The Aggressive Power Manager
Windows 11 is designed to be energy efficient right out of the box. By default, if you step away from your desk for just a few minutes, Windows will automatically turn off the display. A few minutes after that, it will put the entire computer into a deep sleep state to save power. While this is excellent for a laptop running on battery, it is incredibly frustrating for desktop users or anyone running background tasks—like rendering a large video file, downloading a massive game update, or compiling code—because the sleep state will instantly halt all those processes.
Keeping Your System Awake
To ensure your long-running tasks complete successfully and stop Windows 11 from automatically going to sleep while you are away from the keyboard, you must adjust the system’s power plan and timeout settings.
Press the Windows key + I to open the Settings application. In the left-hand navigation sidebar, click on System, and then select Power & battery (or just “Power” on desktop PCs) from the main panel. Look for the section titled Screen and sleep and click it to expand the options. You will see dropdown menus for both when the screen turns off and when the device goes to sleep. (If you are on a laptop, you will see separate settings for “On battery power” and “When plugged in”). Click the dropdown menu next to Put my device to sleep after and change the value from the default time (usually 15 or 30 minutes) to Never. You can leave the “Turn off my screen after” setting at a lower time if you still want the monitor to power down while the PC itself keeps running.