How to Check Laptop Battery Status from Linux Terminal

What if you are too geek like me who want to check even battery status from a command line. We can easily get the battery status from GUI, but what if we want all the battery related information from a command line. Sounds interesting? Okay, We will see two Linux commands to find battery related information in this article.

The battery status and ACPI information is stored in /proc and /sys directory. Using "upower" command or "acpi" command you can get this information.

upower command

upower is a command line tool which provides an interface to enumerate power sources on the system. Execute below command in the terminal. You can get "/org/..." path by executing "upower -e". This command will show detailed information about the battery. An output of the command is easily understandable.

$ upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1
  native-path:          BAT1
  vendor:               13-14
  model:                OA04041
  serial:               08726 06/19/2014
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              Tuesday 15 August 2017 11:41:01 PM IST (23 seconds ago)
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       yes
  battery
    present:             yes
    rechargeable:        yes
    state:               discharging
    energy:              18.7664 Wh
    energy-empty:        0 Wh
    energy-full:         32.2048 Wh
    energy-full-design:  32.2492 Wh
    energy-rate:         10.0936 W
    voltage:             14.982 V
    time to empty:       1.9 hours
    percentage:          58%
    capacity:            99.8623%
    technology:          lithium-ion
  History (charge):
    1502820602	58.000	discharging
  History (rate):
    1502820661	10.094	discharging
    1502820602	8.895	discharging
    1502820572	8.791	discharging

You can use tools like grep to filter out the information you want from all that output. Now, I want to see only important information like stage, time remaining for full charge, current battery level in percentage. So, you can get only that by executing below command.

$upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1|grep -E "state|to\ full|percentage"
    state:               charging
    time to full:        1.7 hours
    percentage:          54%

acpi command

acpi command shows infromation about acpi from /proc and /sys directory and battery status. You might have to install acpi on your system.

To Install it, first, update the packages list available in the repositories by executing below command on your system

$ sudo apt-get update

Now, execute the following command to install acpi

sudo apt-get install acpi

Great, Now acpi is installed.

Now, execute a command "acpi -V". It will give you detailed information about the battery.

$ acpi -V
Battery 0: Charging, 62%, 00:49:20 until charged
Battery 0: design capacity 2116 mAh, last full capacity 2116 mAh = 100%
Adapter 0: on-line
Thermal 0: ok, 27.8 degrees C
Thermal 0: trip point 0 switches to mode hot at temperature 83.0 degrees C
Thermal 1: ok, 50.0 degrees C
Thermal 1: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 105.0 degrees C
Thermal 1: trip point 1 switches to mode passive at temperature 108.0 degrees C
Thermal 2: ok, 50.0 degrees C
Thermal 2: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 105.0 degrees C
Thermal 2: trip point 1 switches to mode active at temperature 100.0 degrees C
Thermal 2: trip point 2 switches to mode active at temperature 55.0 degrees C
Cooling 0: x86_pkg_temp no state information available
Cooling 1: intel_powerclamp no state information available
Cooling 2: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 3: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 4: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 5: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 6: Fan 0 of 1

Execute acpi command to see status of battery

$ acpi
Battery 0: Charging, 63%, 00:47:24 until charged

You can check battery temperature by executing below command. To see in Fahrenheit append '-f' at end.

$ acpi -t
Thermal 0: ok, 44.5 degrees C

If you want to check power adapter is connected or not, execute below command.

$ acpi -a
Adapter 0: on-line

acpi has many more options to run with. Just run "man acpi", you will get more options

$man acpi

OPTIONS
       -b | --battery
                 show battery information
       -a | --ac-adapter
                 show ac adapter information
       -t |  --thermal
                 show thermal information
       -c | --cooling
                 show cooling device information
       -V | --everything
                 show every device, overrides above options
       -s | --show-empty
                 show non-operational devices
       -i | --details
                 show additional details if available:

                 * battery capacity information

                 * temperature trip points
       -f | --fahrenheit
                 use fahrenheit as the temperature unit instead of default celsius
       -k | --kelvin
                 use kelvin as the temperature unit instead of default celsius
       -p | --proc
                 use the old /proc interface, default is the new /sys one
       -d | --directory 
                 path to ACPI info (either /proc/acpi or /sys/class)
       -h | --help
                 display help and exit
       -v | --version
                 output version information and exit

That's it for this article. We have covered two commands to check battery status, Both of these are enough to check various battery related information, If you know or came across some other command or tool, Please share in the comments section and help the community.