Improve Battery Life on your Omarchy Laptop with TLP

Omarchy ships with power-profiles-daemon which is a power management daemon that allows users to switch between different power profiles. This is super useful for preserving battery life on laptops.

TLP is a similar tool for linux that goes even further. From their website:

TLP is a feature-rich utility for Linux, saving laptop battery power without the need to delve deeper into technical details.

They also explain why you should consider using TLP instead of power-profiles-daemon:

TLP offers advantages over power-profiles daemon when the laptop is idle, such as during periods of no user input or low load operations like text editing or browsing.

TLP also offers automatic profile switching:

The second advantage of TLP is automatic switching: when AC power is connected, the performance profile is activated; when changing to battery operation, the balanced profile is activated.

Replacing power-profiles-daemon with TLP is easier than ever since version 1.9. The tlp-pd command is a drop-in replacement for power-profiles-daemon.

Quattro already remembers a separate power profile for AC and battery, so you don’t need TLP just to get automatic switching. TLP is worth considering if you want its additional power-saving settings. See Omarchy’s power-profile documentation for the built-in option.

Here’s the step-by-step guide:

1. Stop and remove power-profiles-daemon

Power-profiles-deamon can conflict with TLP and needs to be stopped before proceeding. You can also remove the package completely.

sudo systemctl stop power-profiles-daemon.service
sudo systemctl disable power-profiles-daemon.service
sudo pacman -Rns power-profiles-daemon

2. Install TLP

Install TLP and tlp-pd:

sudo pacman -S tlp tlp-pd

3. Enable the daemons

Enable TLP and start the Power Profiles compatibility daemon:

sudo systemctl enable --now tlp.service
sudo systemctl enable --now tlp-pd.service

Check status and make sure both are active:

systemctl status tlp
systemctl status tlp-pd

4. Provide powerprofilesctl compatibility

Quattro’s Power panel calls Omarchy’s profile helpers, which still use powerprofilesctl list and powerprofilesctl set. TLP’s tlpctl supports those commands and the same profile names. A symlink lets the helpers use it after power-profiles-daemon has been removed:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/tlpctl /usr/local/bin/powerprofilesctl

Check that your shell finds the compatibility command and that Omarchy can read the profiles:

command -v powerprofilesctl
powerprofilesctl list
omarchy powerprofiles list

The first command should show /usr/local/bin/powerprofilesctl. If Omarchy’s list is empty or reports an error, resolve that before relying on the panel or automatic switching.

5. Apply TLP settings immediately

Start TLP manually to apply all power settings without rebooting:

sudo tlp start

You can check your active configuration with these two commands

tlp-stat -s
tlp-stat -p

6. Check Quattro’s remembered profiles

Click the battery icon in the top bar or press SUPER + CTRL + P to open the Power panel. Choose your preferred profile while plugged in, then choose one while on battery. Quattro stores those choices separately and restores them when the power source changes.

TLP also has its own automatic switching policy, so don’t assume its defaults and Quattro’s remembered choices will always agree. Check the active profile with tlpctl get after plugging in, unplugging, and resuming from sleep on each power source. Also check after rebooting. The result should match the choice you saved in the panel for that power source.

If the profile changes unexpectedly, check both TLP’s switching configuration and Quattro’s saved choices before treating the setup as complete. Changing a profile with tlpctl set alone does not update Quattro’s saved preferences.

You can do a lot of tweakings with TLP. I encourage you to read the official documentation to learn more about the available settings.