Question How to switch on / off display to save power?

How could one easily / fast with a shortcut or key turn the monitor off (may be on as well, but better would be if it turned on automatically when pressing any key, touching the touchpad, moving the mouse, etc.), respectively make it black WITHOUT turning off the music (played with a music player program and outputed through an external amplifier, Pioneer VSX-830-K, connected with HDMI cable to the notebook, respectively the music then is outputted over the notebooks speakers) to save power on a Lenovo IdeaPad 3 17ABA7 Laptop - Type 82RQ (Lenovo IdeaPad 3 82RQ003EGE)?

Is there a way to automatically let the monitor turn off / on WITHOUT stopping the music / switching the output to the notebook (speakers)?

Donk said:

How could one easily / fast with a shortcut or key turn the monitor off (may be on as well, but better would be if it turned on automatically when pressing any key, touching the touchpad, moving the mouse, etc.), respectively make it black WITHOUT turning off the music (played with a music player program and outputed through an external amplifier, Pioneer VSX-830-K, connected with HDMI cable to the notebook, respectively the music then is outputted over the notebooks speakers) to save power on a Lenovo IdeaPad 3 17ABA7 Laptop - Type 82RQ (Lenovo IdeaPad 3 82RQ003EGE)?

Is there a way to automatically let the monitor turn off / on WITHOUT stopping the music / switching the output to the notebook (speakers)?

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Thank you very much!

Cannot get it working at the moment: Add "Turn off display" Context Menu in Windows 11 Tutorial

Ghot said:

Turn Off Display cascading context menu - Add in Windows

How to Add or Remove 'Turn off display' cascading context menu in Windows

www.tenforums.com

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probably the easiest would be to use blu tooth / wireless speakers. If you use HDMI with integrated sound and then turn off the monitor then a laptop won't necessarily re-route the sound output to an alternative output device. In theory it should but what theory says doesn't always work in practice.

cheers
jimbo

Donk said:

Is there a way to automatically let the monitor turn off / on WITHOUT stopping the music / switching the output to the notebook (speakers)?

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Go to Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Power Options\Edit Plan Settings, then adjust Turn off the display to your preference.



This feature switches the monitor off even if music is playing in the background and will switch back on if you press a key or move the mouse.

Why not just press WIN+L ?

BlackTop does what you want. The hot keys are Ctrl+alt+B to turn off monitor. Just wiggle the mouse or press any key to turn on again.

Please would you post the results of this command so that we can avoid misleading you.
PowerCfg -a


All the best,
Denis

Yes, but buying extra speakers just so the monitor can be turned off might be a bit impractical.

This feature switches the monitor off even if music is playing in the background and will switch back on if you press a key or move the mouse.

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I assume, it is here:


Yes, it does, but it it turns the music off then, respectively plays the music through the notebook speakers, no sound from the external speakers then. Or am I missing anything?

Why not just press WIN+L ?

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Don't know, sorry. Because it does not switch off the display?

BlackTop does what you want. The hot keys are Ctrl+alt+B to turn off monitor. Just wiggle the mouse or press any key to turn on again.

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Many thanks for the link! softonic.com shouldn't be considered that trustworthy in general, right? I downloaded it. What does that cool "Even The Demons Believe" pdf (edb.pdf) mean in the download? Is there a connection to turning off the screen (to some demons)?
I also had to install that (shown after clicking BlackTop.exe), usually also needed by some other programs, if I wanted to use BlackTop obviously:

Please would you post the results of this command so that we can avoid misleading you.

PowerCfg -a

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Sorry, what should I do with it? Whatfor?

Donk said:

Yes, but buying extra speakers just so the monitor can be turned off might be a bit impractical.



I assume, it is here:

Yes, it does, but it it turns the music off then, respectively plays the music through the notebook speakers, no sound from the external speakers then. Or am I missing anything?


Don't know, sorry. Because it does not switch off the display?


Many thanks for the link! softonic.com shouldn't be considered that trustworthy in general, right? I downloaded it. What does that cool "Even The Demons Believe" pdf (edb.pdf) mean in the download? Is there a connection to turning off the screen (to some demons)?
I also had to install that (shown after clicking BlackTop.exe), usually also needed by some other programs, if I wanted to use BlackTop obviously:

Sorry, what should I do with it? Whatfor?

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Yes it needs .NET 2.0. I use it but ignore the links in the context menu, it's an old program that still runs on 11. It's safe. Only thing with it is you can't change the hotkeys.

Yes it needs .NET 2.0. I use it but ignore the links in the context menu, it's an old program that still runs on 11. It's safe. Only thing with it is you can't change the hotkeys.

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OK, thank you.

Donk said:

Yes, it does, but it it turns the music off then, respectively plays the music through the notebook speakers, no sound from the external speakers then. Or am I missing anything?

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I have been using the feature for years and it only switches off my monitor, not my speakers.
However, I'm using a Desktop, so the effect may be different for a Laptop.
I have no way to test because I may have a Laptop, but I have no HDMI speakers.

Donk said:

Sorry, what should I do with it?

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Run it, copy its results, post them here.

Donk said:

Whatfor?

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Because without knowledge of those results, no sensible suggestions can be made about your problem.

Denis

I have no way to test because I may have a Laptop, but I have no HDMI speakers.

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OK, thank you.

Run it, copy its results, post them here.

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OK, here they are:

C:\Users\Don>PowerCfg -a
The following sleep mode features are available on this system:
Standby (S3)
hibernation
Hybrid sleep mode

The following sleep features are not available on this system:
Standby (S1)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.

Standby (S2)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.

Standby (S0 Low Power - Idle)
This standby state is not supported by the system firmware.

Quick Start
This action is disabled in the current system policy.

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Thanks for posting that.
I can see from your results that the situation is not being complicated by the presence of S0.

I use a shortcut to NirCmd, a third-party utility, to turn off my display.
C:\PathToTheCommand\NirCmd.exe monitor off

My equipment is nothing like yours so I cannot pretend to know if this solution is suitable for your situation.
- If I have audio & video set to only come out of my laptop & its speakers then using the shortcut blanks my laptop's screen and audio continues uninterrupted.
- If I have audio set to only come out of my [HDMI] external monitor's external speakers then using the shortcut blanks both the external monitor & my laptop's screen and automatically switches audio back to my laptop's speakers.
I had to check your available power states first because, for an S0 computer, the response when a display turns off is entirely different.


All the best,
Denis

I can see from your results that the situation is not being complicated by the presence of S0.

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What is SO?

I use a shortcut to NirCmd, a third-party utility, to turn off my display.

C:\PathToTheCommand\NirCmd.exe monitor off

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Yes, I do / did / tried to as well:

"J:\Programme\WSCC\Apps\NirSoft Utilities\x64\nircmd.exe" monitor off

Turns of the music from the amp. Directs it to the speakers of the notebook.

- If I have audio & video set to only come out of my laptop & its speakers then using the shortcut blanks my laptop's screen and audio continues uninterrupted.

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Yes, the same here (without using that HDMI connection).

- If I have audio set to only come out of my [HDMI] external monitor's external speakers then using the shortcut blanks both the external monitor & my laptop's screen and automatically switches audio back to my laptop's speakers.

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Yes, same here.

I had to check your available power states first because, for an S0 computer, the response when a display turns off is entirely different.

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Yes, I understand, thank you for testing / trying.

Donk said:

What is SO?

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S0 is an increasingly prevalent power state that replaces the S3 Sleep that we have known for years.
Once the display is off, S0 progressively inhibits all user tasks to achieve a low power consumption state that Intel thinks is worthwhile [MS & many device manufacturers are also joining in].
It's based on the assumption that people never want any applications to keep running when the screen is off.

Denis

S0 is an increasingly prevalent power state that replaces the S3 Sleep that we have known for years.
Its proper names are S0 Lower power idle, S0 Modern standby.

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OK, obviously not available on my Win.

It's based on the assumption that people never want any applications to keep running when the screen is off.

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Very strange. So synchronizing / backing up and such are inhibited as well then?

- I could not run my backup routines or some other long-running scripts unless I deliberately made the display stay on.

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Oops, the answer already. OK. Can't understand how something like this can even be constructed.

- There are lots of S0 threads in the forum and you'll see a range of opinions in them.

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OK, thank you. Don't know how many hours I have already spent to get such a ridiculous (standard) option to turn off the display working the last few days (and showing the weekday, seconds in the taskbar, etc.) to save power. Causing some uncertainties / problems / risks when testing such.

So I guess, I will leave it now like it is.

Thank you very much for your help.

Donk said:

OK, obviously not available on my Win.

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It's the manufacturer who designs the device [computer & components] for S0 not Windows. According to some people, it can be introduced by a Bios update.
Windows merely has the ability, in most cases I've seen, to disable it albeit not always perfectly.
That's why I had to ask you to run that PowerCfg -a command to find out what states you had available.

Donk said:

So synchronizing / backing up and such are inhibited as well then?

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MS has built-in bypasses to allow some of their components to keep running [email app, Windows update and, optionally, network connectivity are the only ones I know of].
I imagine that some software publishers have done the same [if MS allows them].
There is no publicly-available information on how it is done so we cannot do anything about it for other applications or for our own scripts.

Donk said:

I will leave it now like it is.

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If a computer is not supplied with S0 then the user cannot choose to convert it to S0 anyway.


All the best,
Denis

It's the manufacturer who designs the device [computer & components] for S0 not Windows.

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Ah, OK, so one with each new computer (from another brand) had to deal again with those settings.

I imagine that some software publishers have done the same [if MS allows them].

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So one just had to try it.

There is no publicly-available information on how it is done so we cannot do anything about it for other applications or for our own scripts.

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So the best is not to deal with such at all, I guess.

If a computer is not supplied with S0 then the user cannot choose to convert it to S0 anyway.

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Good to know.

Many thanks!