How to Find Uptime in Windows 11

There are several methods to find uptime in Windows 11. Uptime is the time the OS was running without restarting or shutting down. Windows 11 may require to restart it finish some of the mandatory tasks, such as installing updates or drivers. But if you have urgent activities, you can postpone such restarts, and have a huge uptime value. Server editions of Windows 11 usually run without restarts for really long, and their uptime will always be greater than a typical consumer PC.

So, system uptime is the total time for which your PC is turned on and operational since the last reboot/or shutdown. But before we start finding its value we should remember one thing. The uptime excludes the period during which your PC might be in sleep or hibernation. As modern laptops and even desktop PCs do a hybrid shutdown, this may interfere with the running time period calculation.

Now, let's review which methods you can use for finding the uptime in Windows 11.

Find Uptime in Windows 11

The easiest way to find the uptime in Windows 11 is to use the Task Manager app. Do the following.

1. Open the Task Manager app by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc.
2. Switch to the Performance section of the left.
3. In the right pane for the CPU graph, you will find the uptime value at the bottom.

If you are using the new Task Manager, switch to the Performance tab. You can see the up time here live.

That is how you can see the overall running time of the operating system using the Task Manager.

In addition, you can use PowerShell for the same. Here's how.

How to Find Uptime with PowerShell

To see the Windows 11 uptime value in PowerShell, do the following.

1. Right-click the Windows logo button in the taskbar, and select Terminal from the menu.
2. The Terminal app opens to PowerShell by default, so directly type the following command:  ((get-date) - (gcim Win32_OperatingSystem).LastBootUptime).ToString('g').
3. In the output, you will find the operating system's total running time value.

Method for PowerShell 7 and later

If you are using PowerShell 7 and newer, you can use a dedicated cmdlet for getting the uptime. Type the following command:

Get-Uptime -Since

In the output, you will get system uptime for Windows 11.

Besides the PowerShell and Task Manager apps, you can see the total running time with help of the good old Command Prompt console, and its systeminfo tool.

Get System Uptime in the Command Prompt

1. Open Terminal as Administrator by right-clicking the Start button and selecting Terminal (Admin) from the menu.
2. Press Ctrl + Shift + 2 or select Command Prompt from the terminal profiles menu behind the arrow down button.
3. Type systeminfo and press Enter. You will immediately see plenty details related to your computer.
4. See the line System Boot Time. It displays the date and time at which the computer booted. Subtract this value from the current date and time, say in Excel, to get the uptime.

That's all about the command prompt method.

Note: Systeminfo is a console app bundled with Windows. It prints a lot of useful information at the command prompt including the computer's name, the installed operating system details, CPU information, the operating system uptime, and so on.

Finally, as I noted in the beginning of the post, desktop versions of Windows 11 come with Fast Boot enabled by default. In this mode, when the user turns off the computer, Windows does not actually shuts down, but unloads the kernel and drivers into a hibernation file. In this case, and also when waking up from sleep mode and regular hibernation, the computer's uptime may not reset and may display an incorrect value.