How do I change the length of time the lock screen appears for?

Question

When my screen is locked and I then reawaken it, by moving the mouse or pressing the keyboard, the password entry screen appears. How can I change the amount of time that is taken before the password entry screen turns off?

To be specific:

• I lock my screen Ctrl+Alt+T
• Screen goes blank
• Move mouse to bring up login screen
• If I do nothing else the screen turns off again after 1 minute

In my Brightness and Lock settings I have the screen set to turn off and lock after 10 minutes, but I can't see a setting to determine how long it takes for the screen to turn off after the lock screen has been woken. It seems to be set to 1 minute by default, can this be increased/reduced?

Solution 1

Ubuntu 17.04 and earlier (Unity)

Open System Settings, click Brightness & Lock and select a value for the screen turn off option, Turn screen off when inactive for:

Choose your time delay in the drop-down menu.

Ubuntu 17.10+ (Gnome Shell)

Check this question.

Solution 2

You can not do that anymore in Gnome3.

In gnome2 you can change lock-screen timeout from gnome-screensaver settings.But In Gnome 3.2, gnome-screensaver doesn't exist, and screen locking is part of Gnome Shell.

They have reimplement some function, but not all. On Ubuntu you can access all power-related settings with dconf-editor from org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power.

OR

You can use x-screensaver as described here:

How can I change or install screensavers?

Solution 3

Just had the same problem but could not resolve the issue with the answer provided by Kurshid Alam. On Gnome 3.28 using dconf-editor:

The screen saver turns on automatically when the session is considered idle

org . gnome . desktop . screensaver . idle-activation-enabled

The easiest way to delay the screensaver is to increase the time limit for idle

org . gnome . desktop . session . idle-delay

Or using terminal

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay $((15*60)) && \
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-delay 0 && \
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-enabled true

Beware of possible impacts on laptop battery charge due to other services affected by the idle status.

Solution 4

Settings -> Power -> disable dim screen when inactive & set blank screen to never

View more solutions

Comments

[Khurshid Alam]

May I know why do you want to change that option?

[Admin]

I am about to go back to 13. I can't find a way to keep the machine from locking itself about every ten minutes. I am so over it.

[Prabhat Kumar Singh]

Not sure but this might be some of your help [ How to adjust screen lock settings on Linux desktop ](xmodulo.com/control-screen-lock-settings-linux-desktop.htm‌​l) You might need to install dconf-editor

[Garri Sumalapao Farol]

@KhurshidAlam, May I answer for the asker? For example, when you work in two environments in one computer - Windows as a host machine and Ubuntu in VM. So sometimes Ubuntu locks your session when it is not desirable.

[Matt]

A maximum of 15 minutes before the screen blanks isn't a very long time. Would really like to see a 30 minutes or even 60 minute option. It's very annoying when the screen begins to blank in the middle of a video.

[Hinz]

I couldn't agree more to Matt's comment. In 2019, still. I don't want to have to unlock every time I leave my computer for 15 minutes (maximum allowed time in settings), so I end up disabling this feature completely and unnecessarily. Why not leave a little more choice to the user?

[coversnail]

this doesn't affect the length of time that the password entry screen appears for

[coversnail]

this doesn't affect the length of time that the password entry screen appears for

[dessert]

Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! Whilst this may answer the question it is not quite clear what this setting does exactly. Please elaborate your answer adding explanations.

[René Nyffenegger]

How do I open System Settings? Can I script such a change with dconf?

[RinesRada]

duplicated question/answer at askubuntu.com/questions/1042641/…

[Pablo Bianchi]

This answer may be right on 2013, now is possible.

[hackel]

You didn't understand the question. The user wants to change the screen blank timeout for the gdm lock screen, which runs as the root user.