The fastest way to turn off the screen in Windows

Neither Windows 10 nor Windows 11 offer a convenient keyboard shortcut to turn off your monitor. Depending on your settings, it can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours for your monitor to automatically turn off. This article will show you the easiest ways to control your monitor and turn it off whenever you want. This will not only save you energy, but also prevent screen burn-in and long-term damage.

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1. Turn off the screen using hotkey on laptop

While Windows doesn’t include a keyboard shortcut, your laptop may come with a hotkey to turn off the screen. This varies depending on the laptop manufacturer and model. Check the top row of keys, usually the F1-12 keys, for the screen-off icon and try it out. You may have to hold down the Fn key (usually in the bottom left) to override the F key and enable the hotkey function.

2. Update Windows power management settings

Windows offers a variety of power management settings. Let's see how you can use these to control when your display turns on and off.

How to make the screen turn off automatically in Windows 11

To turn off your Windows 11 display, go to Start > Settings > System > Power > Screen and sleep and select your preferred timeout.

Note that this setting won't affect games or video-based media, as these settings will keep your screen on. This means you can continue watching a movie or show without worrying about your screen turning off, even if your screen timeout is set to just a few minutes.

How to make the screen turn off automatically in Windows 10

To control how quickly your screen turns off, go to Start > Settings > System > Power & sleep and customize the time under the Screen heading. If you're on battery, we recommend turning off your screen after 5 minutes or less. When you're plugged in, you can leave it on for a little longer, but 10 or 15 minutes is the maximum.

How to turn off screen using power button

To manually turn off your monitor with just one button, go to Control Panel and use the power button on Windows again to turn off your monitor. This works on both laptops and desktops and will save you more energy than letting Windows automatically turn off your monitor after a few minutes of inactivity.

In Windows 10, go to Start > Settings > System > Power & sleep > Related settings and click Additional power settings . This will take you to the old Windows Control Panel.

In Windows 11, you'll have to navigate to the Control Panel manually. Press Windows key + Q , search for Control Panel , and open the corresponding result. In the top-right corner of the Control Panel, make sure View by: Large icons or View by: Small icons is selected , then select Power Options . In the left pane, click Choose what the power button does.

In the next window, under When I press the power button , you can turn off the display when you're on battery or plugged in. (If you don't see that option, check below.) Click Save changes to lock in your preferences.

With this setting enabled, all you have to do to turn off the Windows screen is press the power button. Note that you can still forcefully shut down your computer (in case it is locked) by holding the power button for a few seconds.

The Best Tools to Turn Off the Screen on Windows

Maybe you don't want to manually turn off your PC monitor or don't want to change the default power button settings. You can use a third-party tool to turn off your monitor. Here are four of the best options.

1. Turn Off Monitor

Turn Off Monitor is a small executable that does just one thing: Turn off your monitor. You don’t need to install it. Just download the file, extract the ZIP file, save the utility on your desktop, and double-click it whenever you need it. You can assign a keyboard shortcut to run the utility.

If you see a security warning, you can bypass it by removing the check mark next to Always ask before opening this file .

Note that in Windows 10, when you use this utility and are ready to resume work, the screen returns to the lock screen. If you don't want to enter your login information every time you turn off the screen, you can disable the lock screen . However, that means anyone can access your screen when you're not around.

2. Turn Off Screen

Someone at Microsoft must have realized how cool it would be to have a shortcut to turn off the screen because they wrote a script for it. You can find it on GitHub now.

Save the ZIP file, extract it, find the BAT file inside and double click to run it. You can even change the icon and assign a shortcut which you can find instructions for below.

3. BlackTop

Don't want to assign a shortcut manually? BlackTop has its own: Ctrl+Alt+B. Unfortunately, you can't change the key combination.

Note that this utility requires Windows .NET Framework 3.5 . If you do not have the correct version of .NET Framework installed, Windows will offer to download and install it after you complete the installation. Installing the .NET Framework may take a while.

4. NirCmd

NirCmd is a command line utility that can perform a variety of tasks, including turning off your monitor. You can run NirCmd without installing it. However, if you plan to use it frequently, it is more convenient to install it and not have to type the full path every time you want to run a command.

To install NirCmd in Windows 10, extract the ZIP file, right-click on nircmd.exe and select Run as administrator . Next, click on the Copy To Windows Directory button . Confirm with Yes in the following window. Once the operation is complete, click OK in the previous window.

Now that you have NirCmd installed, you can use it to turn off your monitor and perform other tasks. Admittedly, opening a command line and typing the command every time you want to turn off your monitor is probably the most inconvenient solution. However, you only have to do it once to create a shortcut, and then you can assign a hotkey to it.

Press Win + R to open the Run utility , then type cmd and press OK.

In the command line, type the following command:

nircmd.exe cmdshortcutkey "c:\temp" "Turn Monitor Off" monitor off

Press Enter to run the command.

If you did not copy nircmd.exe to the Windows Directory, enter the full path. Instead of "c:\temp" , you can choose any other location for the shortcut file. "Turn Monitor Off" will be the name of the shortcut file, but you can choose a different name.

3. How to assign hotkey to run any tool

This works for any executable, including the tools above. First, right-click on the EXE file and select Create shortcut. Note that you have already created a shortcut for NirCmd if you followed the steps above.

Next, right-click the shortcut file and select Properties. Place your mouse in the Shortcut key: field that says "None" and click your shortcut key, such as Ctrl+Alt+J. Click OK to confirm.

Finally, test your shortcut and enjoy the convenient experience it brings!

Wish you success and please read more useful tips on QuanTriMang page.