PowerControl

A Windows tray utility that lets you switch Windows "Lid, power and sleep button controls" with a single click.

Who This Is For

People who want Claude Code / Codex to keep running while they move around

AI coding agents such as Claude Code and OpenAI Codex can spend several minutes, or sometimes tens of minutes, thinking, generating code, and running tests on longer tasks. If your laptop goes to sleep because you closed the lid in the middle of that work, the agent stops too.

With this app:

• Before leaving: choose "Work Mode" from the tray with one click, so closing the lid does not put the PC to sleep
• While commuting or moving to a cafe: Claude Code / Codex keeps working in your bag
• When you arrive: open the lid, check the result, and switch back to "Normal Mode" when you are done

No more clicking through six separate settings in the Windows Settings app every time.

Other Use Cases

• Prevent accidental sleep during presentations or recordings
• Use stricter power saving only when running on battery
• Turn off the display while stepping away without stopping the PC

Features

• Runs in the task tray and switches modes instantly via right-click or left-click
• Switches the app UI between English and Japanese from the tray menu
• Includes three default presets (Normal Mode / Work Mode / Power Saving Mode) and supports adding, editing, and deleting custom presets
• Each preset controls the following six settings at once:
  • What happens when the power button is pressed (AC / battery)
  • What happens when the sleep button is pressed (AC / battery)
  • What happens when the lid is closed (AC / battery)
  • Each setting can be set to "Do nothing / Sleep / Hibernate / Shut down"
• When "Register for startup" is enabled, the app starts automatically on future logons without a UAC prompt (Task Scheduler + highest privileges)

Requirements

• Windows 10 / 11
• Administrator privileges (the native executable includes a requireAdministrator manifest because powercfg changes the active power plan)

Usage

Recommended: download the prebuilt binary from Releases

1. Open the Releases page and download PowerControl.exe from the latest release
2. Double-click PowerControl.exe
3. Approve the required UAC prompt, then the tray icon appears
4. Right-click the icon and choose the preset you want

Each release is built from a specific tagged commit by GitHub Actions, so the binary's provenance is traceable to the source.

Building locally

If you would rather build from source, clone the repo and run PowerControl.bat. It calls Build-PowerControl.bat, which uses the .NET Framework 4.x csc.exe to produce PowerControl.exe next to the script, and then launches the native app. If the rebuild fails but an existing PowerControl.exe is present, the batch file starts that existing executable instead. The UAC prompt comes from the native app's requireAdministrator manifest; the batch file does not self-elevate.

On first launch, presets.json (preset definitions) and state.json (the most recently applied preset) are generated automatically.

Language

Open Language from the tray menu and choose English or 日本語. The selected language is saved in state.json.

Smart App Control

PowerControl.exe published on the Releases page is currently unsigned. On Windows 11 systems with Smart App Control enabled, Windows may block unsigned or low-reputation apps even when they are harmless.

If Smart App Control blocks PowerControl.exe, the reliable fix is to sign it with an RSA code-signing certificate from a trusted provider, or with Microsoft's Trusted Signing service. A self-signed certificate is useful for testing, but it is not a dependable Smart App Control distribution solution.

If that happens, you can rebuild the app locally:

%WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\csc.exe /nologo /target:winexe /win32manifest:PowerControl.exe.manifest /win32icon:PowerControl.ico /out:PowerControl.exe /reference:System.Windows.Forms.dll /reference:System.Drawing.dll /reference:System.Runtime.Serialization.dll PowerControl.cs
PowerControl.exe

For distribution to other Smart App Control protected devices, sign PowerControl.exe before publishing it.

Code Signing

Install the Windows SDK so signtool.exe is available, then build and sign the app locally.

Sign with a .pfx code-signing certificate:

.\Build-PowerControl.bat
.\Sign-PowerControl.ps1 -PfxPath C:\path\to\codesign.pfx

Sign with a certificate already installed in the Windows certificate store:

.\Build-PowerControl.bat
.\Sign-PowerControl.ps1 -CertificateThumbprint YOUR_CERT_THUMBPRINT

The signing script timestamps the signature with DigiCert's timestamp server by default and verifies the result with signtool verify /pa /v.

Do not commit certificates, private keys, or passwords. This repository ignores common certificate file formats such as .pfx, .p12, .cer, .crt, .pvk, and .spc.

Legacy PowerShell Version

The legacy PowerShell version is still included. If Windows blocks it because the files were downloaded from the internet, unblock the files once and launch it again:

cd path\to\PowerControl
Unblock-File .\PowerControl.ps1
powershell.exe -NoProfile -STA -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -File .\PowerControl.ps1

The legacy PowerShell launcher uses RemoteSigned. It does not use ExecutionPolicy Bypass.

Customizing Presets

Open "Preset settings..." from the tray menu to edit presets in the GUI. The layout and choices mirror the Windows Settings app, so it should feel familiar.

Auto Start

Click "Register for startup" in the tray menu to register a Task Scheduler task that starts the app automatically when you sign in to Windows. It is registered with RunLevel=Highest, so no UAC prompt appears at startup. You can disable it from the same menu.

How It Works

Internally, the app calls powercfg.exe and updates the following three GUID settings under the SUB_BUTTONS subgroup of the currently active power plan, for both AC and DC power.

Setting	GUID
Power button (PBUTTONACTION)	7648efa3-dd9c-4e3e-b566-50f929386280
Sleep button (SBUTTONACTION)	96996bc0-ad50-47ec-923b-6f41874dd9eb
Lid close action (LIDACTION)	5ca83367-6e45-459f-a27b-476b1d01c936

Values are 0=Do nothing / 1=Sleep / 2=Hibernate / 3=Shut down.

On newer versions of Windows, these items are hidden by default in powercfg /query, but /setacvalueindex and /setdcvalueindex still work when the GUIDs are specified directly.

File Layout

PowerControl.cs      Source for the native Windows tray app
PowerControl.exe.manifest
                     Requires administrator privileges at launch
Build-Icon.ps1       Generates PowerControl.ico locally
Build-PowerControl.bat
                     Builds PowerControl.exe with the .NET Framework C# compiler
Sign-PowerControl.ps1
                     Signs and verifies PowerControl.exe with signtool.exe
PowerControl.ps1     Legacy PowerShell version (tray app + WPF preset editor window)
PowerControl.bat     Launcher batch file (rebuilds and starts the native app)
.github/workflows/build.yml
                     CI workflow: builds on every push / PR and attaches PowerControl.exe
                     to the GitHub Release when a v* tag is pushed
presets.json         Preset definitions (generated automatically on first launch, gitignored)
state.json           Most recently applied preset name and language (gitignored)
PowerControl.exe     Build output (gitignored; distributed via GitHub Releases)
PowerControl.ico     Build output (gitignored; regenerated by Build-Icon.ps1)

License

MIT