the Balanced power plan horizontally by layering configurable overlays on top of it. These overlays, called Power Modes, replaced the traditional additional power plans entirely.

Unlike full power plans, which control a wide range of system behaviors, Power Modes adjust only a targeted subset of power and performance settings, specifically those related to how aggressively the system prioritizes performance versus energy efficiency. Settings unrelated to this balance, such as display timeout and sleep timers, remain static across all Power Modes. This design allows users to fine-tune how their system trades off between performance and battery life without inadvertently altering other system behaviors or preferences.

The available Power Modes typically range from options emphasizing battery conservation to options favoring maximum performance, with a middle ground that mirrors the default Balanced behavior. A Performance Mode Slider, accessible from the battery icon in the system tray, provides a simple way to switch between these modes. They can also be configured through the Power Settings within Windows.

The stock Power Modes are:

Better Battery961CC777-2547-4F9D-8174-7D86181b8A7A
Better Performance381B4222-F694-41F0-9685-FF5BB260DF2E
Best PerformanceDED574B5-45A0-4F42-8737-46345C09C238

Switching to Traditional Power Plans

Users can switch back to traditional power plans by opening the legacy Control Panel Power Options and clicking the link ‘Create a power plan‘, as shown below.

Then make the new power plan active by switching to it. You may need to restart Process Lasso or ParkControl for it to pick up the change.

Switching to Power Modes

Users can switch to power modes (overlays) by entering the ‘Balanced’ power plan, then opening the System Power settings and selecting one of the three power modes, as shown below. Alternatively, the battery icon in the tray can be used to select a power mode. After doing this, restart Process Lasso for them to show up.

Windows Power Modes

For more information, see this Microsoft documentation: Customize the Windows performance power slider.

Did you know? Power Plans, Power Profiles, and Power Schemes are the same thing. Microsoft changed the name several times over the history of Windows. Most recently, they call them ‘Power Plans’.

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