[i3] Screen automatically locking, and how can I disable this?

Desktop Environments All WMs
1

Basically title, my screen auto-locks when I am not doing something for some time, which is pretty inconvenient when I am in a video call. How can I disable this?

Thanks in advance.

2

@BoredCat ,
My bet is the following:
yay -S xorg-xset
and modify in ~/.config/i3/config
2026-01-14-01:35:09-screenshot

xset -q

shows the default Screensaver settings. I set DPMS to 10 hours or can be disabled by
xset -dpms

3

On wayland+gnome I personally use “caffeine” to get around this annoying issue

4

Where should I add that line?

5

I modified only an exsisting line. CTRL+F and search for xset.
geany editor shows line numbers by default.
Edit:
In nano
ALT+N toggles showing the line numbers
ALT+G and then add line number to go to.
Edit 2:
It’s not clear that in EnOS i3wm (installed not alongside)
xset (xorg-xset) is not installed by default,
so the 10 minute timeout must have been inherited from somewhere
otherwise that xset line is ineffective.
In the test system it seems to work

xset -q
Keyboard Control:
  auto repeat:  on    key click percent:  0    LED mask:  00000000
  XKB indicators:
    00: Caps Lock:   off    01: Num Lock:    off    02: Scroll Lock: off
    03: Compose:     off    04: Kana:        off    05: Sleep:       off
    06: Suspend:     off    07: Mute:        off    08: Misc:        off
    09: Mail:        off    10: Charging:    off    11: Shift Lock:  off
    12: Group 2:     off    13: Mouse Keys:  off
  auto repeat delay:  660    repeat rate:  25
  auto repeating keys:  00ffffffdffffbbf
                        fadfffefffedffff
                        9fffffffffffffff
                        fff7ffffffffffff
  bell percent:  50    bell pitch:  400    bell duration:  100
Pointer Control:
  acceleration:  2/1    threshold:  4
Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  0    cycle:  0
Colors:
  default colormap:  0x20    BlackPixel:  0x0    WhitePixel:  0xffffff
Font Path:
  built-ins
DPMS (Display Power Management Signaling):
  Standby: 6000    Suspend: 6000    Off: 6000
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On
6

I had a similar issue with XFCE and LXQT this is what I ended up having to do to get this behavior to permanently stop.

7

I tried that, and I tried solutions of https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Display_Power_Management_Signaling, but it still goes to sleep. I had Xfce on this PC previously, and I don’t remember if it also happened there, but maybe Xfce made some change I see effects of now?

8

I’m assuming you have all screenlockers off and screensavers. If you had to install xset then your problem could be another issue all together. Is power management off?

9

how to check it?

10

depends on what power manager is being used. I have LXQT so I just had to uncheck everything. I can’t remember XFCE power manager I haven’t run it in a while

11

I don’t know what power manager is being used. How can I check it?

12

xorg-xset was present on my machine, so I just found that line and changed values to zeroes, I will know if it works soon

13

try something like
pacman -Qs power

14

Thanks. As in the comment above, I found a line that eso told me about and modified it, and it looks like it works, but I will try for a longer time. If it does not, I will dig further.

1 Like
15

Thanks, looks like it works

2 Likes
16

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