Battery Charging Threshold for Acer laptops on Linux

As the owner of an Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-57), I wanted to extend my battery's lifespan by limiting its charging capacity to 80%. Unfortunately, Acer doesn't provide an official solution for this on Linux. However, we can still achieve this functionality.

Enable health_mode once

The acer-wmi-battery repository hosts a custom kernel module that provides this feature. You can build it from source, enable health_mode then remove the module if you never plan to disable it.

You can even do this once from a Debian/Ubuntu live USB. The module flips a persistent firmware flag in your laptop's Embedded Controller (EC), instructing the battery to stop charging at 80%.

DKMS/akmods

If you want to toggle health_mode periodically, it's recommended to use the alternatives below so that the build step runs automatically whenever the kernel is updated.

For general use, try this fork with DKMS support. You can also search for packages for this module in your package manager, such as the AUR.

For Fedora specifically, try the Copr repository with akmods support.

Make health_mode persist between reboots (DKMS/akmods)

The health_mode value sometimes resets to 0, disabling the feature. Running the command below configures the module to always load with the enable_health_mode=1 parameter on boot.

echo "options acer_wmi_battery enable_health_mode=1" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/acer-wmi-battery.conf