For those with Acer laptops running Linux on GitHub there has been an out-of-tree driver providing an experimental "acer-wmi-battery" kernel module to allow controlling battery-related features. Now a cleaned-up version of that driver is working on getting into the mainline Linux kernel.

The acer-wmi-battery driver the past two years has lived on [1]GitHub as an out-of-tree, experimental driver for battery health controls. The functionality aims to match what is available in the Acer Care Center under Microsoft Windows. With this driver you can limit the battery charging to 80% to help preserve the battery's capacity. There is also a battery calibration mode as a controlled charge-discharge cycle to improve the battery capacity estimations.

Now with [2]this patch series on the platform-driver-x86 mailing list, the cleaned-up driver code is looking to get into the mainline Linux kernel. The initial code is focused on battery charge controls as well as battery temperature monitoring. The battery calibration feature is left out of this patch series since it wasn't working on the Acer laptop of the developer working on the code upstreaming.

For those with a modern Acer laptop using Linux and interested in battery charge limit controls and battery temperature monitoring can find the initial code on the [3]mailing list where it's currently undergoing review and will hopefully make it into a future Linux kernel release.



[1] https://github.com/frederik-h/acer-wmi-battery

[2] https://lore.kernel.org/platform-driver-x86/20260105171024.227758-1-jelle@vdwaa.nl/

[3] https://lore.kernel.org/platform-driver-x86/20260105171024.227758-2-jelle@vdwaa.nl/