The techniques discussed herein reduce the power consumption of a Wi-Fi tethering device by switching the Wi-Fi functionality of the Wi-Fi tethering device from a normal operational mode to a sleep mode during idle intervals. The techniques implement a sleep protocol where a Wi-Fi tethering device and the Wi-Fi client device coordinate and establish a sleep schedule. Moreover, the techniques describe a sleep interval adaptation algorithm to establish sleep duration intervals based on data packet exchange patterns associated with different applications executing on the Wi-Fi client device and/or different operations being performed by the Wi-Fi client device.