Turning your monitor off with Nircmd
Posted: Sat Aug 29, 2020 7:59 pm
I've long had an interest in using freeware to save energy turning off my monitor quickly to both save power and for privacy reasons. In particular, my work machine's lock screen has my full name and company listed in big and clear text, which is not ideal at an internet cafe or hotel lobby.
While we already have a Nircmd thread, I'm giving this post a separate thread because it is -- of the MANY different tools for turning off your monitor I've tested -- the best. I recommend it not just because the program closes after launch, but because it's very consistent, works on multiple monitors, and is super simple.
Steps:
Disable speakers and monitor
In building something around this, I also became interested in muting both the speakers and microphone input. To be clear, there's power savings with disabling your mic and speakers, but turning off your monitor takes means probably 50x the power savings, unless you were actively playing loud music.
I've integrated Nirsoft's SoundVolumeView into the process, as I had mixed results with nircmd's microphone controls.
What follows is the text file I created (and renamed to ".bat") and then saved to my desktop. I double-click on it whenever I step away from my machine for more than a few minutes.
While we already have a Nircmd thread, I'm giving this post a separate thread because it is -- of the MANY different tools for turning off your monitor I've tested -- the best. I recommend it not just because the program closes after launch, but because it's very consistent, works on multiple monitors, and is super simple.
Steps:
1. Create an empty text file
2. Paste in the following text (adjusting the location to point to nircmd on your machine):
3. Rename the text file to have a .bat ending
4. Launch the bat file
2. Paste in the following text (adjusting the location to point to nircmd on your machine):
Code: Select all
"C:\Temp\PortableApps\nircmd\nircmd.exe" monitor off4. Launch the bat file
Disable speakers and monitor
In building something around this, I also became interested in muting both the speakers and microphone input. To be clear, there's power savings with disabling your mic and speakers, but turning off your monitor takes means probably 50x the power savings, unless you were actively playing loud music.
I've integrated Nirsoft's SoundVolumeView into the process, as I had mixed results with nircmd's microphone controls.
What follows is the text file I created (and renamed to ".bat") and then saved to my desktop. I double-click on it whenever I step away from my machine for more than a few minutes.
Code: Select all
REM - turning off the monitor(s)
"C:\Temp\PortableApps\nircmd\nircmd.exe" monitor off
REM - Muting mic and sound
"C:\Temp\PortableApps\soundvolumeview\SoundVolumeView.exe" /Mute "Microphone"
"C:\Temp\PortableApps\nircmd\nircmd.exe" mutesysvolume 1
