ideapad-cm 0.1.3

A rewrite of ideapad-cm with improved systemd and GNOME 3 integration.

ideapad-cm rewrite

:warning: USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

:computer: A rewrite of ideapad-cm in Python with improved systemd and GNOME 3 integration.

Should you use it?

If you use a Lenovo IdeaPad laptop and a GNU/Linux distribution, then you definitely need to install this tool!

Battery conservation mode always keeps your battery charged around 60%. Your battery will last longer.

Installation

The easiest installation method is to use pipx. Make sure to run pipx ensurepath after installing pipx.

pipx install ideapad-cm

Usage

As of version 0.1.3, only 3 commands are supported.

ideapad-cm enable

This command enables the battery conservation mode.

ideapad-cm disable

This command disables the battery conservation mode.

ideapad-cm status

This command lets you know if the battery conservation mode is enabled or disabled.

Motivation

ideapad-cm is a popular Bash script that I have used for years to enable and disable battery conservation mode when I use GNU/Linux on my Lenovo IdeaPad laptop.

Unfortunately, the script was taken down by its original author, and it was never maintained or improved.

The 3 main features that were missing in the original project, in my opinion, are:

• Script configuration as a systemd service. This will make it easy to autostart at boot;
• Script integration with the desktop environment. I usually use GNOME 3 (or one of its forks), and it would be better to be able to enable and disable the script directly from the user graphical interface (as we do in Windows using Lenovo Vantage);
• Easy installation. You needed to clone the repository locally, and manually add it to PATH. The script was added to Arch's AUR, but I don't personally use Arch that much. gnome-shell-extension-ideapad has the same problem, as manual configuration steps are still needed after installing the GNOME extension.

For the 3 reasons described above, I decided to rewrite the script in Python. I chose Python because it's the only scripting language, except Bash, that I'm familiar with.

Many other tools seem to exist (if you search "lenovo battery" on GitHub for example), but I don't currently need any advanced feature. I'm only mixing two tools: ideapad-cm and gnome-shell-extension-ideapad.

Both tools are licensed under GPLv3, so I'm free to adapt their code (with attribution and releasing this project under the same license).

I will keep the CLI compatible with the original ideapad-cm CLI. This way, you can simply uninstall the old tool (or remove it from PATH), and install my new tool. If you have existing scripts that call ideapad-cm, you don't need to change anything. The basic interface will be the same.

I'm building this tool for my own personal use. Use it at your own risk.