Razer Book13: battery charge limit not working

[zefir-git]

I have a Razer Book 13 i7 FHD. When running:

razer-cli --battery 80

I get no output. $? = 0

Plugging in the charger continues to charge the battery above 80%.

[4kbyte]

Two bugs here.

I get no output. $? = 0

This hint is helpful. The battery setter in razer-cli iterates devices that has batteries, so the case in which no device is found ought to report as such given that the CLI asked to set an unknown battery.

Next question is whether razer-cli -ll shows that it found the battery capabilities of the hardware.

[4kbyte]

Constituent bugs are now at #17 (comment) and #93.

[zefir-git]

Next question is whether razer-cli -ll shows that it found the battery capabilities of the hardware.

I recently replaced my battery with an unofficial one due to swelling. The new battery has all the same markings, manufacturer, etc. but no Razer logo. Not sure if that changes anything.

$ razer-cli -ll
Found 0 Razer device(s)

$ upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0
  native-path:          BAT0
  vendor:               Razer
  model:                Blade
  serial:               CNB1RC30-035707H00050-X01
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              Sat 28 Jun 2025 12:10:26 EEST (9 seconds ago)
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       yes
  battery
    present:             yes
    rechargeable:        yes
    state:               fully-charged
    warning-level:       none
    energy:              50.8662 Wh
    energy-empty:        0 Wh
    energy-full:         50.8662 Wh
    energy-full-design:  55.0011 Wh
    energy-rate:         0 W
    voltage:             13.06 V
    charge-cycles:       N/A
    percentage:          100%
    capacity:            92.4822%
    icon-name:          'battery-full-charged-symbolic'
  History (rate):
    1751101826	0.000	fully-charged
    1751101796	0.069	discharging

Let me know if there’s anything else I can provide.

[zefir-git]

I haven’t used razer-cli before and not sure if keyboard backlight is within the project scope, but if it is, there might be an issue with detecting that as well (if supposed to show in -ll). I use the razerkbd module, openrazer, and Polychromatic and all is working.

[4kbyte]

Thank you for the additional detail. I've only started as a project maintainer yesterday, but I'll do my best to avoid repeat requests for info on your setup.

not sure if keyboard backlight is within the project scope

Yes, it is. Colors/LEDs, generally.

there might be an issue with detecting that as well (if supposed to show in -ll).

This is the key detail. Because you are seeing 0 devices, there's a fundamental disconnect with how razer-cli is communicating with the openrazer daemon.

It would help to double-check that dbus doesn't have any obvious problems on your system, but...

I use the razerkbd module, openrazer, and Polychromatic and all is working.

Presumably polychromatic indicates that it is. Review polychromatic's source, it only explicitly mentions dbus in the menubar module, but the project uses openrazer with modules that have dbus throughout.

If you're interested in exploring a bit of code, this example from openrazer would be the least amount of code to reproduce. If there are still 0 devices found, then it would conclude that it's an upstream issue with openrazer as it wouldn't touch razer-cli code.

[4kbyte]

Footnote to self:

$ upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0
native-path: BAT0
vendor: Razer
model: Blade
...

https://upower.freedesktop.org/docs/UPower.html

[zefir-git]

My bad: razerkbd wasn’t loaded due to an issue with signing, which caused openrazer to not work.

$ razer-cli -ll
Found 1 Razer device(s)
Razer Book 13 (2020):
   type: keyboard
   generic zone:
      colors: ['FFFFFF', '00FFFF', '0000FF']
      effect: static
      speed: 2
      wave_dir: 1
      effects available:
         breath_random
         breath_single
         none
         reactive
         spectrum
         static
   serial: BY2050M14600569
   firmware version: v1.0
   driver version: 3.10.3
   supported capabilities:
      name
      type
      firmware_version
      serial
      brightness
      keyboard_layout
      lighting
      lighting_breath_single
      lighting_breath_random
      lighting_reactive
      lighting_none
      lighting_spectrum
      lighting_static

$ razer-cli --battery 80
Does Razer Book 13 (2020) have a battery?

$ echo $?
0

[4kbyte]

Nicely done sorting it out! This thread is useful for posterity, because certainly others will run into the module loading issue.

Do you have a log/dmesg snippet to paste to show the error that indicated the root cause? We'll consider the issue closed but adding a comment for search discovery would help future users.

[zefir-git]

I usually just use Fn + F10/F11 to adjust the backlight brightness (which I guess might work without OpenRazer). I only noticed the problem when opening Polychromatic, which showed a message saying OpenRazer didn’t recognise the device. I used the ‘Troubleshoot’ button there, and it identified the issue being the razerkbd module wasn’t loaded. Running modprobe razerkbd -v then showed the signing key wasn’t trusted. modinfo razerkbd revealed the signer was DKMS, but mokutil --list-enrolled didn’t list DKSM MOK as enrolled (best guess is it probably got cleared after a distro upgrade). After enrolling the DKMS MOK, loading the module worked.

I believe the Razer Book 13 does not support controlling the battery charge threshold, unlike modern Razer Blade laptops. I have attempted this with several different software packages. OpenRazer most likely does not list a battery at all, as there is probably no functionality available to manage it.

I have been using the following script to send me a high-priority notification when charging reaches 80%. However, I am not a battery expert, and it is possible that unplugging the charger at 80% and thereby accumulating more charge cycles may actually be worse for the battery than allowing the laptop to charge fully to 100% and subsequently draw power directly from the charger.

#!/bin/bash
THRESHOLD=80
NOTIFIED=false

while true; do
    BATTERY_STATUS=$(upower -i $(upower -e | grep '/battery') | grep -i state | awk '{print $2}')
    BATTERY_PERCENT=$(upower -i $(upower -e | grep '/battery') | grep -i percentage | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/%//')

    if [ "$BATTERY_STATUS" == "charging" ] && [ "$BATTERY_PERCENT" -ge "$THRESHOLD" ] && [ "$NOTIFIED" = false ]; then
#        notify-send -u critical "Battery Charge" "Battery is at $BATTERY_PERCENT%. Consider unplugging the charger to extend battery lifespan."
	gdbus call --session \
	    --dest org.freedesktop.Notifications \
	    --object-path /org/freedesktop/Notifications \
	    --method org.freedesktop.Notifications.Notify \
	    "Power" 0 "battery-level-80-charging" "Battery at $THRESHOLD%" \
	    "Consider unplugging the charger to extend battery lifespan." \
	    '[]' '{"urgency": <2>}' 0
        NOTIFIED=true
    fi

    if [ "$BATTERY_STATUS" != "charging" ]; then
        NOTIFIED=false
    fi

    sleep 20
done