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Zac Smith edited this page Jun 26, 2026 · 4 revisions

DisplaySnooze Wiki

DisplaySnooze is a tiny utility for turning your displays off while leaving the PC awake, logged in, and running normally.

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Quick Answer: Screens Wake Back Up After A Few Minutes

If your screens turn off, then wake back up around 5 minutes later, and the same thing happens when Windows turns the display off by itself, it is probably something on the PC waking the display again rather than DisplaySnooze turning it back on.

DisplaySnooze only sends the standard Windows monitor-off command. It does not schedule wake events, does not listen for input, does not use the network, and does not change power settings.

The default Windows guard window is 600 seconds. That default was chosen because one real test showed a delayed input wake at about 5 minutes 28 seconds. DisplaySnooze now keeps guarding long enough to turn the displays back off after that kind of wake.

.\DisplaySnooze.exe

By default, that keeps nudging the monitors off for 10 minutes, every 4 seconds. It can help with a delayed wake, but it does not fix the root cause.

Common causes include:

  • A mouse, keyboard, controller, USB hub, dock, or Bluetooth device sending input.
  • A network adapter or scheduled wake timer waking the computer from sleep.
  • Remote desktop, streaming, media, or display-management software.
  • A monitor or GPU re-detecting inputs after the display powers down.
  • Windows maintenance tasks if the whole PC is sleeping, not just the displays.

Useful Windows checks:

powercfg /requests
powercfg /lastwake
powercfg /waketimers
powercfg -devicequery wake_armed

For more detail, see Diagnosing Display Wakeups and Troubleshooting.

What DisplaySnooze Does

On Windows, DisplaySnooze sends:

WM_SYSCOMMAND / SC_MONITORPOWER / 2

By default, it:

  • Turns the displays off immediately.
  • Repeats the display-off command every 4 seconds.
  • Stops after 10 minutes.
  • Leaves the PC awake.
  • Leaves apps running.
  • Lets you press Esc to stop the guard early.
  • Does not lock, log out, sleep, hibernate, shut down, or change power settings.
  • Does not install a service or add itself to startup.
  • Does not use the network.

Source And Downloads

DisplaySnooze

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