My PC turns off the screen after a minute or two of idle time and it drives me completely crazy. I’m constantly having to wiggle my mouse just to be able to read a full page of text. How the heck do I fix this problem in Windows 11?
After decades of creating an operating system that made it really easy to inadvertently maximize resource and energy consumption, Microsoft has been on a kick about creating more eco-friendly systems. Given that an estimated 1.4 billion devices are currently running Windows 10 or Windows 11, a reduction of even 1% in power usage could add up to enormous savings globally. Kinda gives one pause about each of our individual impacts on the planet and, of course, our combined impact, which is producing all sorts of negative side effects.
Worth noting is that whatever energy we’re saving is promptly being consumed by both cryptocurrency “mining” and the processing required for the current generation of artificial intelligence software. Crypto accounts for as much as 2.5% of total US energy consumption! ChatGPT is a great tool, but it’s also quite an energy hog as it keeps grinding through unimaginably enormous datasets: Training it costs an estimated 10GWh, enough to power over 1,000 homes.
The long and short of it is that you can absolutely change your display time – particularly since it sounds way too short – but extending it to 30 minutes or more might be inadvisable. But… let’s have a look.
PERSONALIZE YOUR DESKTOP
The easiest starting point for our update is to simply right-click on a blank portion of your Desktop. A context menu will appear:
Choose “Personalize” to proceed and you’ll be presented with your current wallpaper and a way to change to a new one and even update your theme:
You can sidetrack and check those options out or you can stay on task and scroll down a ways to find the entry called “Lock screen“:
Click on the “>” symbol to the right of the “Lock screen” entry and you’ll be just about there…
ADJUSTING LOCK SCREEN SETTINGS
It’s the lock screen that you need to change, more specifically its timeout. Here’s what Windows shows you:
It’s nice that you can change your lockscreen image – and even add an app to have some information on the lock screen if desired – but, again, you want to scroll down to get to the right spot:
Notice I’ve enabled “Show the lock screen background picture on the sign-in screen” above. A feature I really like, but you can enable or disable it to see how your PC changes up.
To tweak the screen timeout, click on the “>” adjacent to “Screen timeout“. This actually moves you to System > Power, but the setting is nonetheless what you seek:
Notice mine is set to “5 minutes” for “When plugged in, turn off my screen after”. If you’re on a laptop with battery power, you’ll be able to set a longer (or, better, shorter) timeout for when you’re on battery power than when you’re plugged in. If you have an always-plugged-in desktop, however, you’ll see something similar to the above.
Back in the day, one of the options was “Never”, but it’s very telling to see that you can no longer choose that from the pop-up menu:
I would encourage you to increment it one or two values to see how that works for you before you swing to the more aggressive 30 minutes, 45 minutes, or one hour options. While your display likely doesn’t consume an enormous amount of energy, why not try to minimize its energy footprint anyway?
THE GREEN SIDE OF WINDOWS
If you’re curious, you can click on the “Energy recommendations” and learn more about what Microsoft suggests are the best settings for your PC to have a minimal energy footprint too.
Notice its recommendation is to set it to a 3 minute timeout. I wonder how many people at Microsoft have that as their setting, though. What do you think?
Anyway, now you know how to find and change your screen timeout. Use this new power wisely. 🙂
Pro tip: I’ve been writing about Microsoft Windows for many years. Please check out my Windows help area for lots more useful tutorials while you’re visiting the site!