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:

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):

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

To check the set value on AC:

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

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

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

To check the set value on Battery:

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