Battery indicator turns red at 30% on desktop

In modern computers where battery life lasts 4-6 hours normally, I would expect the icon to go red at 10% and the really critical point should be 4%

I agree, I keep charging my laptop, because it gets red at 30%, which is just annoying!

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

This looks like a Desktop variation of bug #1388235. The solution there was to provide extra icons for 10%, 30%, 50%, 70%, and 90% so that we could improve our accuracy when rounding to the closest icon, and also to special case the rounding between [20-30%) to avoid hitting the red-at-20% icons from not just our own icon sets but others eg Humanity.

I'm seeing the same behavior on my Xenial box when I set the battery to 28%. The icon list sent by indicator-power is correct:

> {"battery-030", "gpm-battery-030", "battery-020", "gpm-battery-020", "battery-low-symbolic", "battery-low"}

So the rounding rules described in bullet point #2 of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-power/+bug/1388235/comments/5 are working correctly and things look great on devices with suru icons. The problem for the Desktop is that bullet point #3 is incorrect:

> indicator-power keep providing the current icon names as fallbacks so that this fix doesn't break compatibility with other icon themes

Because ?keeping the current icon names as fallbacks" means the problem still persists in other icon sets. We should tweak the special case rule for [20-30%) s.t. the fallback icon is *040* instead of *020*, e.g.:

- {"battery-030", "gpm-battery-030", "battery-020", "gpm-battery-020", "battery-low-symbolic", "battery-low"}
+ {"battery-030", "gpm-battery-030", "battery-040", "gpm-battery-040", "battery-low-symbolic", "battery-low"}

This bug was fixed in the package indicator-power - 12.10.6+16.04.20160516.1-0ubuntu1

---------------
indicator-power (12.10.6+16.04.20160516.1-0ubuntu1) xenial; urgency=medium

  * Fix the fallback power icon so the battery icon doesn't show red
    above 20% even when the Suru icon theme isn't present. (LP:
    #1559731)
  * Use the fdo 'sound-file' hint to play a sound when a low battery
    notification is shown.

 -- Charles Kerr <email address hidden> Mon, 16 May 2016 21:33:32 +0000

Hello Omer, or anyone else affected,

Accepted indicator-power into xenial-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-power/12.10.6+16.04.20160708-0ubuntu1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, and change the tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

I don't know if this is the same bug or not but my laptop decided it was critically low and shut itself off while the battery indicated it still had about 3+ hours of life left. I couldn't power it back on until I plugged in ac and at that point it was over 80% of battery life. I don't think this is caused by a 30% icon. If you want me to open up a new bug, I can do so but the title at least looks the same.

Thank you,
Anita.

It appears the solution to my problem was to use the dconf-editor and set org.settings-daemon.plugins.power.critical-battery-action to nothing. My laptop currently displays 19% battery life and continues to work. Thanks, Anita.

In my test indicator still turns red at 29% after this proposed update installed:

apt list indicator-power -a
Listing... Done
indicator-power/xenial-proposed,now 12.10.6+16.04.20160708-0ubuntu1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
indicator-power/xenial 12.10.6+16.04.20160105-0ubuntu1 amd64

If you would like additional info please list out what is useful.

The version of indicator-power in the proposed pocket of Xenial that was purported to fix this bug report has been removed because the bugs that were to be fixed by the upload were not verified in a timely (105 days) fashion.