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By default, only the most recently used plan as well as "balanced" are available. How do I display all 3 default power plans? I'd like to avoid third party programs if possible.

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Battery Care installs malware along with it. You can opt out (although not obviously at first glance). I would discourage users from installing software that bundles malware. The author gets barely enough to buy a beer per year from that stuff and it only serves as a distribution point for malware and spyware. It needs to end.

Here's an alternative that doesn't bundle any malware.

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Shameless plug: Power Buddy

Power Buddy is a very lightweight system tray application that allows you to switch between all the defined power plans.

No malware. No junk.

Full Disclosure: I am the author of this project.

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Windows 7 has no natural settings to show more than 2 power plans in the system tray. However, you can create shortcuts or hotkeys to switch between your power plans. How-to Geek has a nice article about how to do that: Create a Shortcut or Hotkey to Switch Power Plans.

One of the users in a forum having the same question as you says that this solution is perfect; but each time he ran the shortcut, the command prompt popped up for a second. To prevent this he created a small script. You can see the related post here.

There is also a Windows sidebar gadget which can do what you want. It's called Power Scheme and can be downloaded from this page.

Although you avoid 3rd party solutions, there is a tool called Power Plan Assistant for Windows® 7 which can do the job as well.

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    Note that Power Plan Assistant is nagware. After one week of use, the software disables itself, and you're required to download a new version from the website and to install it again. You have to repeat this every week as long as you keep using it.
    – phsource
    Oct 27, 2011 at 3:35
  • A good alternative I've found is BatteryCare, at batterycare.net/en/download.html
    – phsource
    Dec 6, 2011 at 1:35
  • Battery Care has already been suggested as an answer to the question: superuser.com/a/162697/13567 Dec 6, 2011 at 7:38
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I would recommend Battery Care, a freeware tool that does more than allowing you to easily change the power plans (Power Saver, Balanced and High Performance) . See this Battery Care review

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  • Could you write a bit more about it, especially in comparison with Power Plan Assistant?
    – mafu
    Jul 29, 2010 at 8:58
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Just use the shortcut key WIN+X which will bring up the mobility center; then you may choose the power plan you want. very simple!!

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  • this is also what i use Apr 18, 2015 at 11:11
  • This is 4 strokes/click + a large menu select. compared to in Win10: 6 clicks using the stock battery guage notification/tray icon. So this is not much of a comparative savings in Win10.
    – cellepo
    Jan 13, 2016 at 20:52
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Have you looked at Power Plan Assistant

Searching for 'show all 3 power plans in tray software'? Congratulations, you just have found a comprehensive solution. Power Plan Assistant for Windows 7 is an ultimate manual / automatic power plan switcher and a compact (yet very informative) system Power icon replacement. It's the multiple award-winning, the world's smartest power management tool. Blockquote

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I'll throw in a late update to this, Power Scheme Switcher, under the MIT license with source code available from the same place. Built in C# on Visual Studio 2012.

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See my answer to this an other question, on how to create your own Power Scheme switcher menu, using only Windows built-in features :

https://superuser.com/a/1631250/711015

That way you can show and have access to switch to any number of schemes.

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