Unlock the hidden Ultimate Performance power plan — via Sergey Tkachenko, Winaero

Commandlow riskNeeds adminWindows 11Windows 10 1803 and later

Windows ships a hidden "Ultimate Performance" power plan meant for workstations. One command makes a copy of it that you can select in Power Options. It uses more power than Balanced, and real-world gains on a normal desktop are usually small.

Takes effect right away

The easy way

  1. Run the command in an elevated Command Prompt or Terminal. It prints the GUID of the new plan.
  2. Open Control Panel → Power Options (or run powercfg.cpl), expand Show additional plans if needed, and select Ultimate Performance.
  3. To remove it later, switch to another plan first, then use Change plan settings → Delete this plan, or the undo commands.

Command

Run in an administrator Command Prompt / Terminal window.

powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61

Undo

powercfg /list
rem Note the GUID shown next to "Ultimate Performance", switch back to Balanced, then delete the copy:
powercfg /setactive 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e
powercfg /delete <GUID-of-Ultimate-Performance>
PCs that use Modern Standby (most recent laptops and many tablets) only allow Balanced or plans derived from it, so the plan may not appear or may be ignored there. Winaero notes the plan isn't offered by default on battery-powered systems such as laptops, and that it trades extra power use for lower latency.

Sources

Source reviewed
2026-11-02
Link checked
2026-11-02
Tested hands-on
Not by Oddbyte.Me

Oddbyte.Me hasn't tried this on every Windows build, so keep the undo handy.

power planultimate performancepowercfgperformancegaming

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A Mac that shows almost no free memory is usually fine: macOS keeps recently used files cached in RAM so apps reopen faster. The number that matters is the Memory Pressure graph in Activity Monitor, which combines free memory, swap and cached files.