In this section we will explain in details the possible configuration of the power manager running on laptop computer. Please note that the configurations are different when the power manager is running on a desktop computer, for example you will not have LCD brightness etc.

Notification area

The notification area settings allow you to control the behaviour of the icon placed in your notification area. You can set it to be always visible. For battery devices, you can select the icon to be visible only when your are running on battery for example.

Keyboard special keys

Enable you to specify which key will trigger which action. These keys are not found on all the systems. For example, in the screen shot the hibernate key is missing since the screen shot was taken on a computer which doesn't have this key. The default action of all these keys is set to do nothing.

Monitor power management control

Enable/Disable the Display Power Management Signaling (DPMS).

Power manager Notification

If the notification of a battery status change are annoying you, you can always disable them by unselecting the checkbox. Please note this doesn't apply on the notification that the power manager sends notifying the user of errors or that the system is running out of power.

The on AC power tab contains self explanatory options such as lid close, system idle and monitor sleep configurations.

The on battery tab is only shown on systems that have battery devices. It contains the same options as the AC power tabs plus two other important options:

Power is critical

With this option you can specify the action taken by the power manager in case the system is running on low power. If this option is disabled and the computer is running on low battery power, the power manager will display a warning message.

Prefer power savings over performance

This is the power profile when running on battery. With this option your battery will last more when running on battery power. Enabling this option is always a good idea.

Inactivity sleep mode

You can select the inactivity sleep action to be taken by the power manger when the system is idle for a interval of time set by you either on ac power or on battery power. Of course if you disable idle timeout those settings will have no effects.

Monitor sleep mode

DPMS sleep modes before switching off the monitor are either standby or suspend. They are technically different and provided for convenience.

Computer on low power level

Ideally when the battery giving the main power to the computer reaches 10 percent of charge, the computer can be considered on low power. However, for some broken or old batteries the interval of time between 10 percent and a power cut is a matter of minutes if not seconds. You can adjust the level at which your computer will be considered on low power. – Note: This option might disappear in future releases.

CPU Frequency control

Unselecting this checkbox, the power manager don't attempt to play with the CPU frequency.

Lock screen when going for suspend/hibernate

Just tell your power manager if it should lock the screen before suspending or hibernating the computer. It is enabled by default.

Hidden options are the options that in normal situations one should not be changed, but these options are provided in case of misbehaviour of the backend that the power manager is relying on.

Since xfce4-power-manager relies on xfconf to store and retreive configurations, you can change any settings by using xfconf-query or by using your Xfce settings editor.

LCD Brightness

The xfce4-power-manager detects brightness key events and interacts with the backend to update the brightness level. This might be problematic on some systems therefore the key “/xfce4-power-manager/change-brightness-on-key-events” is provided. Just set this key to false if you have any such problem. Please refer to the xfconf-query manual, but as an example you can disable this property by running the following command.

xfconf-query -c xfce4-power-manager -n -p "/xfce4-power-manager/change-brightness-on-key-events" -t bool -s false

Disabling Brightness popup

If you want for some reason to disable the brightness popup indicator (the one which popup to display the brightness level), just run the following command in your terminal.

xfconf-query -c xfce4-power-manager -n -p "/xfce4-power-manager/show-brightness-popup" -t bool -s false