Screen blanking

[Member blur13]

Hi!

I’ve set screen blanking to start after 2 minutes (in the 19.4 control center). Works like a charm. Except when using Zoom (which I’m forced to use, I don’t have any say in the matter). When in a zoom meeting, the screen will blank after 2 min of no input. This is obviously not expected. When watching a video in VLC the screen does not blank after 2 min, even though there is no user input. So I guess my question is, how does screen blanking work? Is there some config file, setting, etc, I can change so that while Zoom is running screen blanking does not set in? Similarly to how it currently works for VLC, mpv, etc.

thanks!

[Member Xecure]

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It seems to be a Zoom known issue, and they require you install a compositor and have it launch at startup.

You could try with their recommendation or use compton, which could be lighter. You just need to make sure it is launched before using zoom or have it automatically launch at startup.

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member blur13]

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Not sure that is the issue, that seems to be specific to screen sharing. I’m under the impression that the screen goes blank because I have set “screen blanking” to a value of 2 minutes in the control center. And voilà, when watching somebody talk on endlessly, after two minutes the screen goes blank. Moving the mouse fixes the issue. Turning off screen blanking fixes the issue. I was just wondering if there was a third solution of making “screen blanking” recognize Zoom as a program that, similarly to watching videos, doesnt warrant screen blanking. Do you know the name of the program or script that is run behind the scenes when using “screen blanking” in the control center?

[Member Xecure]

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blur13 wrote:

Not sure that is the issue, that seems to be specific to screen sharing. I’m under the impression that the screen goes blank because I have set “screen blanking” to a value of 2 minutes in the control center.

Sorry. I searched for a bit and thought it was related.

The command used to set the blanking timeout in antiX is xset dpms. I looked at the manpage and cannot see any option to watch specific applications. Unfortunately, I can see no easy way. Disabling it seems to be the best “workaround”.

Edit: you can see the enabled xset options with
xset q

• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by Xecure. Reason: xset q info

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member blur13]

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Great! I’ll play around with that and see if I can solve it. Even a simple script to disable, run zoom, then enable screen blanking might work.

thanks so much for your time Xecure!

[Member blur13]

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My laptop has a Fn+F7 key for turning off the screen that doesnt work in antiX. Now if only I could link Fn+F7 to “xset dpms force off.” This is great, now I have a mission to accomplish this evening.

[Forum Admin Dave]

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blur13 wrote:

I was just wondering if there was a third solution of making “screen blanking” recognize Zoom as a program that, similarly to watching videos, doesnt warrant screen blanking.

This is looking at the situation backward. VLC has an option to prevent screen blanking as well as other programs (generally in relation to their full screen options. EG: firefox) Zoom should also have an option for this but as noted by xecure, it is a known problem with zoom. Perhaps a good workaround would be to make an alias / wrapper script for zoom that replaces the “zoom” command. The wrapper script would turn off screen blanking until zoom is exited.
Example:

#!/bin/bash
xset dpms 0 0 0 s 0 0; 
xset -dpms; 
xset s off; 
xset s noexpose ;
zoom &&
blanktime=$(cat $HOME/.desktop-session/desktop-session.conf |grep "SCREEN_BLANK_TIME" |cut -d "=" -f2|tr -d '"');
xset dpms "$blanktime" "$blanktime" "$blanktime" s "$blanktime" "$blanktime";

• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by Dave.

Computers are like air conditioners. They work fine until you start opening Windows. ~Author Unknown

[Member blur13]

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Thanks Dave! That script works really well!

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