Nine months after the previous 2.6 release, Auto-cpufreq, a free and open-source automatic CPU speed & power optimizer for Linux, has launched its latest version, 3.0.
If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a great piece of software that dynamically adjusts the CPU governor and frequency settings to balance power consumption, performance, and thermal management based on the system’s current workload and power state.
The most notable change in the new release is the ability to override the CPU turbo setting directly from both the command-line and graphical interfaces. This gives users explicit control over turbo boost behavior, rather than relying entirely on automatic heuristics.
Alongside this, Auto-cpufreq 3.0 now allows users to specify the battery device explicitly in the configuration file, improving reliability on systems with non-standard battery paths or multiple power sources.
Under the hood, several fixes address CPU frequency reporting and scaling logic, including issues where minimum and maximum frequencies were not applied properly and cases where scaling_max_freq was not used for accurate clock detection. Monitoring output has also been corrected, resolving incorrect information in the “CPU frequency scaling” section when using the built-in monitor mode.
Battery handling has seen broad improvements, too, as Auto-cpufreq 3.0 enhances battery path detection, adds fallback paths for threshold files, and fixes errors related to incorrect battery paths. Additionally, ASUS laptop owners benefit from improved battery threshold handling, including fixes for ExpertBook models and more reliable charging threshold detection.
On the graphical side, the GTK interface received several targeted fixes. These include resolving an incorrect window icon under Wayland, improving pkexec error handling, and documenting a workaround for an exit code issue affecting auto-cpufreq-gtk.
Finally, the release includes a range of maintenance updates, such as dependency bumps, documentation cleanups, and internal variable fixes.
For more information, see the changelog.
