README.md

ClearPower for Windows (x64)

Tray app with the same popover as the Linux and macOS versions: charge limit / Top Up, a power-flow diagram that adds up (adapter · battery → system → CPU · GPU · SoC · memory · display · other), runtime estimate, Windows power mode and the apps using significant energy. English and Chinese.

Requires Windows 11 (the Energy Meter Interface that exposes RAPL) on an Intel laptop. Windows 10 works with a single "system" node. Nothing to install besides the app: no service, no driver, no administrator prompt; .NET Framework 4.8 is part of Windows.

Install

1. Download ClearPower-Setup-<version>-x64.exe from Releases and run it (per-user install by default; SmartScreen warns because the binary is not code-signed — choose More info › Run anyway). Or unzip the portable ClearPower-<version>-x64-portable.zip anywhere and run ClearPower.exe.
2. The icon in the notification area shows the live system power. Click it for the popover, right-click for settings / quit. Windows may hide new icons in the overflow flyout; drag it onto the taskbar to keep it visible.
3. Optional: Settings › Calibrate once, on battery (about 90 s, the screen turns white), so the display gets its own number instead of being lumped into "other". On Windows the whole-machine total is only measurable from the battery; on AC it is estimated from SoC + memory + the calibrated baseline and shown with ≈.

How it works on Windows

Quantity	Source
System total	Battery discharge rate when on battery (physical truth, IOCTL_BATTERY_QUERY_STATUS); on AC an estimate (≈)
CPU / GPU / memory / SoC	Intel RAPL through the Windows 11 Energy Meter Interface (\Energy Meter(RAPL_Package0_*)): PP0, PP1, DRAM, PKG − PP0 − PP1
Display	Calibration table × brightness (WMI WmiMonitorBrightness), optionally × screen content
Other	Total − everything above
Charge thresholds	Lenovo Power Manager local RPC (ThinkPad; the driver Windows Update installs). The EC keeps the thresholds across reboots and other operating systems. Other vendors: see below
Power mode	PowerGetEffectiveOverlayScheme / PowerSetActiveOverlayScheme (the Settings › Power mode slider)
Temperatures / fans	Not available without a kernel driver; hidden

Two fields are easy to misread in --once output:

• adapter_max_w is 0 because Windows exposes no negotiated USB-PD contract and no adapter rating through a public interface — not because no adapter is connected. adapter_w is the power actually drawn from the supply and is real; on_ac is the AC state.
• psys_w is always -1 on Windows: there is no platform-power sensor. On AC the system total is the estimate described above and the UI marks it ≈.

Charge control needs a vendor interface. Windows has no universal API for a charge limit: the standard mechanism is an ACPI _DSM that the kernel evaluates, with no user-mode route to it, so every tool speaks a vendor interface instead. ClearPower keeps one backend per vendor and tries them in order:

Vendor	Charge limit
Lenovo	Works. Power Manager's local RPC, the interface Lenovo's own tools use; verified on hardware
HP	Implemented, not verified on HP hardware. A charge limit published in root\wmi
Dell, ASUS, MSI, Acer	The backend detects and reports the vendor's interface, but its charge setting is not mapped yet, so the buttons stay hidden rather than writing a guess

ClearPower.exe --charge-probe prints exactly what a machine exposes — every backend's verdict, and for a recognised vendor provider the classes it offers with their properties and methods. That output is what adding a vendor needs; docs/charge-control.md explains the contract. Force-discharge has no public Windows interface, so the Discharge button stays hidden.

Notes on the estimates:

• Apps. Per-application power is the dynamic CPU power (package power − its ten-minute rolling 20th percentile) split by CPU share, so the apps take the rise above idle rather than a slice of the whole machine; a row below 0.5 W is hidden, exactly as on Linux and macOS. The percentile rather than the minimum matters on Windows: a desktop always runs hundreds of processes and the CPU never reaches a true zero, so a minimum would sit well below what "idle plus the usual background" actually costs. While the package power is unknown the box says "application power data unavailable" instead of claiming nothing is running. ClearPower.exe --procs prints what the box is working from.
• Screen content. With content-aware on, the popover samples the screen every 5 s to scale the panel estimate by what is on it. That only answers on a single-monitor system, because the calibration measures one panel; with a second screen attached the reading is reported as unknown and the display stays folded into "other".
• Monitors. The popover anchors to the tray icon's own monitor at that monitor's scale, and re-places itself when the display configuration changes or the window's DPI scale does.

Development

winget install --id Microsoft.DotNet.SDK.8 -e            # builds net48 with the .NET SDK
winget install --id JRSoftware.InnoSetup -e              # for the installer only
dotnet build windows/ClearPower.sln -c Debug
dotnet test  windows/Tests/ClearPowerCoreTests            # golden tests against the Python reference
ClearPower.exe --once -v                                  # one snapshot as JSON + parts-vs-total check
ClearPower.exe --charge [limit N | topup | cancel]        # inspect / drive the charge backend
ClearPower.exe --shot popover.png                         # render the popover and settings off-screen
ClearPower.exe --shot p.png --shot-hover cpu               # ... plus the hover detail card for a node
pwsh windows/build.ps1                                    # dist/ installer + portable zip + SHA256SUMS

Build outputs go to %LOCALAPPDATA%\ClearPower-build (the repository may live in a synced folder). State lives in %LOCALAPPDATA%\ClearPower (settings.json, state.json, display_cal.json, clearpower.log).

Layout:

Sources/ClearPowerCore   platform-independent logic, ported 1:1 from daemon/clearpowerd
                         (smoothing, runtime estimate, conserved breakdown, charge state
                         machine, display calibration, history, i18n) — same class names as
                         the Swift port
Sources/WinBackend       Energy Meter (PDH), battery IOCTLs, WMI brightness, process CPU,
                         power mode, Lenovo Power Manager RPC client, sampling engine
Sources/ClearPower       WPF tray app: tray icon, popover, Sankey, settings, calibration screen
Tests/                   golden tests; fixtures shared with macos/Tests (generated by the
                         Python daemon: macos/scripts/gen-fixtures.py)
installer/               Inno Setup script; scripts/make-icon.ps1 rasterises the app icon

The snapshot dictionary keeps the Linux key names and sentinels (-1 = unknown, bat_w positive into the battery); sys_source is battery on battery and estimate on AC.

The Lenovo interface is the MIT-licensed one documented by alandau/LenPwrCtl; its MIDL-generated NDR format strings are embedded (WinBackend/Resources/lenpwr_*.bin) and driven through rpcrt4's NdrClientCall2, so no native stub is compiled or shipped.