If for certain tasks you need to turn off your laptop screen without turning it off, In other words, to keep the laptop running, you can do it in several different ways: both through Windows 10, 8.1 o Windows 7, as well as with the help of third-party utilities.
This tutorial details several alternatives to turn off the laptop screen without interrupting its operation.: using the power button, a simple script or shortcut on the desktop or taskbar, and using third party software for this purpose. If your task is to make closing the laptop just turn off the screen, about this in a separate instruction: How to make the laptop not turn off when closing the lid.
Turn off laptop screen with power button and other functions in Windows 10, 8.1 and Windows 7
You can use Windows' built-in power settings to:
- Turn off the screen by pressing the power button on the laptop or by closing it (without shutting down or putting the laptop to sleep)
- Set the screen to turn off automatically after a period of inactivity
It's very easy to do, Just follow these simple steps:
- Go to power settings. To do this, you can right-click on the battery icon in the notification area at the bottom right and choose the desired context menu option, the go to “Control Panel” and open the option “Power supply”.
- On the left side power settings, look at the items “Power button action”, “Lid closing action” Y “Screen off setting”.
- Each of these items enables you to configure your laptop screen to turn off when a specific event occurs.. As an example, going to “Power button actions”, we can make the laptop screen turn off when the power button is pressed, and this can be done separately in the event that the laptop is powered by battery or mains.
- In screen shutdown settings, we can determine the time after which the laptop screen will automatically turn off when there is no user activity.
- Same configurations can be found (but not on all laptops, some items may not be present) selecting “Power Scheme Settings” for the selected combination and then going to “Change advanced power settings”.
At the same time, when using an external monitor connected to the laptop, you can set the output only for the external monitor and the laptop screen will turn off. In Windows 10, you will find the respective item in the display settings, as shown in the next picture.
For configuration of older versions of Windows, see How to connect a second monitor to your computer.
Script or shortcut to turn off the laptop screen
The Microsoft Sysinternals web portal provides a simple .bat script that shuts down the laptop or PC screen on startup. It can be downloaded from the official page https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Turn-off-screen-4d173e0a
The content of the script is very easy:
powershell (Add-Type '[DllImport("user32.dll")]^public static extern int SendMessage(int hWnd, int hMsg, int wParam, int lParam);' -Name a -Pas)::SendMessage(-1,0x0112,0xF170,2)
And you can create a bat file with that content yourself. It is also possible to create a shortcut on the desktop, on the taskbar or anywhere else. To do this, right click on an empty space on the desktop, select “To create” – “Direct access” and enter the following code in the field “Specify the location of the object”:
C:WindowsSystem32cmd.exe /c powershell (Add-Type '[DllImport("user32.dll")]^public static extern int SendMessage(int hWnd, int hMsg, int wParam, int lParam);' -Name a -Pas)::SendMessage(-1,0x0112,0xF170,2)
The rest of the settings for the shortcuts and the icon view can be configured at will.
Turning the screen back on after turning it off with each of these methods is done simply by clicking the mouse or pressing any key on the keyboard.
Third party programs
There are many third-party utilities that also allow you to turn off the laptop screen without turning it off or falling asleep., What: ScreenOff, Turn Off Monitor, DisplayOff, BlackTop and others.
As an example, Screen offavailable on developer page https://www.thewindowsclub.com/screenoff-turn-off-windows-laptop-screen is a very small utility that, when it starts, just turn off all monitors until next key or mouse button is pressed .
Some public services offer more options. Screen off (official download page – https://sourceforge.net/projects/doff/ provides more functions: when the utility just runs, just turn off the screen, but if it is executed with certain parameters (shown below), Also can lock your computer, add a screen off icon to the notification area, run a screen saver (screen saver).
At the same time, the utility comes not only with an executable .exe file, but also with a screensaver .scr file (screen saver), that can be installed on Windows (as usual, just right-click on the file and select “Install”), then select in the screensaver settings and, instead of activating the screensaver, it will just turn off the screen at the specified time. Here can be useful: How to set the screensaver in Windows 10.
Video-tutorial
I hope the instructions have served you. Additional related material on this site: How to set the sleep timer on your computer or laptop.
