How to Turn Off Screen Timeout Without Losing the Lock

Updated: October 2026

The ticket says the screen goes black every five minutes, and the user wants it gone. On a personal PC that's one setting. Here's how to turn off screen timeout on Windows 11 and phones, why a company device may refuse, and where the security line sits.

Screen Timeout, Sleep and Lock Are Three Different Timers

Users call all three "the screen timeout". Windows treats them as separate settings.

The display timer turns the monitor off. Apps keep running and nothing is locked. Move the mouse and the screen comes back.

The sleep timer suspends the whole PC. Downloads stop, remote sessions drop, and waking it takes a few seconds.

The lock timer ends access. The session stays open behind the lock screen, but getting back in needs a password, PIN or Windows Hello.

Before you change anything, ask which one annoys the user. "My screen keeps turning off" is usually the display timer. "I keep having to type my PIN" is the lock timer, and that one may belong to policy.

How to Turn Off Screen Timeout on Windows 11

Open Settings, then System, then Power & battery (just Power on a desktop). Expand Screen and sleep. Newer builds label it Screen, sleep, & hibernate timeouts.

Set "Turn my screen off after" to Never. Laptops show two rows, one for plugged in and one for battery. Leave sleep alone unless the user needs the PC awake too.

Check the screen saver next. It lives under Personalization, then Lock screen, then Screen saver. Set it to None. If "On resume, display logon screen" is ticked, the screen saver is also a lock timer in disguise.

The lock screen has its own display timer. Lock the PC and the monitor goes dark after about a minute, whatever you set above. That's the hidden "Console lock display off timeout", and it only applies while the PC is locked.

Turn Off Screen Timeout From the Command Line

Settings is fine for one desk. For a script, use powercfg. Values are in minutes and 0 means never.

code
powercfg /change monitor-timeout-ac 0
powercfg /change monitor-timeout-dc 0
powercfg /change standby-timeout-ac 0

The first line covers plugged in and the second covers battery. The third stops sleep on AC power, so skip it if you only want the display on.

For the locked-screen timer, the alias is VIDEOCONLOCK, in seconds:

code
powercfg /setacvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_VIDEO VIDEOCONLOCK 600
powercfg /setactive SCHEME_CURRENT

Run powercfg /aliases first to confirm the alias exists on that build. These commands change the active power plan, so a policy-managed plan can overwrite them at the next refresh.

Why the Screen Still Turns Off: Policy Wins

If Settings shows "Some of these settings are managed by your organization", stop tweaking. Something above the user is setting the timer, and it wins every refresh.

Three policies do this on Windows. "Interactive logon: Machine inactivity limit" locks the session after a set number of seconds. Microsoft notes one side effect: with it configured, the device also locks when the display turns off because of power settings, so a short display timer becomes a short lock.

The power policies "Turn off the display (plugged in)" and "(on battery)" set the display timer in seconds. When they're configured, the user's own setting stops counting. In Intune, the same limits come from the Settings catalog or the DeviceLock policy, whose MaxInactivityTimeDeviceLock caps what the user can pick in Settings. Our Microsoft Intune review covers where those profiles live.

To see which one applies, run gpresult /h report.html on a domain PC, or check the device's configuration profiles in Intune. There's also more than one way to build the policy, as this r/Intune thread shows.

Where the Security Line Sits for Company Devices

The lock timer exists for one reason. Someone walks to lunch, and anyone passing their desk gets their email, their files and their sessions.

The CIS benchmark for Intune-managed Windows 11 (v5.0.0) sets "Machine inactivity limit" to 900 seconds or fewer, and never 0. The DISA STIG for Windows 11 lands on the same 15 minutes. Microsoft's own Machine inactivity limit guidance says the value should match where the device sits, with public areas getting shorter limits.

Go much shorter and users fight back. In this r/Intune thread, one admin reports a two-minute lock that lasted a week before everyone settled on ten.

This MSFT WebCast walkthrough sets the Intune version of the lock step by step.

So split the timers. Let the display stay on for as long as the user likes, and keep the lock at 15 minutes. The screen that stays lit is a comfort setting. The session that stays open is a risk.

Kiosks, Dashboards and Presentations

Some screens should never go dark. A NOC dashboard, a lobby display or a meeting-room panel.

Don't solve these by exempting a person's account. Use a dedicated account with nothing worth stealing, or kiosk mode through Assigned Access. Then "never" for both display and lock is a reasonable call, because a passerby gets a dashboard, not a mailbox.

Presentations don't need a policy change at all. PowerPoint in slideshow mode and video players ask Windows to keep the display on. Run powercfg /requests to see which app is holding the screen awake. It's also the fastest way to answer the opposite ticket, where the screen refuses to turn off.

How to Turn Off Screen Timeout on iPhone and Android

On an iPhone, open Settings, then Display & Brightness, then Auto-Lock, and pick Never. If Auto-Lock is greyed out, check Low Power Mode first. Apple's own documentation says it sets Auto-Lock to 30 seconds.

On Android, open Settings, then Display, then Screen timeout. The longest option varies by manufacturer. For a phone on a charger, Developer options has "Stay awake", which keeps the screen on while charging.

Company phones follow the same rule as laptops. In Intune's iOS device restrictions, "Maximum minutes of inactivity until screen locks" tops out at five minutes on iPhone. Once it's set, the user's longer choices disappear from the menu.

A Better Answer Than "Never"

"Never" is fine for the display on a personal PC. On a company device, give the user a longer display timer and keep the lock at 15 minutes. For shared screens, move them to an account that can afford to stay unlocked.

To check what's configured across a fleet, run powercfg /query SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_VIDEO. OpenFrame can run it as a script across a client's devices and collect the output, so you see every "never" before an auditor does.

The same one-PC-or-whole-fleet logic applies to other comfort settings users ask about. Our guide to turning off Windows notifications covers the next ticket in the queue. If personal phones touch company data, the lock rules belong in your BYOD policy template.