Major Update: v1.4.3 is out which includes lots of new features + still supports most old/new Surface UI
A small Windows system-tray utility that switches the Microsoft Surface app's charging mode (Adaptive / Limit to 80% / Charge to 100% temporarily) — and the Windows 11 Power mode (Best efficiency / Balanced / Best performance) — without you having to open Settings or the Surface app yourself. Now with a built-in scheduler so you can have charging mode flip overnight on its own.
⚠️ Will this work on my Surface?First, you must have a functional Surface app for this tray tool to work. v1.3.0+ auto-detects whether your Surface app shows the three-mode UI (Adaptive / Limit to 80% / Charge to 100%) or the single-button Charge to 100% override UI, and reshapes the tray menu, hotkeys, and scheduler around what your device actually supports.
Three-mode UI (variant A): Surface Pro 9 onward · Surface Laptop 5 onward · Surface Laptop Studio 2 onward. Most modern Surfaces.
Single-button UI (variant B): Surface Laptop Studio 1 · Surface Pro 7 and similar older devices. v1.3.0+ supports this variant with a single "Charge to 100%" override action that's available when Smart Charging is actively limiting your battery.
Work in progress — only tested on a few devices so far. Issues may exist and reports are appreciated; see Flagging issues in Github below.
Known Surface-app bug (not us): on some installs the Surface app intermittently fails to render the Battery & charging card even when you open the app manually. This is a long-standing Surface-app-side issue; the usual fix is to uninstall and reinstall the Surface app from the Microsoft Store.
- Tray icon with a color-coded mode badge (green = Adaptive/Smart, blue = 80%, orange = 100%)
- Tray menu or configurable keyboard shortcuts
- Quick-change Surface charging modes (Adaptive, 80%, 100%)
- Schedule charge-mode changes during "sleep" — now with up to 3 time slots in one run (e.g. 100% at 06:00, back to 80% at 09:00)
- Quick-change Windows Power mode (Performance, Balanced, Efficiency)
- Battery health in the tray menu (retention %, cycle count, capacity)
- Configurable low-battery warning — toast at your chosen % while on battery
- Update checker — notifies you when a new release is available
- Export / import settings from the Settings dialog
- Run at Windows login
- Auto-detects your language localization, Surface app UI, and current charging mode
- Hides the Surface app during operation
All releases are kept available so you can pin to whichever you prefer.
| Version | Released | Highlights |
|---|---|---|
| v1.4.3 (latest) | 2026-05-27 | Feature release. Multi-slot scheduler — up to 3 timed charging-mode changes in one simulated-sleep run, with a 3-option auto-exit. Battery health in the tray menu (retention %, cycles, capacity). Configurable low-battery warning (toast at your chosen %). Color-coded tray badge for the active mode. Tray tooltip shows current Windows Power mode. Update checker, battery calibration reminder, error-log viewer in the Show-last-error dialog, and export/import settings. Includes the multi-monitor simulated-sleep dismiss fix. Backward-compatible with v1.3.x settings. |
| v1.3.1 | 2026-05-17 | Safety + polish release on top of v1.3.0. Adds fake-sleep watchdogs (AC-health, AC-disconnect, low-battery floor, duration cap) to bound damage from rare USB-C PD failures during overnight scheduled charging-mode flips. Thorough dark-mode pass on the Settings dialog. "Hotkeys" tab renamed to General. No functional regressions vs v1.3.0. |
| v1.3.0 | 2026-05-16 | Auto-detects two Surface app UI variants and reshapes the tray menu / hotkeys / scheduler around whichever your device supports. Three-mode UI users (most modern Surfaces) get the same experience as v1.2.2. Single-button override UI users (older Surfaces) now get a working Charge to 100% override action with live state tracking. Backward-compatible with v1.2.x settings. |
| v1.2.2 | 2026-05-12 | Charging-mode scheduler. Press a hotkey before bed; the device enters simulated sleep to change charging mode, then lets the device sleep normally. See Charging-mode scheduler below. Adds a separate diagnostic tool download for users whose Surface model isn't detected, plus better error dialog that links. No AHK package — .exe builds only. |
| v1.1.1 | 2026-05-10 | Multi-language UIA Name lookup so non-English Surface app installs find the Battery & charging card. .exe build also adds first-launch auto-discovery + AutomationId caching, self-healing on schema changes, and a coalescing queue for rapid mode switches. AHK package gets the multi-language fix only. |
| v1.1.0 | 2026-05-10 | Windows Power mode submenu (3 modes) + 3 Power-mode hotkey slots, persistent rotating logs, memory-leak fixes for long-running trays. AHK package gets the same Power-mode features. |
| v1.0.0 | 2026-05-09 | Initial release. Charging-mode tray icon, light/dark theme, configurable hotkeys for the four modes + cycle, auto-start at Windows login, three packages (arm64 / x64 / AHK). |
Full per-release notes: CHANGELOG.md.
Latest release on the Releases tab. Two packages:
| Package | For |
|---|---|
SurfaceChargingTray-v1.4.3-arm64.zip |
Snapdragon Surfaces (Pro X / 11 / 12, Laptop 7 Snapdragon) |
SurfaceChargingTray-v1.4.3-x64.zip |
Intel-based Surfaces (most common). Also runs on Snapdragon via Prism emulation. |
Find your CPU at Settings → System → About → System type. Unzip, double-click SurfaceChargingTray.exe. No install, no admin.
Requires .NET 8 Desktop Runtime , a Windows standard framework (i.e. PowerToys, Terminal, Files). Windows offers a direct install link on first launch if missing.
- Windows 10 build 19041 (May 2020) or newer; Windows 11 recommended
- .NET 8 Desktop Runtime (~55 MB, free, one-time install)
- x64 or ARM64 — native builds for both
- No admin rights required
- Scheduler requires the device to be plugged in
Tested on: Surface Pro 12 (Snapdragon ARM64). Variant B path has limited real-hardware coverage so far — reports welcome.
Likely supported devices — v1.3.0+ auto-detects which UI variant your Surface app exposes and adjusts itself. Two paths covered:
Three-mode UI (variant A) — full feature set:
- Surface Pro 9, 10, 11, 12
- Surface Laptop 5, 6, 7 (Intel and Snapdragon)
- Surface Laptop Studio 2
- Surface Laptop Go 2, 3
Single-button override UI (variant B) — Charge to 100% override only:
- Surface Laptop Studio 1
- Surface Pro 7 and similar older devices
- Some newer devices where Smart Charging is in a paused / limited state — the Surface app appears to ship the single-button UI in those cases too
Microsoft doesn't publish a definitive map of Surface models to UI variants, and which UI you see can depend on your Surface app version, firmware state, and Smart Charging mode — so the lists above are educated guesses, not guarantees. The tool will tell you what it detected on first launch; if your model isn't listed but it works, great. If the detection misfires or you hit something we haven't accounted for, the diagnostic tool captures what's on your screen — open an issue with the report attached.
Charging modes — Microsoft offers no documented API to change them, so the tool briefly opens the Surface app off-screen, drives the right radio button on its Battery & charging page via Windows UI Automation, then closes the app. The whole cycle takes a few seconds.
Power modes — calls powrprof.dll via P/Invoke. No process launches, no UI, no admin. A 5-second timer keeps the tray check marks in sync with external Power-mode changes.
The Surface app's package family name varies between Surface generations; auto-detected on first run via the WinRT PackageManager, so a fresh install on a different Surface model just works.
Surface charging modes can only be changed through the Surface app's UI, and Windows doesn't render that UI when the device is truly asleep or has its screen off — so a normal scheduled task at 5 AM doesn't activate. The scheduler works around this with "simulated sleep": only use if needed.
- Right-click the tray icon → Settings... → Schedule tab
- Charging mode — pick what you want to switch to (e.g. Charge to 100% (1 day))
- Scheduled time — set the time it should fire (e.g.
05:30) - After the fire — pick Stay in simulated sleep or Exit simulated sleep and allow real sleep timeouts (recommended for overnight charging)
- Toggle hotkey — enable and set a combo (default:
Ctrl+Shift+T) - Save
- Before bed — plug in, press the toggle hotkey. The tool:
- Covers every monitor with a black overlay (looks like sleep)
- Drops brightness to 0
- Switches Windows Power mode to Best efficiency
- Holds an exec-state flag so Windows treats the device as awake — overrides your Sleep / Screen-off timers without permanently editing them
- At the scheduled time — the charging mode flips in the background while the overlay stays up. Your original brightness and Power mode are restored when simulated sleep ends
- In the morning — the device is either in real sleep (auto-exit option) or still in simulated sleep waiting for you. Press any key or click to wake/dismiss
- Plugged in only. Simulated sleep keeps the device active, which would drain the battery. Refuses to enter on battery.
- Don't close the lid / press the power button / Win+L during simulated sleep. Hardware signals override our flag — they put the device into real sleep or locked state, and the scheduled charging-mode flip will fail (Surface app dormant again).
- The screen is technically on behind the overlay. Brightness is 0 but the panel still draws power.
- No user activity is generated. Software that pings on user idle (e.g. "away after 5 min") will behave as if the device is idle. That's fine.
- Crash recovery — if the tray crashes during simulated sleep, the brightness and Power-mode originals are restored automatically on the next launch.
If something goes wrong, take it in this order:
surface-error.log and crash.log live next to the .exe — auto-rotating at 500 lines so they stay small. Please attach them when filing a report — they contain the diagnostic info needed to debug.
If you see "card not found" or "no charging-mode radios appear selected", your Surface app's UI is structured differently than what this tool expects. The diagnostic tool captures your Surface app's full UI tree + a screenshot + system info so the developer can support your device in a future update.
- Download
SurfaceChargingTrayDiagnostic.zipfrom the latest Release. It's attached as a separate asset alongside the main app's zips. - Unzip, then run the
.exematching your CPU (x64 or arm64). - Click Run Test in the dialog. The tool launches the Surface app if needed, scans the UI, and writes a
.txt+.pngnext to the diagnostic exe. - Post both files as a comment on the diagnostic-results thread. One sentence about what you were doing helps.
For other problems (crashes, scheduler issues, UI bugs in the tray), open a new GitHub issue. Please include:
- Windows version
- Surface device model
- Surface app version
- Charging tray app version (latest is v1.2.2)
- Screenshot of the error dialog, plus a screenshot of your Surface app manually opened (charging panel open if possible)
settings.ini,surface-error.log,crash.logfrom the program folder- Steps to reproduce / what you were doing when you hit the error
- For scheduler issues: Windows sleep/screen-off settings + what you did during simulated sleep
- Any extra details or video capture if possible
This project is a work in progress and tested on only a couple of devices, so reports are appreciated and I'll patch as I can.
Needs the .NET 8 SDK:
git clone https://github.com/keyokku/SurfaceChargingTray
cd SurfaceChargingTray
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File build.ps1Output: dist/v1.2.2/<arch>/SurfaceChargingTray.exe (~25 MB framework-dependent).
Issues and PRs welcome. If you have a Surface model where this doesn't work out of the box, an issue with your model + the contents of surface-error.log is the most useful thing to share.
MIT — see LICENSE.
Made by @Keyokku / u/keyokku. If this is useful to you, a small tip is appreciated, but no obligation: ko-fi.com/keyokku.