Wi-Fi power-save in my Thinkpad (fedora OS) makes the card enter low-power mode when idle, causing high latency, jitter, and packet loss on sensitive connections like Tailscale, gaming, or VoIP. This doesn’t happen on Ethernet because it’s wired and stable. This happens becasue as I normally work with my laptop remotely to a workstation so to save some energy and get 8hrs battery i ran it in powersave mode. Also the Wifi signal is interrupted after suspending the laptop in this mode and can’t connect it without a reboot.

How to do it?

Solution, create a rule

sudo tee /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/00-wifi-powersave.conf << EOF > /dev/null
[connection]
wifi.powersave=2
EOF

sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager.service

What does each line do?

| Line | Function | |——-|———| | sudo tee ... << EOF | Writes root file with heredoc (avoids Permission denied) | | wifi.powersave=2 | Disables power-save globally (2=off, 3=on) | | restart NetworkManager | Applies changes immediately |

Verify it works

# 1. File created
cat /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/00-wifi-powersave.conf

# 2. Power management OFF
iwconfig wlp2s0 | grep "Power Management"

# 3. Test Tailscale
tailscale ping <remote-IP>

# for Fedora
iw dev wlp2s0 get power_save

wifi.powersave values

0 = Default (automatic)
1 = Don't touch
2 = OFF (this is what we want) ✅
3 = ON (avoid)

Note: Related to this gist.github