Automations

Automations

Automations switch presets for you based on what the machine is doing. You can set one preset for when the charger is plugged in, another for when you're on battery, and one to re-apply every time the system wakes from sleep. Set them once and the daemon handles the rest in the background.

For the config.ini keys behind this page, see Configuration. For the live-tuning mode, see Adaptive Mode.

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Getting to the tab

Open the Automations tab (press 4, or click it).

The whole tab is three dropdowns. There is no on/off switch: automation is active whenever you set a preset in one of the slots, and off again when you clear it.

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The slots

Slot	When it applies
Preset on Battery Charge	Applied when you plug the charger in.
Preset on Battery Discharge	Applied when you unplug and run on battery.
Preset on System Resume	Applied once each time the machine wakes from sleep, suspend or hibernation.

Each dropdown lists None, the built-in presets (Eco / Balance / Performance / Extreme as available for your CPU) and your saved custom presets. Picking a preset takes effect right away and is saved, so it survives restarts.

Leave a slot on None to do nothing for that case - the currently applied settings are kept. For example, set only Battery Discharge if you want a low-power preset on battery but don't care what happens on AC.

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How it works

The daemon watches for AC/battery changes and applies the matching slot the moment the power source flips: /sys/class/power_supply on Linux, pmset -g batt on macOS. A slot left on None is skipped, so that state keeps whatever is already applied.

Resume is detected separately by comparing a clock that keeps running through sleep against one that doesn't, so a gap between them means the machine just woke up. This catches suspend-to-RAM and hibernation without relying on any distro-specific suspend hook, and works the same way on macOS. The resume preset is applied on every wake, independently of the AC/battery slots.

All of this runs in the background even with the app closed, as long as the daemon service is running. It does not need the reapply loop turned on.

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Notes

• Applying a preset by hand from the Premade Presets or Custom Presets tab still works while automations are set; the automation simply re-applies the matching preset on the next power-source change.
• Deleting a custom preset that a slot points to clears that slot.
• AC/battery switching is paused while Adaptive Mode is running.

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Troubleshooting

If switching never happens, check that the daemon is running and that the OS reports your power source.

Linux:

systemctl is-active zentune.service
cat /sys/class/power_supply/AC*/online 2>/dev/null || cat /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD*/online 2>/dev/null

1 means on AC, 0 means on battery. If that file doesn't exist, the kernel isn't reporting AC state and the power monitor can't see transitions.

macOS:

launchctl print system/com.horizonunix.zentune | grep state
pmset -g batt

More in Linux Troubleshooting.