How to Show Battery Percentage in Ubuntu 18.04 [Quick Tip]

Brief: This quick tip shows you how to display battery percentage in Ubuntu 18.04 and 17.10 that uses GNOME desktop environment.

One of the radical new features in Ubuntu 17.10 was the introduction of GNOME as the default desktop environment. And since it is a whole new desktop environment, finding small things like displaying battery percentage on the top panel can be tricky.

In Unity, you could show battery percentage of laptops from the system settings itself. However, that’s not the case in GNOME desktop used by Ubuntu 18.04. You’ll have to use a dedicated tool like GNOME Tweaks. Let’s see how to do this.

How to show battery percentage in Ubuntu 18.04

You can use the dconf editor for this task but we’ll be using GNOME Tweaks here. You can also use GNOME Tweaks to install themes in Ubuntu 18.04.

Step 1: Install GNOME Tweaks tool

Installing GNOME Tweaks too is fairly simple. Just search for it in the Software Center.

Alternatively, you can also use the command below to install GNOME Tweaks:

sudo apt install gnome-tweaks

Step 2: Enable battery percentage in GNOME Tweaks tool

Once installed, start the Tweaks tool by searching for it in applications. Use Super a.k.a. Windows key to bring up the search option.

In here, go to Top Bar in the left sidebar and then toggle the option of Battery Percentage in the right sidebar.

The changes take place immediately. You can see that your laptop’s battery percentage is displayed in the top right corner:

I prefer to see the battery percentage, be it my laptop or my phone. It gives you an accurate idea of how much battery is remaining on the system instead of you trying to guess from those tiny bars in the battery icon.

I think I should include it in one of the first things to do after installing Ubuntu 17.10. What do you think?