The Aggressive Power Saving
Windows 11 is designed to be as energy-efficient as possible, especially on laptops. To conserve battery life and prevent screen burn-in, the operating system is programmed to automatically turn off your display after a very short period of inactivity—sometimes as little as three minutes. While this is great for battery life, it is incredibly annoying if you are reading a long document, watching a video on a website that doesn’t properly signal Windows to stay awake, or waiting for a long progress bar to finish. Having to constantly jiggle the mouse every two minutes just to keep your monitor from going black disrupts your workflow and ruins your focus.
How to Change Screen Timeout Settings in Windows 11
You can easily instruct Windows 11 to wait much longer before turning off the display, or you can disable the timeout feature entirely so the screen stays on forever.
1. Click the Start button on your taskbar.
2. Click the gear icon to open the Settings app.
3. In the left-hand navigation pane, click on System.
4. In the main pane, click on Power & battery (or just “Power” on desktop PCs).
5. Look for the section labelled Screen and sleep and click it to expand the options.
6. You will see two different settings for the screen (and four if you are on a laptop):
- On battery power, turn off my screen after:
- When plugged in, turn off my screen after:
7. Click the drop-down menu next to each option.
8. Scroll down through the time options (5 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 hour, etc.) and select Never at the very bottom of the list.
Once you select “Never,” your Windows 11 monitor will remain brightly lit indefinitely, regardless of whether you are actively moving the mouse or typing on the keyboard. Note: If you are using an OLED monitor, leaving the screen on “Never” with static images displayed can cause permanent burn-in.