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# Display Power Management Signaling

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Reason: Does not cover Wayland. (Discuss in Talk:Display Power Management Signaling)

VESA Display Power Management Signaling (DPMS) enables power saving behaviour of monitors when the computer is not in use. The time of inactivity before the monitor enters into a given saving power level—standby, suspend or off—can be set as described in DPMSSetTimeouts(3).

Note The standby, suspend and off modes do the same thing on LCD monitors. DPMS was originally developed for CRTs.

## Linux console

To alter the terminal, use the setterm command. Its syntax (where 0 disables):

    $ setterm --blank [0-60|force|poke]
    $ setterm --powersave [on|vsync|hsync|powerdown|off]
    $ setterm --powerdown [0-60]

Note

- Console blanking alone does not enable DPMS power saving. Console blanking is disabled by default. [1]
- `setterm --powerdown` does not seem to have any effect when the `APM_DISPLAY_BLANK` kernel configuration option is not enabled. [2]
- Console blanking can also be enabled by the `consoleblank`. See automatic suspend.

Some commands just write the terminal sequences to the current terminal device, whether that be in screen, a remote ssh terminal, console mode, serial consoles, etc.

To see the escape codes used, pipe the output as follows:

    $ setterm --powerdown 2>&1 | exec cat -v 2>&1 | sed "s/\\^\\[/\\\\033/g"

To modify a specific terminal, redirect the escape codes to it (with write permission):

    $ setterm --powerdown 0 >> /dev/tty3

Note `>>` is used instead of `>`. For permission issues using sudo in a script or something, you can use tee to append the output of setterm to the tty device, which tty's let appending sometimes but not writing.

## Xorg

### Configuration

To fully disable DPMS and screen blanking on the X Window System, create configuration files:

    /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-extensions.conf

    Section "Extensions"
        Option "DPMS" "false"
    EndSection

    /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-serverflags.conf

    Section "ServerFlags"
        Option "BlankTime" "0"
    EndSection

If you simply want to adjust the delays, change the duration (in minutes):

    /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-serverflags.conf

    Section "ServerFlags"
        Option "StandbyTime" "10"
        Option "SuspendTime" "20"
        Option "OffTime"     "30"
    EndSection

Note If the `OffTime` option does not work, use screen blanking (i.e. `BlankTime`) instead.

### Runtime settings

It is possible to turn off your monitor with the xset command which is provided by the xorg-xset package.

Examples:

Command | Description
--- | ---
`xset s off` | Disable screen saver blanking
`xset s 3600 3600` | Change blank time to 1 hour
`xset -dpms` | Turn off DPMS
`xset s off -dpms` | Disable DPMS and prevent screen from blanking
`xset dpms force off` | Turn off screen immediately
`xset dpms force standby` | Standby screen
`xset dpms force suspend` | Suspend screen

To query the current settings:

    $ xset q

    ...
    Screen Saver:
      prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  yes
      timeout:  600    cycle:  600
    DPMS (Energy Star):
      Standby: 600    Suspend: 600    Off: 600
      DPMS is Enabled
      Monitor is On

See xset(1) for all available commands.

Note

- XScreenSaver, xfce4-power-manager and lxqt-powermanagement use their own DPMS settings and override xset configuration. See XScreenSaver#DPMS and blanking settings and Xfce#Display blanking for more information.
- If using the command manually in a shell you may need to prefix it with `sleep 1;` for it to work correctly, for example `sleep 1; xset dpms force off`
- `xset dpms 0 0 0`, which sets all the DPMS timeouts to zero, could be a better way to "disable" DPMS, since the effect of `-dpms` would be reverted when, for example, turning off the screen with `xset dpms force off`.
- If using `xset` in xinitrc does not work, specify settings within a file in `/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/`, see #Configuration.

## See also

- Backlight#Switch off the backlight
- PC Monitor DPMS specification explanation
- DPMS control in X

Categories:

- Display control
- X server

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