Screen saver not allowing monitor sleep/stand by mode

[NonMuss]

Describe the bug Screen saver not allowing monitor sleep/stand by mode.

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior: Setup Lively to use screen saver and wait for it to initialize, set to 1 minute, wait for monitor power down, set to 3 minutes.

Expected behavior Monitor to power down.

Screenshots/Video

I'm not sure you can record it and show the monitor powering down.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: Edition Windows 11 Pro 24H2
• Using Matrix wallpaper and Rain as screen saver.

Additional context Tried the steps in https://github.com/rocksdanister/lively/issues/1446 since it describes a similar problem but without the pre-installed options.

Log file (Important) Share the diagnostic files by: lively_log_20250515_092252.zip

[rocksdanister]

You disabled the audio? https://github.com/rocksdanister/lively/issues/1109#issuecomment-1066088998

Can you verify if its disabled by playing video wallpaper with sound.

[NonMuss]

Tried setting the screen saver to - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRwVDLpMcJg - it has sound. I have mpv.conf in AppData\Local\Programs\Lively Wallpaper\Plugins\Mpv\portable_config and AppData\Local\Lively Wallpaper\Mpv\portable_config

[NonMuss]

I downloaded this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_q7bsVQ5IQ - and set it as screen saver. No sound and the monitor doesn't power off. Doesn't loop either, I don't know if that's by design though.

[rocksdanister]

Doesn't loop either, I don't know if that's by design though.

That is not design, weird 🤔

[jeois]

I'm having the same issue. With the screensaver enabled, the monitor never turns off, and the system never goes to sleep. I wake up seeing the monitor and system always on, with terrible energy efficiency.

My "powercfg /requests" returns nothing, but I can't run the command whilst the screensaver is running, as any keyboard input would interrupt it as per normal screensaver behavior. I really don't think it's an audio issue. None of the suggestions in #1446 or #1109 seem to resolve the issue.

Perhaps unrelated, but I noticed the top edges of the wallpaper seems to have an invisible frame where the animation does not play. It's like a static frame on the edge of the animated portion. Sometimes, reselecting the display method (e.g. display 1, span, duplicate) will somehow reset the animation to fullscreen, but now this extra step does nothing, and I can't get rid of the static frame now. Again, this is most likely unrelated since that culprit is the screensaver, and the wallpaper doesn't actually inhibit power saving.

[rocksdanister]

I can't recreate this (monitor sleep) issue on my system with monitor and screensaver set to 1 minute timeout.

1. For testing I used a local .mp4 video file without audio track, can you try to reproduce the issue like so instead of yt link? You can find video files here: https://repo.jellyfin.org/test-videos/
2. Running powercfg /requests during screensaver should give more information that should help, but since keyboard input will interrupt it you will have to write a bat/powershell script that executes powercfg /requests automatically after 'x' minutes, its simple try asking chatgpt.

The invisible top-left frame is a unrelated to screensaver, fix https://github.com/rocksdanister/lively/issues/2415

[jeois]

I was never using yt links. I never figured out how to make add wallpaper with URLs work, as they've all wound up capturing blank screens. Therefore, I've been using downloaded mp4s from desktophut and motionbgs locally.

I created a windows batch file to execute the powercfg /requests after a 1 minute delay, then I'd launch a preview from Screen Saver Settings. Upon the first attempt, it returned nothing, but after I ran the .bat as admin with a different mp4 file, and turns out it was indeed audio since my sound device was listed. :P

I've added the "border=no" and "--aid=no" lines to the mpv.conf file, and it seems to return nothing now. Therefore, it's likely whatever issues are now resolved. I'll know when I leave my PC unattended. Thank you for the quick response, and if you don't hear from me, then please consider the issue fixed.

[jeois]

Unfortunately, the issue isn't resolved just yet. While the screensaver previews return no powercfg requests, but when the screensaver is activated normally through idle, somehow its launch is different from the preview:

1. a cursor is shown when it's normally hidden by the screensaver preview
2. my previous powercfg returns with the audio device under SYSTEM were due to faulty testing parameters, since i was listening to audiobooks to pass the time. However, under the DISPLAY section, which affects monitor power savings, there's still "none."
3. when the screensaver is launched while idling at the cmd.exe console running the batch script as admin, its behavior is even weirder since it doesn't act like screensaver at all, and I have full video control buttons and closing the video gives me a blank screen. So, the normal mouse and keyboard input interrupts don't work. Pressing ESC exits the console and closes the blank screen. However, I lose the text output. Next, I guess I have to dump the text to file, but I think it'll be "none" since that's what I get if I change focus to any other window besides the console and allow the rest of the test to run normally.

My current theory is that this has to do with users. Somehow, when the system activates the screensaver, it bypasses loading the configuration file due it being a user (perhaps "system" or admin) that retrieves its mpv.conf somewhere else, perhaps other config files as well. Mine is located in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Lively Wallpaper\Mpv\portable_config

For testing reference, I'm choosing locally stored mp4 set to launch at 1 minute of idle. The monitor power off is set to 2 minutes. Then, I'm running a batch file which executes powercfg /request with 50, 20, and 20 second delays. Eventually, at the 2 minute mark, the screen flashes blank (black) but quickly resumes the screensaver play within <1 second. Then, I check the console, which returned nothing.

I guess I can uninstall Lively and reinstall it for the single user, but I really dislike doing that since I'm the only user at this particular Windows PC. My Lively installation is located in C:\Program Files\Lively Wallpaper. I'm not sure if it would help if we moved it to \AppData\ or whereever else more inconvenient since "system" would be the pseudo-user launching the screensaver anyway, or at least that's my theory.

[jeois]

So, I reinstalled Lively to the ...\appdata\local\Programs path, and the screensaver is still behaving the same way. I deleted \AppData\local\mpv in case it was interfering. Moreover, regardless if the screensaver is launched by idle or the preview, it never lets the monitor shut off.

Basically, using the parameters from my previous post, the screen will blank every 2 minutes, but the screensaver will keep going and bring up the looping video playback again. powercfg /requests always returns "none" in every category.

This behavior suggests the system is indeed engaging power saving mode, so powercfg requests are irrelevant most of the time; but for some reason, the screensaver or video playback just wants to restart and keep going, counting as an interrupt to the power savings mode and the monitor never turns off.

[rocksdanister]

I don't remember if the original thread talked about this but you need to also set this power setting to allow display/pc sleep:

https://github.com/rocksdanister/lively/wiki/Common-Problems#display-sleepscreensaver-not-working

In my testing even without audio track this was preventing display sleep.

[jeois]

Strangely, I don't even have "Multimedia settings" in Power Options>Advanced Settings. I may have screwed up my Windows configuration, but I did a repair installation fairly recently.

[jeois]

well, thanks for the info. I tried to edit the registry to make that option appear, but couldn't manage it. apparently, it's not supported by my motherboard's ACPI drivers perhaps. In any case, I don't think that's it.

Turning off the screensaver or using one that comes with MS Windows, the monitor power savings returns to normal functionality. The screen blanks at 2 minutes, then the monitor reports "no signal" briefly then shuts off into power saving mode. Feels unlikely that this video relaunching behavior is caused by any power setting alone, although video playback and sharing does sound relevant.

I mean, if nothing happened at all (it just kept looping) or we caught something in the powercfg /requests, then we can blame video playback stopping power savings from activating, but what's weird is the system is clearly trying to turn off the monitor by blanking the screen, but right afterwards, the video starts another loop again and the monitor never shuts off.