Reading the taskbar icon and the notifications

The whole point of the app is that you should never have to open it. Everything it knows is on the icon itself, and the rest arrives as a notification at the moment it matters.

The icon

• The silhouette is tinted by level: green when there is plenty left, orange as it gets low, red when it is about to go.
• The percentage is written on the icon, readable at normal taskbar size, so you do not have to hover to get a number.
• A lightning bolt appears while the device is charging.

Colour and number carry the same information on purpose. You catch the colour without looking, and read the number when you actually want to decide whether to start another match.

One icon per device

Each tracked device gets its own icon rather than sharing one. A controller and a headset therefore sit side by side, and you can tell at a glance which of the two is about to die.

The notifications

A discreet notification appears at the bottom right of the screen, in the same spirit as the Steam ones, without taking over what you are doing.

• Connection: the device is recognised, with its current level.
• Low battery: fired at the threshold you chose, with an estimate of the remaining runtime.
• Reminder: repeats periodically below the threshold, if you enable it.
• Charge complete: you can unplug.

Choosing your threshold

The low-battery alert can fire at 10, 15, 20 or 30%. Which one is right depends on how long your sessions are rather than on the device:

• 10%: short sessions, and a charging cable within arm's reach.
• 15 or 20%, the sensible default for most people: enough runway to finish a match and plug in between two.
• 30%: long sessions, ranked play, or anything you really do not want interrupted.

It never interferes with your game

The level is read passively: the app never sends a single command to the controller. This matters more than it sounds. Tools that poll a controller by writing to it can make a game briefly lose the device: a dropped input, or a disconnect mid-fight. Reading only makes that impossible by design.