How do I disable the screensaver/lock?

Question

When I'm watching a film in Mythtv the screen turns to black every 10 - 15 mins and I have to log back into Ubuntu. Very annoying!

How do I disable the black screen / screensaver / logout in Unity?

There no longer seems to be any options to turn the screen saver off as there were in Ubuntu prior to Unity.

Follow this instruction: How to Disable Screensaver/Lock Screen/Sleep Mode in Ubuntu? — , Mar 18 '13 at 03:51
As of 18.04 the screensaver and lock screen settings are located in two separate locations. The screensaver setting is located in Settings -> Power -> Power saving. The lockscreen setting is located in Settings -> Privacy -> Screen lock. If you only turn off the lock screen, the screen itself will still come up, just no login prompt to make it go away. — user1086516, Jul 08 '19 at 13:26

score 162 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 18 '12 at 09:46

162

Go to System Settings...Brightness and Lock:
The default screensaver idle time is 10 minutes, and the screen is locked once the screensaver activates:
You can adjust the idle time (or disable the screensaver), and also disable the lock:
Simply close Brightness and Lock to apply the new settings.

answered Aug 18 '12 at 09:46

ish

139,926

22

This does not work. The X server has a separate setting that still causes the monitor to turn off after N minutes of inactivity. – Cerin May 02 '13 at 10:47
5

And how do you disable that setting? – matteo Oct 24 '13 at 18:18
12

And why on earth is this non-working answer marked as answer? – matteo Oct 24 '13 at 18:18
1

Well, it sort of works. You don't have to authenticate, but you still have to move the mouse or press a key to wake the screen back up. So I agree it's not a very good answer. – BobDoolittle Sep 16 '14 at 17:56
4

What I wonder is why this setting group is called "Brightness and Lock", when it has not much to do with brightness.. – Claudiu Oct 15 '14 at 17:41
What about the settings in 'Power'? +Claudiu That annoys me too. On occasions where I want to keep the computer from going to sleep and/or turning the screen off, I have to go through a total of two different sections. – Hitechcomputergeek Oct 25 '15 at 02:47
Unfortunately, this has been removed in 16.04. – Cerin Feb 08 '17 at 19:08
4

Now (as of 17.10) it is under Privacy menu – Suncatcher Apr 19 '18 at 18:43
There is no "Brightness and lock" in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS – Paul Jan 17 '19 at 07:49
This is only solution that works for me after searching answer for two days. Even caffeine command line does not work. – anonymous Sep 17 '19 at 01:25
A universal way to find the settings. 1. press "super/windows" key or click "activity" at the upper left corner of desktop 2. type the keyword "brightness". You will see it is under "power". 3. Click it to navigate to the position. – anonymous Sep 17 '19 at 01:25

BobDoolittle · Answer 2 · 2016-06-23T17:34:26.683

57

If you want to wrap your app in a script that takes care of this for you when you launch it (or GUI simply isn't an option), the best command-line solution as of Ubuntu 14.04 is:

To disable the screen blackout:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay <seconds> (0 to disable)

To disable the screen lock:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-enabled false

You probably want to add their inverses at the end of the wrapper script to return your system to normal behavior on exit. In such a case, you want to prevent against ungraceful termination (i.e. interrupt, or SIGTERM during system shutdown), so create a function to restore normal behavior and use trap <function> 0 (for bash-type shells) to catch exits and apply the restoration functions.

edited Jun 23 '16 at 17:34

answered Sep 16 '14 at 19:36

BobDoolittle

1,129
10
19

4

works on ubuntu 16.04 (with unity DE) – Felipe May 17 '16 at 20:57
1

Is there a way to do this via SSH? I'm trying to disable the screensaver on my office computer while at home. When I run the code you wrote I get this error: (process:7353): dconf-WARNING **: failed to commit changes to dconf: Cannot autolaunch D-Bus without X11 $DISPLAY – AnnanFay May 26 '17 at 18:24
1

@Annan I have the same question, currently all I've found is https://askubuntu.com/a/743024/358498 which is quite convoluted – tyleha Nov 30 '17 at 00:30
1

For your proposes the simplest approach would be to just kill the screensaver process, then start it up again when you return to your office. "pkill screensaver". Sometimes a hammer is the best tool for the job. – BobDoolittle Dec 02 '17 at 20:05
2

This also works on Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS – Joe Jordan Dec 27 '18 at 17:25
Doesn't work on ubuntu 18.04 – stiv Aug 16 '19 at 16:27

score 31 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 19 '17 at 22:00

31

To disable the automatic screen lock in Ubuntu 14.10 Gnome, these are the necessary steps:

Start the application "Settings"
Choose "Privacy" under the "Personal" heading
Choose "Screen Lock"
Toggle "Automatic Screen Lock" from the default "ON" to "OFF"

To make this answer more useful as a Google search result for common search terms such as "disable lock screen ubuntu" (how I found this page), I've added this answer to extend the context of this page to include the steps to disable the automatic screen lock in Ubuntu 14.10 Gnome. System Settings (called simply "Settings" in Ubuntu 14.10 Gnome) are organized slightly differently within Ubuntu 14.10 Gnome than as described by the answer listed above, requiring a different user flow.

edited Mar 19 '17 at 22:00

Community

1

answered Dec 06 '14 at 23:00

Pagan

440

3

Only answer works on Ubuntu 14.10 with Gnome 3. – Fernando Kosh Feb 12 '15 at 20:56
3

Vote this up! It is the only one that works on 16.04! – Theodore R. Smith Jun 27 '16 at 18:14
2

worked for me for Ubuntu 18+, other answer did not work for me – Grijesh Chauhan Aug 06 '19 at 08:17
It works on 18.04 and 20.04 – Manuel Jordan Mar 25 '21 at 14:48

score 11 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 14 '17 at 06:11

11

If the unity gui doesn't work, then you could try using xset

Open a terminal and type:

xset s off

To also prevent the display from blanking and to prevent the monitor's DPMS energy saver from kicking in, add the following:

xset s noblank
xset -dpms

Also try some things here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Display_Power_Management_Signaling#xset_screen-saver_control

edited Apr 14 '17 at 06:11

Josh Sanford

103

answered Jun 11 '14 at 13:38

isaaclw

745

1

Works on Ubuntu 16.04. The only (non-GUI) method that worked (of the presented here). – LRDPRDX Nov 15 '18 at 03:53

score 4 · Answer 5 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

4

Consider this dialog:

this is not essentially a screensaver but it serves same function.

edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Community

1

answered Aug 16 '19 at 16:31

stiv

495

I wonder why I do not have the "Dim screen when inactive" setting? I have the latest updated ubuntu – Robert Houghton Feb 01 '20 at 17:32
Robert, i have no idea – stiv Feb 02 '20 at 08:53

score 3 · Answer 6 · answered May 30 '19 at 11:15

Only caffeine extension worked for me in Ubuntu 19.04 to disable automatic screen lock and have manual locking still working.

This is disable locking screen alltogether, so is not good:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.lockdown disable-lock-screen 'true'

Carlo Wood · Answer 7 · 2020-02-02T21:54:32.790

1

For me on kubuntu 16.04 (plasma) I have to go to System Settings -> Workspace -> Desktop Behavior -> Screen Locking -> turn off 'Lock screen automatically after'

On kubuntu 18.04 I find, K-menu -> Settings -> System Settings -> etc (see above).

edited Feb 02 '20 at 21:54

answered Nov 29 '16 at 01:23

Carlo Wood

251

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Apr 08 '20 at 22:46

Yet another potentially useful solution, along the lines of caffeine, is xssproxy. From its description in synaptic:

For example Firefox uses the org.freedesktop.ScreenSave D-Bus interface to disable the screensaver when playing videos. This package implements that interface and disables the X built-in screensaver in that case.

Like with caffeine, you'll need to run it when your X session starts.

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Nov 03 '21 at 23:03

I found that this works on Ubuntu 18:

# Configure dconf to disable screen lock
sudo mkdir -p /etc/dconf/profile/
sudo tee /etc/dconf/profile/user <<EOF
user-db:user
system-db:local
EOF
sudo mkdir -p /etc/dconf/db/local.d/
sudo tee /etc/dconf/db/local.d/10disable-lock <<EOF
[org/gnome/desktop/session]
idle-delay=uint32 0
EOF
sudo dconf update

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Aug 27 '16 at 16:26

0

On Ubuntu 16.04 you have to go to System Settings -> Screensavers and switch to Settings tab:

Over there you can disable several types of locking.

answered Aug 27 '16 at 16:26

noded

150

I can't find Screensavers in Settings. My OS is Ubuntu 16.04 LTS – Serhiy Feb 28 '18 at 18:01
@Serhiy: I am checking now, and the Screensavers option is gone. It probably happened after some System Settings update or due to other customizations. – noded Apr 23 '18 at 14:10

How do I disable the screensaver/lock?

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