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GNOME: ScreenIdle and ScreenLock Customization

If you want to control GNOME screen turn off, and screen lock separately like KDE, you came to the right place.

GNOME GUI Settings manager gnome-control-center doesn’t allow turning off the screen on idle without locking it first.

The gsettings tool comes to our rescue. It’s a built-in command-line tool to manage configuration settings on GNOME.

Idle/Lock Settings

Unintended Consequences, please see this section.

Let’s enable Screen Idle after 60 seconds:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay 60
  • The idle-delay basically means, the screen will turn off after 60 seconds of inactivity.

Now, let’s check the set value:

gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay

Enable the screen saver:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-enabled true

To check the set value:

gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-enabled

Now set the Screen Lock delay to 600 seconds (10 minutes)

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-delay 600

To know set values:

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gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-delay 

Now, the PC screen will turn off after 60 seconds, without locking it. After 10 minutes, if no activity is detected, it will lock the screen.

Sleep Settings

Warning

The one side effect of using gsettings to control ScreenLock and Screen-idle is, missing Sleep settings on battery/power via Settings GUI.

But these settings can be set via gsettings too.

Suspend/Sleep State

To check available sleep/suspend states on battery:

gsettings range org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery-type

On AC:

gsettings range org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-type

To disable automatic sleep on AC:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-type 'nothing'

To re-enable, just replace 'nothing' with 'suspend'

Suspend/Sleep Duration

To set a sleep delay on AC (in seconds):

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gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-timeout 1800

To check the set value on AC:

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gsettings get org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-timeout

To set a sleep value on Battery (in seconds):

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gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery-timeout 1200

To check the set value on Battery:

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gsettings get org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery-timeout
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