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How to check support for Modern Standby mode on Windows 10

Standby is basically what we call Sleep on Windows 10. It’s nothing complicated; you can put your system to sleep from the options in the Power Menu and your system will enter a super-low power state without you having to close anything you’re working on. Windows 10 has different types of Sleep mode one of which is Modern Standby.

Modern Standby on Windows 10 isn’t available for all laptops and desktops that can run the system. It appears to be restricted to certain hardware. There’s no list on what type of hardware it’s available on however, a simple command will tell you if you can enable it on your system or not.

Modern Standby on Windows 10

Open Command Prompt with admin rights and run the following command. The Modern Standby type of sleep is S0.

powercfg /a

If the command tells you that Standby (s0) Low Power Idle is not supported, you cannot enable or use it. If it is available on your system though, you will may have to enable it. Here’s how.

Enable Modern Standby

Remember that this will not work unless you have hardware that supports it.

Tap the Win+R keyboard shortcut and enter ‘regedit’. Tap Enter and it will open the registry editor. Navigate to the following location.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power

Look for a value with following name, double-click it, and set its value to 0.

CsEnabled

When you enable Modern Standby, you don’t see any new options in the power options menu. You will only see ‘Sleep’ listed there, the same as usual. Select it to enter the new ‘Modern Standby’ mode.

What is Modern Standby

When you have normal standby or Sleep(3), your CPU basically powers down, the data is dumped to memory, and you have RAM consuming just the bare minimum amount of power needed to keep the data from being lost.

With Modern Standby i.e., Sleep(0), the CPU does not power down. It uses very little power but it is still running. Most Windows 10 services and processes are still running which means if there’s a pending update, it can download and install while your system is in Modern Standby. Other apps can also start a process or run (if scheduled to). This will cause the battery to be used up. Your screen will stay off though and you might just be left wondering why your battery has died.

We should also mention that some laptop manufacturers may void your warranty if you transport it in this sleep state. Most people who have a system that supports it actively look for a way to disable it.

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