By default, Ubuntu’s battery indicator does not show the remaining battery life as a percentage, instead it shows the remaining time. This I think is preferred by the most users, however, it would have been nice, if we could manually change between the two.
Then again, this indicator icon does show a small ‘bar’ that goes up/down, and you can get a rough idea about the remaining percentage. Plus, you can always access advanced statistics by using this icon and there it lists the current percentage as well. Still, it is a bit of a stretch.
Due to few issues that I’m having with my battery, I wanted the power indicator icon to display the percentage by default, so I looked for a solution. The best option was to use the famous ‘battery-status’ package. But sadly, it does not support Ubuntu 12.04.
But thanks to a simple hack done by ‘Leonardo Bras‘, you can easily make that happen in Ubuntu 12.04 too.
Please remember that, it will only show the percentage and does not show the remaining time (if the developer could add an option to let users switch between the two, then that would be very useful!).
If interested, you can install this hack by using the below commands.
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:leonardobsp/indicator-upower-percentage
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indicator-power
Then logout of the Unity desktop and log back in to apply the changes. That’s it!.
How to remove it?
If you wanted to roll back the changes and get the original ‘indicator-power’ package, then use the below commands.
sudo apt-add-repository -r ppa:leonardobsp/indicator-upower-percentage
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get purge indicator-power
sudo apt-get install indicator-power
Again, logout and re-login to apply the changes.
That’s it. Good luck.
16 Comments
This is great, thanks! 🙂 So handy! Cuz the time seems to be changing constantly, whereas the percentage gives a more accurate picture on how the battery is doing.
Cheers!
Hey ‘Alex’,
Yes, it indeed is handy! :D.
Great work! Thanks to both Leonardo Bras and also Gayan for the article.
Isthuthi ‘Udith’ :D!.
Thanks a ton man!!
It worked perfectly for me. 🙂
You’re welcome :).
Thank you so much been looking for this for ages!
You’re welcome.
Me too! Installed successfully on Ubuntu 13.04. Thanks a bunch, Leonardo and Gayan!
Strange that the Ubuntu developers think that a computer can predict how you’ll be using your computer better than you can — this is ridiculous.
Time left means nothing — percentage gives you a good idea that your laptop will not survive the upcoming meeting if you’ll be showing your clients a video presentation.
You’re welcome Chris.
Will this work with wingpanel as used in elementaryOS?
Hi Hayden,
I don’t think it’ll work in Elementary OS.
P.S – ‘Doc’ (below) has conformed that this actually works on the Elementary OS Luna.
Actually, it DOES work on Elementary OS (Luna) 😀
Thanks Doc :). I updated the comment so hopefully ‘Hayden’ will notice it.
Will this work in Ubuntu 12.04 with XFCE 4.10 ???
I’ve installed it but it doesn’t shows anything in indicator-panel.
But in Ubuntu with Unity works flawlessly.
🙂 thanks
Hi Sergio,
No, this only works for the Unity desktop 🙂 .