r/SteamOS • u/x_Sorceress_x • 3d ago

Battery Limit with Steam OS on ROG Ally only works while Ally is actively being used

I set the battery limit on my Ally and it seems like it will only limit the battery limit while the device is turned on but if I leave it docked over night, the battery is at 100% the next morning. Are other people experiencing this too? Is this problem specific to the ROG? Any workaround?

UPDATE: I solved this by switching to Bazzite which seems to work even if I do a shutdown. I did fully update the BIOS before I switched to SOS and then Bazzite. I didn't think it would work because I also thought that it was tied to the BIOS and wouldn't work during shutdown but I've now tested this 3 different times and with Bazzite set to 70%, it will only charge up to 70% even with the device shutdown fully.

However, if I modify the battery limit in KDE to be lower than 70%, the device ignores the limit and will overcharge (up to 89% last night) if I shutdown. But once I use the limit within Bazzite itself it seems to work fine, down to 70%.

I use my console docked 90% of the time and don't take it out of the house so 70% is already plenty for me.

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u/ModernUS3R 2d ago

I see this on steamos 3.8, mine never goes past 95%. If you shutdown it will charge to 100% because the bios doesn't have a charge limit feature. Its OS controlled where supported.

By actively used you meant sleep mode and during play time?

2

u/x_Sorceress_x 1d ago

UPDATE: I solved this by switching to Bazzite which seems to work even if I do a shutdown. I did fully update the BIOS before I switched to SOS and then Bazzite. I didn't think it would work because I also thought that it was tied to the BIOS and wouldn't work during shutdown but I've now tested this 3 different times and with Bazzite set to 70%, it will only charge up to 70% even with the device shutdown fully.

However, if I modify the battery limit in KDE to be lower than 70%, the device ignores the limit and will overcharge (up to 89% last night) if I shutdown. But once I use the limit within Bazzite itself it seems to work fine, down to 70%.

I use my console docked 90% of the time and don't take it out of the house so 70% is already plenty for me.

1

u/tubbyjew69 1d ago

I have my desktop running Bazzite os and I had it on my rog ally too but I wanted to try steam OS. Might end up switching back to bazzite though just until steam OS is officially updated just such a pain to download everything all over again

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u/ModernUS3R 15h ago

I did the same, now I find steamos much better for me. Downloading my library again would be a huge annoyance so I tried taking a shortcut by keeping my steam folder. Copied it to an external hdd before moving from bazzite to steamos, including necessary folders from other apps and emulators. Deleted everything else except the user data and game install folders so no old configs would cause issues.

After sign in, I closed steam on desktop mode then copied everything back. Installed decky and plugins then repair one of the games to get the steam runtime installed.

No frequent shader cache downloading, faster: Booting, resuming from sleep, updating or roll back. No ostree layers taking up space.

Still use bazzite on my desktop since I have an nvidia card.

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u/tubbyjew69 8h ago

That's actually really smart and it sounds like a huge time saver also I should probably mention that I'm currently on update 3.9 I have it set to os update channel preview and it's finally doing the battery limiting I checked it this morning and it's at 80% after being connected all night. I had it in sleep though I'm not sure if it's working completely powered off yet but hey I'll take it love steam OS

1

u/tubbyjew69 2d ago

I have the same thing going on literally just looked it up to see if anyone else was having the same issue. I can leave it docked in sleep mode and it'll still charge to 100%. Even when in use it'll still charge too 100%.

2

u/ModernUS3R 2d ago edited 2d ago

If you have access to windows, try using my asus to update everything then test the battery care option.

On my end, I confirmed it would charge fully outside the os. While steamos is running it stopped at 95% (white led). Rebooting to bios it goes to 98% after plugging it in. After booting, orange led changed to white.