scudo's junkie site - Changing your display refresh rate when the battery is low (without VRR)

Changing your display refresh rate when the battery is low (without VRR)

Aug 14th, 2025 - scudo

Today I was messing around with my laptop display, when I noticed that it had a 48Hz mode; I immediately thought it was going to be great to save power (spoiler: it probably doesn't save all that much).

KDE Plasma offers a tool (kscreen-doctor) that allows you to change all of your display settings with a single command (basically xrandr on X11 but it's actually useable and you don't risk bricking your X server). There may be a GNOME equivalent, but I don't know it.

So I made two scripts that changed the display to the 60Hz and 48Hz modes:

Sorry for the italian lol

KDE Plasma's power management settings, on the 'low battery' section, showing two scripts to be ran. One is set to run when the 'low battery' status is entered, and the other when the status is left.

Here is the script if you want it. YMMV as your laptop may address its internal monitor in a different way than mine.

Edit (22/08/2025): the script has been tweaked to set different permissions.

Edit (25/08/2025): the scripts don't seem to be called by Plasma at all and I have no idea why they don't. If they are ran they still work though.