Low Power Mode

What it is

Settings → Performance → Low Power Mode (lowPowerMode, default off). Trims GPU-expensive visual effects so Omniscio stays smooth on weak computers, while keeping a clean, attractive look. Takes effect immediately — no restart.

Where to find it

Settings → Performance → Low Power Mode. It is off by default and takes effect the moment you switch it on — no restart, nothing to reload.

How it behaves

What it does

When on, Omniscio drops the heavy visuals and keeps the cheap, pretty ones:

• Removed: background blur (backdrop-filter), the floating Tasks-v2 glass blur, decorative hover shadows + hover-lift transforms, and the visual-theme animated blurred background blobs (Glassmorphism / Aurora). The blob's soft gradient stays — it just becomes a still glow instead of a blurred, drifting one. (Those blobs use a plain filter: blur(100px) + an infinite drift animation and were the single biggest always-on GPU cost the mode used to miss.)
• Stilled: the swirling logo in the title bar, Quick Launch and the startup loading card shows the still logo instead (see the Animated logo page).
• Slowed: spin/pulse/bounce animations run at a calmer rate; transitions snap.
• Lighter re-renders: the idle relative-time clock ticks every 60s instead of 30s, and streaming output is always coalesced (painted ~30fps, not per token).

Nothing functional is disabled — only the fancy effects. The mode is also applied automatically as a crash-safe-mode when Omniscio falls back to software rendering (html.software-render).

Turning it on

Low Power Mode is turned on by the user — it is never silently auto-enabled:

• The "Make Omniscio lighter" offer. About 3 seconds after launch, Omniscio checks the machine once. On genuinely weak hardware (low RAM / few cores / GPU acceleration off) it shows a one-click "Make Omniscio lighter on this computer" toast that applies the Lite mode preset — which includes Low Power Mode plus a few other performance settings. (A below-recommended machine instead gets the persistent low-spec warning card, which owns that case so one machine never gets both.) See lite-mode.md.
• The Settings toggle. Settings → Performance → Low Power Mode flips it directly, any time.

Either way, the moment lowPowerMode turns on you get the inbox notice below.

The inbox notice

A persistent, dismissible inbox row ("Omniscio is running in Low Power Mode for this computer") is raised the moment the mode turns on and cleared the moment it turns off — for every path that flips lowPowerMode (the Lite-mode offer, the Lite-mode toggle, or the Low Power Mode toggle). It carries a Restore full effects button (alongside the universal "Start session") that deep-links to the setting. It's never re-raised on a later launch (no nagging): if you dismiss it while staying in the mode, it stays gone.

For agents

Where it lives

• When it's offered/enabled is owned elsewhere: the weak-hardware "Make Omniscio lighter" offer + LITE_MODE_BUNDLE (src/shared/lite-mode.ts, maybePromptLowPower in src/main/services/system-health/hardware-detector.ts) and the low-spec warning card. This page/contract owns what happens once lowPowerMode is on.
• The notice: src/main/services/system-health/low-power-mode-alert.ts (raise/clear/reconcile), raised/cleared by the lowPowerMode transition in src/main/services/settings-side-effects/telemetry-and-logging.ts; shared identity in src/shared/alert-features/low-power-alert.ts; startup clear-if-off in src/main/index.ts.
• The effect kills: the html.low-power / html.software-render block in src/renderer/src/styles/globals.css; useLiveTick.ts; useSessionSync.ts.
• Invariants + tests: low-power-mode-contract.md.

Related: lite-mode.md (the offer + preset), motion-polish.md (the opt-in flourishes, auto-quieted under low power), smooth-load.md, inbox-alerts.md.

Related

The broader bundle of performance settings for a less powerful machine is Lite mode, and the wider picture of what to do when the app feels slow is under the app's Performance settings.