If you want to improve your computer’s battery life, then you should be using the power-saving hibernation state in Windows 10.

Hibernation has been around for years on Windows machines. It’s the process of saving the content currently in memory to the hard drive to allow your PC to shut down completely, saving battery without losing your current session. At any time, you can turn your PC on to resume from hibernation and continue working where you left off. This feature is one of the power-saving states in the operating system that conserves the most power and extends battery life significantly longer than the Sleep option.

While you can use hibernation at any time, you will see the benefit when using the feature for those times you won’t be using your computer for an extended period. For example, when your laptop or tablet is running out of battery, or when using a Surface Book or Surface Pro 4, as both devices still having battery drain issues. Using hibernation can help to improve battery life.

While Windows PCs typically come with hibernation automatically enabled on new installations, the default settings may not be optimal to save the most power. In this Windows 10 guide, we’ll show you the steps to verify the power-saving feature is enabled and supported on your system. We’ll demonstrate how to add the “Hibernate” option to the Power menu on Start, and you’ll also learn the process to customize when your computer should go into hibernation automatically.