While attending a day-long series of presentations I realised I wanted my laptop switched on running on battery but with the screen switched off or very dimmed, say, 95% of the time. That would extend my ageing battery life greatly from 3-4 hours to over 6 hours. But I wouldn’t want to have to enter a password every few minutes when I wanted to add something quickly to my notes, so conventional lock screen and sleep wouldn’t help. I wouldn’t want to change lock screen and sleep setup just for this scenario.
Ideally, there would be a separate ‘attendance mode’ that we can switch to quickly. The screen would switch off or be dimmed to, say, 5% or less after 1-2 minutes of inactivity, when we press a key combination, or when you move the pointer to a defined screen corner. On key press, the screen would light up again instantaneously and no password would be requested. This mode would also cancel the lock screen/sleep timers completely or for eg 60 minutes.
Can this be achieved already? If not, it could be a power management feature. It would really extend battery life dramatically in this scenario. I think it would be like lock screen (or possibly sleep if waking up is fast enough) without the password.
under settings > energy saving you have separate control over the screen power and the sleep function.
but if there is anything listed in the power management widget in the system tray as blocking sleep and screen locking it may not trigger the power saving.
there may be a way of removing the inhibit manually from the command line if you know which applications is causing it (check the system tray widget for clues).
My power management works as intended. The problem is as far as I can tell there is no way to switch quickly to a separate mode where lock screen or sleep don’t ask for a password.
I don’t want to enter the password every few minutes, reset my existing power management profiles every time I attend a presentation, or disable password protection permanently.
I would have to do the following every time I attend a presentation:
Switch off screen locking in settings
Switch off sleep in power management
Change ‘Dim automatically’ from 2 minutes to 1 minute
Change ‘Turn off screen’ from 5 minutes to 2 minutes
Make sure ‘Switch to Power profile’ is set to Power Save
and after the session I will have to remember to undo all these these, especially (1) to get password protection back.
What I am suggesting is a separate mode that does 1-5 with one click or a shortcut and then (6) automatically after x minutes.
All these values are indicative. Different users may go for different ones of course. A script could perhaps achieve the same effect. Is there such a thing?
The single-click optionality is similar to how a ‘Presentation mode’ is implemented on several systems or ‘Manually block’ is done in KDE Plasma. We could achieve these by changing several individual settings manually, but the shortcut is more practical and more consistent with KDE Plasma’s reputation for flexibility.
i can see the utility of an “Attendee” or “Meeting” mode where you keep everything alive in a low power state for quick access if needed but otherwise maximizes the battery life while you are with the device.
the only caution that i can think of is that this leaves your device and data vulnerable to anyone who has physical access to it, so it should only be used while the device is in your presence and you have physical control over it.
there should also be considerations of lid closing so that if you close the lid to pick up and move for a moment it does not override this mode and put the machine to sleep.
It’s up to the user to decide for themselves where they stand on vulnerability vs convenience/battery life. In certain settings (eg negotiations) vulnerability wins. In academic contexts it is not an issue at all, otherwise people may also steal your notepad and pencils. But this concern is why I suggested a timer. After x minutes password protection would switch on again. Not a big problem if you have to enter the password once every 60 minutes.
The advantage of that mode for battery life is enormous. In big meetings there aren’t enough power sockets nearby for everyone. My old laptop would normally last 3-4 hours. With a ‘Meeting’ mode it would easily last more than 8 hours. I tested that last week actually.
A side advantage is that most of the time your bored neighbours will see a dark screen rather than your incoming emails and embarrassing notifications. The downside is you won’t constantly show off your KDE Plasma
