I have been using Plasma for years at this point and I still don’t understand how to use the screen locking and power management modules.
I can get the screen to lock after a certain amount of time, and I can get the screen to turn off after a certain amount of time, but not both, and neither reliably. If I set “Lock screen automatically” in Screen Locking and “Turn off screen” in Power Management to the same amount of time, it will do only one OR the other, with no way for me to pridict which it will do. If I set “Turn off screen” to be longer than “Lock screen automatically” it will, again, do one OR the other, at the “Lock screen automatically” timer.
Firstly, I don’t know why these are separate modules. Get rid of the Screen Locking module and allow “Lock screen” to be selected in Suspend Session > When inactive in the Power Management module.
This would also allow you to set different screen locking timeouts depending on power mode (why would you want this? To lock screen and turn off the screen in the same squence, e.g. lock screen then turn it off, or to do them both at the same time).
The only 2 other settings in Screen Locking can surely also be moved to the Power Management (or I guess Screen Locking and Power Management) module.
And the “Turn off screen:” “x minutes” “When locked:/when locked and unlocked” interface is incredibly confusing.
That second dropdown is either its own setting,
Turn off screen in 24 minutes when unlocked. Turn off screen immediately when locked.
or part of the preceding sentence,
Turn off screen in 24 minutes when locked and unlocked
depending on the what is selected in the second dropdown — if I understand correctly?
(Just pointing out, if lock screen existed under suspend session, you would only need a separate “Turn off screen when locked” setting and you’d avoid the confusion. There is also no way to currently set “Dim automatically” when locked, so you could also add that. And the other problem currently is that setting “turn off screen when locked” to “immediately” means you can’t then set a timer for locking after inactivity when actually on the lock screen, so the “immediately” setting should be replaced by a separate checkbox, something like “Also turn off screen when locking”)
So I’m still not sure if I’m encountering a bug with the screen off/locking behaviour or if I misunderstand the settings.
But at the very least I need a way to make it reliably lock when left unattended.