Rarely do we see users who prefer to use the hardware power button instead of using the power options in the Start menu to shut down their PC. In case you’re one of those who prefer the mechanical button over the Start menu, you must also know that the physical power button is heavily customizable. In this article, we’ll guide you through the detailed steps on how to change the power button action on Windows PC.
How To Change Power Button Action on Windows PC or Laptop
The physical power button functionality can be changed to sleep, hibernate, shut down, turn off the display, or do absolutely nothing when it is pressed. You can switch its functionality to something that you very frequently use such as hibernating your PC instead of sleeping to conserve its battery life, and so on.
This action can be carried out in three different ways. We’ll go over all three methods briefly and step by step. Firstly, let’s see the methods:
- Control Panel
- Command Prompt
- Power Options
Before starting with the configuration of the power button, you must know that there isn’t any special permission required to perform the steps that we’re going to discuss.
1] Change the Power Button Action Using the Control Panel
Using the Control Panel to configure the role of the power button is the most common way to accomplish this task; to learn how you can do it as well, follow the steps below:
- Open the Control Panel on your PC.
- Open Power Options, and then click on the link Change what the power buttons do.
- Choose the action you want from the drop-down menu for “When I press the power button“:
- Do nothing
- Sleep
- Hibernate
- Shut down
- Turn off the display
After selecting the action as per your requirement, click the Save changes button present at the bottom of the window.
After you’ve completed the steps, from now on, every time you press the power button, your PC will respond to the newly set action.
2] Change the Power Button Action Using Windows Terminal
If you don’t prefer using the Control Panel for changing the action for your power button, you can also do that by using command prompts. Here’s how you can do it:
- Open the Start menu.
- Search for Windows Terminal in the search bar, right-click on the option, and choose Run as Administrator.
- Copy/Paste the following command to change the default action of your power button, press Enter.
When your computer is plugged into the power source, change the default action:
powercfg -setacvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT 4f971e89-eebd-4455-a8de-9e59040e7347 7648efa3-dd9c-4e3e-b566-50f929386280 0
When your computer is not connected to a power source, i.e. is running on battery, use the following command:
powercfg -setdcvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT 4f971e89-eebd-4455-a8de-9e59040e7347 7648efa3-dd9c-4e3e-b566-50f929386280 0
Here, in the above examples, you can notice that both the command lines end with the value “0”, which is the index value that defines the action, in order to change the default action of your power button, you must change it.
Below are the available values that you can use as per your preference to change the default action:
- 0 – Do nothing
- 1 – Sleep
- 2 – Hibernate
- 3 – Shut down
- 4 – Turn off the display
- To apply these commands, type the following command, and finally, press Enter.
powercfg -SetActive SCHEME_CURRENT
As you may have deduced from these steps, this method is not user-friendly. This method is not recommended if you are inexperienced with the Command Prompt. For better results, use the Control Panel instead.
3] Changing the Power Button Options With the Help of Power Options
Using Power Options to change the power button option is by far the easiest way of doing it. This method is super user-friendly and should be used by the majority of users. Here are the steps by which you can perform this action:
- Open the Settings menu.
- There, go to System, then go to Power & Sleep.
- Click on the link Additional power settings, present on the right side of the screen.
- Finally, expand the Power buttons action, and choose your preferred action.
Wasn’t it simple? As you can see, there aren’t any lengthy steps to take when compared to using the command prompt or control panel. However, this does not imply that those methods are ineffective. They each have their own set of advantages and distinctions.
It’s a great feature in Windows to be able to customize the functionality of your power button. As a result, you are not limited to the Turn off option; instead, you can set it to one of five different actions available for your PC.
It is ideal for users who prefer alternatives to simply shutting down their computers. In this article, we discussed three major methods for changing the default action of your PC’s power button. You are free to choose any approach that suits your needs. We hope you found this article to be informative.
Is It Ok To Shut Down My Computer With the Power Button?
Yes, it is completely okay to shut down your computer with the power button, because, by default power button will trigger the same action as manually shutting down your computer from the Windows interface. On top of that, shutting down the computer with the power button can save time.
What Does Long Pressing the Power Button Do?
Long pressing the power button will directly cut off the power in most computers. This means that there will be no proper shutdown and all the processes running on your computer will be directly killed. This can be harmful to your device and can create complications during the next startup.
