Color-coded battery icon update for Windows 11 should've been super simple, proves to be anything but

As a formerly, frequently disorganised dingbat, I know the fear of a rapidly dwindling battery all too well. While it's easy enough these days to glance at your phone screen and see clearly just how numbered your minutes of doom scrolling are, the same could not be so easily said of Windows 11 machines—until recently.

An update on the Windows Insider Blog last week announced that new, improved battery icons would be coming to the Release Preview Channel for Windows 11 Build 26100.3321, among a variety of other changes. Alongside making the battery percentage visible in the system tray, colour-coded battery icons would make it even easier to judge how much juice is left in the metaphorical tank at a glance. Sounds simple, right? Well, apparently not because Microsoft began rolling back this change on Tuesday to "to address some issues" (via The Register).

The plan for the battery icons sounded straightforward enough: green would indicate a full or mostly full battery, yellow would indicate that battery power had decreased to 20% or less, and then a red icon would serve as a fairly eye-grabbing indication that you ought to plug in your laptop. Microsoft has not divulged what the 'issues' with the new icons or more visible battery percentage are, instead only assuring that it will, "begin rolling [these features] out in a future update soon."

Other devices, like phones, have had similar visual and numerical battery readouts for years—but the feature has not been native to Windows 11 before this update. Some Feedback Hub digging carried out by The Register demonstrates these more easily peeped battery icons are very much in demand, but this rollback just goes to show that, when it comes to OS and UI features, few things are as easily done as requested.

For the time being, Windows 11 users will continue to have to hover their mouse over the battery icon in the system tray to get a clue about how much power they have left. Inelegant UX? Always has been, and a better way can't re-roll out soon enough.

Naturally, this is far from the first OS feature so seemingly obvious you may wonder why it wasn't there from the off. For a start, Windows 11 Insider Canary builds now let you choose different power modes for your laptop.

If you've yet to upgrade to Windows 11, however, there are ways to circumvent its 'annoying' system requirements if you'd like to keep enjoying official security updates past October this year. Just be aware that if you already installed Windows 11 via USB either last October or in November of 2024, you may need to reinstall the OS to keep getting security updates. Yup, nothing can ever be simple, can it?