Server –watch and laptop charge

tips & tricks
1

The “–watch” feature is great when you want to see near realtime updates of your site. It’s very convenient to type a bit, save the file, and see the results immediately in your browser. When you’re tweaking a theme, it’s indispensable. It’s a real thrill to make a change to a template and see the browser magically update the page.

There’s a cost, though, if you’re running on battery power. On my MacBook Air, the estimated time with a full charge goes from 12 hours of charge to 5 hours when I run with the “–watch” option and Google Chrome at the same time. That’s still plenty long enough for most flights, but if you’re in a crunch, consider running the server without “–watch” and restarting it when you want to see your updates.

2

Your experience is your own, of course, but it seems very unlikely that running hugo server is killing your battery that much. I run Hugo all day and there is no discernible battery drain. I’d have that laptop checked out if that happened.

For others finding this post, make sure to consult the LiveReload docs.