Awake keeps PC awake after being disabled

[daniporr]

Microsoft PowerToys version

0.56.1

Running as admin

• Yes

Area(s) with issue?

Awake

Steps to reproduce

1. enable (toggle to 'On') Awake (with Mode 'Keep awake indefinitely')
2. (optional) do whatever you want
3. disable (toggle to 'Off') Awake

✔️ Expected Behavior

• The screen turns off after the time specified in your Windows settings
• The PC goes to sleep after the time specified in your Windows settings

❌ Actual Behavior

The PC stays 'awake' (i.e., the screen does NOT turn off and the PC does NOT go to sleep) until you restart it.

Other Software

No response

[crutkas]

Are you on Win11?

[daniporr]

No, Windows 10.
Is that a problem?

[crutkas]

nope, seeing if it may be a quirk but knowing little things like this is important

[crutkas]

I have a theory. If you do the steps above and go into task manager, do you still see powertoys awake in task manager?

[crutkas]

/needinfo

[daniporr]

I have a theory. If you do the steps above and go into task manager, do you still see powertoys awake in task manager?

No, I don't.
(when I noticed this problem, the first thing I tried was to go into the Task Manager to try to kill it, but it was not there, not even in the "Details" tab)

[daniporr]

I do not know if this is useful, but I have just discovered something new.
It seems that if I close PowerToys, then this wrong behaviour disappears (and the PC is not kept awake).

[crutkas]

@daniporr. Can we do a quick teams call and do a screen share? /needinfo

[crutkas]

Crutkas@microsoft.com

[ghost]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has been marked as requiring author feedback but has not had any activity for 5 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 5 days of this comment.

[daniporr]

@daniporr. Can we do a quick teams call and do a screen share? /needinfo

Sorry, I would prefer not to do that (for privacy reasons).

Is there another way?

Is there someone else who can reproduce this issue?

[sjiang95]

I have the same problem. The toggle Keep screen on behaves oppositely -- it degenerates to follow system power plan when checked; and keep screen on when unchecked.

I am using windows 11 pro 22000.556. PowerToys v0.56.2 .

[dend]

If there is no PowerToys.Awake process running, then we should not really be keeping the PC awake in any capacity because the process itself doesn't mess with power settings - it just spins up some threads that require the OS to keep the PC awake while they process. Without a repro as @cruktas asked, @daniporr, it would be very hard to diagnose this. I am working on adding a bit more logging to the product to make it easier to spot issues like this, but we'd still need to see it.

@AdorableJiang - can you please open a separate issue for this, since it seems like it's unrelated to the behavior above?

[daniporr]

I have the same problem. The toggle Keep screen on behaves oppositely -- it degenerates to follow system power plan when checked; and keep screen on when unchecked.

This seems to be a completely different issue (as dend mentioned).
In my case, when I turn it on, it works as expected. The problem is that when I turn it off, it somehow stays on.

[daniporr]

If there is no PowerToys.Awake process running, then we should not really be keeping the PC awake in any capacity because the process itself doesn't mess with power settings - it just spins up some threads that require the OS to keep the PC awake while they process. Without a repro as @cruktas asked, @daniporr, it would be very hard to diagnose this. I am working on adding a bit more logging to the product to make it easier to spot issues like this, but we'd still need to see it.

Thank you for your help!

Is there a specific way I can help with this?

Here is a clarification of what I mentioned in #16751 (comment)

1. if I turn on the Awake
2. [the screen is kept on]
3. if I then turn it off
4. [the screen is kept on, even if the executable of Awake is not running anymore]
5. if I close PowerToys
6. [the screen is NOT kept on]
7. if I start PowerToys again
8. [the screen is still NOT kept on]

So, when you exit PowerToys, this wrong behaviour of Awake stops (note that before discovering that, I used to restart my PC in order to stop this behaviour).
This seems to suggest that the error could be in the PowerToys executable rather than in the Awake one.

[dend]

This should be addressed in the latest version of PowerToys.

[dahamsta]

Had this happen last week, needed to reboot my PC to get it to start sleeping again. Windows 10.

[Uddhav07]

If there is no PowerToys.Awake process running, then we should not really be keeping the PC awake in any capacity because the process itself doesn't mess with power settings - it just spins up some threads that require the OS to keep the PC awake while they process. Without a repro as @cruktas asked, @daniporr, it would be very hard to diagnose this. I am working on adding a bit more logging to the product to make it easier to spot issues like this, but we'd still need to see it.

Thank you for your help!

Is there a specific way I can help with this?

Here is a clarification of what I mentioned in #16751 (comment)

1. if I turn on the Awake
2. [the screen is kept on]
3. if I then turn it off
4. [the screen is kept on, even if the executable of Awake is not running anymore]
5. if I close PowerToys
6. [the screen is NOT kept on]
7. if I start PowerToys again
8. [the screen is still NOT kept on]

So, when you exit PowerToys, this wrong behaviour of Awake stops (note that before discovering that, I used to restart my PC in order to stop this behaviour). This seems to suggest that the error could be in the PowerToys executable rather than in the Awake one.

the problem still persists in win 11, please help i can even screen share if you want

[Maelstromeous]

I'm also having this issue on Windows 11. Ever since I turned on Awake mode in PowerToys the PC has not been able to sleep since.

I did however use the "Keep awake until expiration" mode, which I set a date in the future. That date has long been and gone, and now "Enable Awake" is disabled, however the don't sleep behaviour is persisting.

For reference here is power toys and my power options plan:

The PC does not seem to sleep after 30 minutes.

[dend]

In all of these cases, I'd like to know - is PowerToys.Awake.exe in the process tree, when you look inside Task Manager?

Also, if you run powercfg /requests - what is the output?

@Maelstromeous @Uddhav07 @dahamsta

[Jimmyzzt]

I meet this problem on Win11. After disabled PowerToys.Awake.exe is NOT in the process tree. But I still inable to let my PC "sleep".
After I run powercfg /requests here is the result:

which all means"NO"