Screen turns off too quickly

Question

Screen turns off too quickly

Reid-7439 20

I am having difficulty with power management on my laptop. The screen turns off too quickly.

I'm using Windows 11. In the power mode setting, I have chosen "best performance" for both Plugged In and On Battery modes. In the Screen, Sleep, & Timeouts section of Power & Battery settings, I have set "Turn my screen off after" to 30 minutes for both Plugged In and On Battery. However, in both situations the screen turns off after a few minutes. Is there a setting I am overlooking?Also in the Screen, Sleep, & Timeouts section of Power & Battery settings, there appears to be a contradiction. For example, in the entry for Turn my screen off, the entry says "Turn the screen off after 5 minutes to save energy. Higher settings use more energy, but I have selected 30 minutes for the timeout. (see attached screenshot Sleep settings screenshot.pngI Why does it say 5 minutes when I've selected 30 minutes?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

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4 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Hello,

What you are experiencing is a mismatch between the configured timeout values in the modern Settings app and the underlying legacy power policy that Windows 11 still enforces. The “Turn the screen off after 5 minutes” message you see is not actually reflecting your chosen 30‑minute setting; it’s a static description tied to the default plan values. The real controlling parameters are stored in the active power plan, and sometimes the Settings UI does not properly update them, especially after switching between “Best performance” and custom values.

To confirm, open an elevated Command Prompt and run:

powercfg /query SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_VIDEO VIDEOIDLE

This will show the actual timeout in seconds for both AC and DC (plugged in vs battery). If you see 300 seconds (5 minutes) instead of 1800 seconds (30 minutes), then the setting has not been applied correctly. You can force it with:

powercfg /change monitor-timeout-ac 30
powercfg /change monitor-timeout-dc 30

That directly writes the correct values to the active plan. After that, recheck with powercfg /query to ensure the numbers match your intended configuration.

Also, check Group Policy if this is a managed device. Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Power Management > Video and Display Settings. If “Turn off the display (plugged in/on battery)” is enforced there, it will override your Settings app values. Similarly, registry keys under HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\User\PowerSchemes\<GUID>\VideoSettings can hold conflicting values if policies were applied previously.

In short, the contradiction you see in Settings is a cosmetic description, but the actual behavior is being dictated by the underlying power policy. Adjusting it with powercfg or clearing any Group Policy enforcement should resolve the screen turning off prematurely.

I hope you've found something useful here. If it helps you get more insight into the issue, it's appreciated to accept the answer. Should you have more questions, feel free to leave a message. Have a nice day!

Hoang Le.

Lisa Gay 0 Reputation points

2026-10-09T21:03:05.9+00:00

this is helpful, however I dont know how to do these things so off to the shop I go!!!

Answer 2

Reid-7439 20

Hi, Would it be possible to get feedback to my response from July 26?

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Answer 3

Thanks for the guidance.

When I used this command,

powercfg /query SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_VIDEO VIDEOIDLE

I got this response. Which item shows the current setting in seconds?

Power Scheme GUID: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e (Balanced)

GUID Alias: SCHEME_BALANCED

Subgroup GUID: 7516b95f-f776-4464-8c53-06167f40cc99 (Display)

GUID Alias: SUB_VIDEO

Power Setting GUID: 3c0bc021-c8a8-4e07-a973-6b14cbcb2b7e  (Turn off display after)

  GUID Alias: VIDEOIDLE

  Minimum Possible Setting: 0x00000000

  Maximum Possible Setting: 0xffffffff

  Possible Settings increment: 0x00000001

  Possible Settings units: Seconds

Current AC Power Setting Index: 0x00000708

Current DC Power Setting Index: 0x00000384

Answer 4