How to turn off screen with shortcut in Linux?

Question

Since my monitor takes an awful lot of time to turn back on after being physically turned off, I'm looking for a command or a simple utility to turn off my screen with a shortcut. Setting a black screensaver is not satisfactory; I want the screen to "hibernate" (the same effect I would get by turning off the computer while leaving the screen physically on).

The same question for Windows: How can I make my screen blank by a shortcut?

score 89 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 04 '12 at 21:13

89

Try using

xset dpms force off

to force the screen to turn off.

edited Jan 04 '12 at 21:13

wizlog

13,573

answered Jan 04 '12 at 19:35

Siva Charan

4,959

score 31 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 05 '13 at 09:07

I made a file called /home/me/bin/blank and made it executable chmod +x blank with the following in it:

#!/bin/bash
sleep 1; xset dpms force off

Then I set a shortcut in Gnome3 application "keyboard" (gnome-control-center keyboard) to run that script when I push CTRL+ALT+Q.

Man I love linux.

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 18 '19 at 12:01

I use Alex Cabal script to turn my two monitors screens off and on and it works very fine for me.

#!/bin/bash

# turn screens off/on
# (ɔ) alex cabal

screenOffLockFile=/tmp/screen-off-lock

if [ -f $screenOffLockFile ];
then
    rm $screenOffLockFile
    notify-send "Screen on." -i /usr/share/icons/gnome/48x48/devices/display.png
else
    touch $screenOffLockFile
    sleep .5
    while [ -f  $screenOffLockFile ]
    do
        xset dpms force off
        sleep 2
    done
    xset dpms force on
fi

tavish · Answer 4 · 2020-06-19T08:17:18.547

4

You can go to your distro's settings, and add a shortcut => putting the command - xset dpms force off, then put a hotkey(say F9). That's it, whenever you hit the hotkey, your monitor's screen will turn off

edited Jun 19 '20 at 08:17

answered Jun 16 '20 at 06:39

tavish

41

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 25 '17 at 11:22

As a premise, I personally prefer hamstar/Siva Charan solution. Anyway, I know another possible way could be a script that sets screensaver to blank and then make it start:

rem #!/bin/bash

xset s blank ; sleep 1 ; xset s activate

So as just not to let unspoken things

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 22 '12 at 19:09

2

slock locks the screen gracefully.

answered Nov 22 '12 at 19:09

octosquidopus

1,450

How to turn off screen with shortcut in Linux?

6 Answers6

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