The Immediate Lockout
When you close the lid on your Ubuntu laptop or manually trigger a system suspend, the operating system goes into a low-power sleep state. By default, Ubuntu’s GNOME desktop environment is configured for maximum security. The exact moment the system enters suspend mode, it automatically engages the lock screen. When you wake the machine up (even if it was only asleep for three seconds), you are immediately greeted by the login prompt and forced to re-enter your password. If you frequently close your laptop lid just to walk to another room in your own secure house, this constant, aggressive password prompting is an unnecessary hurdle.
Modifying Suspend Security Settings
To streamline your workflow in trusted environments and stop Ubuntu from automatically locking the screen every single time the system suspends, you must modify the privacy and screen lock settings.
Open the primary system settings by clicking the network/battery cluster in the top-right corner of the screen and selecting Settings (the gear icon). In the left-hand navigation pane, scroll down and click on Privacy & Security, then select Screen Lock in the main panel. You will see a toggle switch explicitly labeled Lock Screen on Suspend. By default, this is turned on. Click the toggle to switch it to the Off position. Additionally, you should look at the dropdown menu labeled “Lock Screen after Blank for.” If you want a grace period, you can set this to “5 minutes.” With these settings applied, waking your computer from a brief sleep will drop you straight back to your desktop without requiring a password.