How to enable battery percentage in the status bar on Android 4.4 KitKat

Google has finally implemented a battery percentage indicator in the status bar with Android 4.4 KitKat, but you won’t find an option to enable it any of the settings menus. However, it’s really not all that hard to enable it, and you don’t need to be rooted. There are two methods, one involves an ADB command and the other involves installing a simple app. Now I know you can just download one of probably 10,000 battery widgets in the Play Store, but you might be looking to clean up your homescreens. Head on past the break to find out how to enable it.

The first method is by far the easiest. Just download the Battery Percent app (download link below) that was created by kroegerama over at XDA. All you have to do is open it and check “Enable Battery Percent” and reboot.

        

The second method is for those that don’t want to trust a third party app.

1. You will need to make sure you have the latest Android SDK installed on your PC.
2. Enable USB debugging in the developer options on your Moto X. If this is the first time going into developer options, just go into “About Phone” from your settings and tap the build number seven times. From now on you will see the developer options.
3. Connect your phone (only a Nexus 5 at the time of this post) to your computer via USB
4. Launch Terminal / Command Prompt
5. Navigate to the fastboot/adb folder which will be inside the location where the Android SDK is installed (On Windows, it should be in C:\program files (x86)\android\android-sdk\platform-tools)
6. Enter this command to enable battery percentage: adb shell content insert –uri content://settings/system –bind name:s:status_bar_show_battery_percent –bind value:i:1
7. Enter this command to reboot: adb reboot

If you want to revert back to the traditional way, just send this command for Step 6 instead ….

adb shell content insert –uri content://settings/system –bind name:s:status_bar_show_battery_percent –bind value:i:0

Then follow to Step 7 by rebooting: adb reboot

The setup isn’t the most ideal since the percentage is shown in white, the same color as the battery drain indicator. This means you won’t be able to read it until the bar reaches about 50%.

Download  - Battery Percent APK  (ver 1.0.1) – Click on the source link to check if there is a newer version

source : XDA