Summary
- Microsoft is developing a Windows 11 widget that shows your laptop’s battery level alongside those of connected accessories.
- The widget could appear on both the Widgets board and lock screen, making battery information easier to check.
- The feature is not yet functional or officially announced, and Microsoft has not provided a release date.
Microsoft appears to be developing a new widget for Windows 11 that displays the battery percentages of your laptop and its connected accessories in one place. The somewhat macOS-inspired feature could spare you a recurring inconvenience by allowing you to see whether your wireless headset, mouse, or keyboard is about to die.
The feature has not been officially announced, but a user on Discord discovered strings and visual assets inside recent Windows 11 preview builds. The discovery includes light and dark designs for the Widgets board, as well as strings indicating that the widget could be placed on the lock screen.
Finally, a Windows 11 Widget that's actually useful
Your laptop and accessories will appear together in one place
Windows 11 can already display the remaining charge of supported Bluetooth devices, but the information is buried inside the Settings app or the Bluetooth section of Quick Settings. You only see your accessories' battery percentages if you intentionally look for them.
That's fine if you use a mouse or just one pair of headphones with your computer; you can kind of judge when either one needs charging based on how long it has been since you last plugged it in. But if you're like me and carry a bunch of accessories around in your laptop bag, you know that keeping track of all their batteries in your head is nearly impossible.
Microsoft's proposed widget would solve that issue by putting every device in a vertical list, starting with your laptop itself and followed by connected accessories. Each entry would include the device's name, an appropriate icon, its remaining battery percentage, whether it is currently charging, and — where applicable — whether Energy Saver is enabled.
Aside from a weather widget and a couple of other options, the Widgets board in Windows 11 hasn't had much to offer. In fact, with all the news and suggested content thrown in the panel, we believed Windows 11's taskbar felt much better after disabling widgets altogether. A system-level battery overview would be useful enough that we might change our minds about that.
There is no release date yet, and Microsoft could still change or abandon the feature before making it public. Although Windows 11’s secret feature flags can sometimes unlock unfinished updates, this widget cannot currently be enabled for normal use.
Android, iOS, and macOS have all had battery widgets for quite some time, and you'd think it would be a no-brainer feature for any operating system. Apparently, the devs at Mircorosft hadn't thought of it up until now. Still, Microsoft has recently shown that it is willing to borrow sensible ideas from its competitors. PowerToys, for example, gave Windows an app-switching shortcut macOS has offered for years. And honestly, good — if another operating system has already solved a problem, use the solution.